Airtel Africa reported customer base and profit growth, but continued to grapple with currency devaluation on the continent as revenues and EBITDA declined.

Digital infrastructure company Equinix announced it has opened its first International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in South Africa, and is already onboarding new customers and partners.

According to industry body the GSMA, 43% of the global population still does not use mobile internet, highlighting device affordability and digital skills as the main barriers.

Ethio Telecom is back in the news – this time via plans to launch a smart city project in Bahir Dar, capital city of the Amhara region in northern Ethiopia, following the deployment of commercial 5G services.

Orange once again highlighted the “outstanding performance” of its Africa and Middle East unit, which led growth in its third-quarter financial results.

Kenyan operator Safaricom's M-Pesa mobile money service has teamed up with Kenyan start-up tappi to digitise 650,000 business users in the country.

Telecom Namibia said on Monday it has launched a dedicated whistleblowing hotline that enables anyone – including its own employees – to report any fraudulent and corrupt activities being committed within Telecom Namibia’s organisation.

Ericsson said on Friday its Nigerian unit has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Nigerian government to establish a framework of cooperation covering 5G technology development, deployment and innovation.

Hormuud Telecom strengthened its EVC Plus mobile money platform by making it interoperable with MyBank and Agro Bank, with plans to onboard more banks in 2025.

Satellite and terrestrial network operator Intelsat has unveiled a new satellite cellular backhaul service platform, located at  the Open Access Data Centres facility in Lagos, Nigeria. Data centre facility provider OADC is a division of core digital infrastructure solutions and managed network services company WIOCC.

Kenyan service provider Safaricom has announced a strategic partnership with Cloudflare, a global web infrastructure and cybersecurity provider, and Copycat, a leading systems integrator in East Africa. This collaboration, it says, will significantly reduce the costs of integrated cybersecurity services for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Research from Finnish vendor Nokia predicts that one in four mobile subscriptions in the Middle East and Africa will be connected via 5G within the next five years.

Analyst firm Canalys reported that global smartphone shipments grew 5% year-on-year in Q3 2024, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of growth. 

Kenyan and Ethiopian service provider Safaricom has extended its M-Pesa Global service – which enables M-Pesa registered customers to send and receive money globally – to Ethiopia, allowing customers to make mobile money transactions from Kenya to Ethiopia.

Somalian operators Hormuud Telecom, Golis Telecom, and the GSMA have moved to deepen their collaboration with NGOs by developing a strategy to fully harness mobile technology for humanitarian efforts.

Leading financial services platform Mukuru has announced the launch of its new mobile wallet in Malawi, the Mukuru Wallet, which, Mukuru says, is designed to address the growing demand for a convenient, secure, efficient way to manage funds and make money transfers.

The government of Ghana said that it has implemented free roaming with Benin and Togo, enabling residents of all three West African countries to use their mobile services without having to pay international roaming charges.

The 10% sell-off of Ethio Telecom is finally going ahead. In fact Reuters reports that Ethio Telecom will become the first company to list on Ethiopia’s new stock market next week when the government sells a 10% stake in the company.

The Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) is reportedly demanding a full review of Starlink’s operations in the country after the LEO satellite operator jacked up its prices without regulatory approval.

The South African government has revealed plans to close the connectivity coverage gap in rural areas, emphasising this as a key initiative to empower poorer communities and stimulate economic growth.

Nigerian fintech startup Okra launched a new cloud infrastructure service on Tuesday, making it the latest of several startups in the country that aim to provide a local alternative to cloud giants like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

MTC Namibia launched its mobile financial service, MTC Maris, as the Namibian government hailed the operator for “stepping ahead” of its rivals, while urging them to follow suit in order to connect the fifth of the population that remains unbanked.

Burundi and Zambia are to be connected via an underwater fibre optic cable, following an agreement at the second Digital Government Africa Summit, which took place from 2-4 October 2024 in Zambia’s capital Lusaka.

We’ve written a lot this year about the effect of the devaluation of naira on telecoms services in Nigeria. But another African country where service providers have been hit by the devaluation of its currency is Ethiopia, whose state-owned telecom provider, Ethio Telecom, has now announced tariff increases across many of its services.

Mobile operator Orange Burkina Faso is reportedly unable to access almost 15% of its telecom sites due to the security situation in those areas as fighting between the military government and Islamist armed groups continues.

Global digital solutions provider Hayo said on Tuesday it has opened new offices in Cameroon, Niger and Sri Lanka to expand its ability to meet growing local and regional demand for digital services.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, a multilateral institution whose objective is to contribute to the sustainable economic development and social progress of African countries, has approved grants for digitising the Comorian economy.

A London High Court has rejected an appeal by former Unitel director Isabel dos Santos to unfreeze assets worth around US$778 million.

South African telco Vodacom said on Thursday its enterprise unit is working with local governments to implement smart city solutions for use cases such as utilities management, healthcare, education and security.

KaiOS,  whose mobile operating system brings the internet to affordable devices, has announced a partnership with payment giant Mastercard to integrate a range of digital payments solutions for developing markets, beginning with Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria.

Smartphone financing company M-KOPA hailed reaching the milestone of providing over five million customers with loans in Africa totalling US$1.5 billion.