New research from consulting group Omdia shows Africa’s smartphone market closed 2025 on a strong note. But will this trend continue into 2026? The news there is less positive.

Satellite operator SES and network builder Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) have announced a milestone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, expanding mobile connectivity to 27% of the country’s population and bringing coverage to an additional 1.3 million people.

M-Pesa Ethiopia and African AI creator platform Gebeya announced on Wednesday they have launched a subscription package that allows Ethiopians to access AI creation tools and pay for them directly via M-Pesa.

Telekom Malaysia (TM) announced on Wednesday that that it will switch from 5G wholesale operator Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) to competing 5G wholesaler U Mobile, which it said will boost its competitiveness in the mobile sector.

Global fintech platform Pine Labs has announced that it has won multiple contracts from three of the leading oil and marketing companies (OMCs) in India: Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL).

Pan-African infrastructure and services group Axian says it has secured a Decentralised Digital Financial Institution (DFI) license from the Central Bank of Comoros, enabling the creation of a newly established regulated entity operating under a prudential supervisory framework.

Hayo, a global digital service provider, says it has expanded its footprint in Francophone Africa with on-the-ground presence in Senegal.

Bahrain-headquartered technology company Beyon Group has been selection by the Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) as the winning investor for the Fixed Telecommunications Network Development Project in Kuwait.

PTCL’s Ufone and China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak, a.k.a. Zong 4G) have reportedly deposited pre-bids of US$15 million each to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to participate in its upcoming 5G spectrum auction.

InterDigital and Turk Telekom said on Monday they have implemented a collaborative cellular and Wi-Fi sensing solution that they say will pave the way towards creating intelligent, sensing-enabled 6G networks.

Nokia announced on Tuesday it is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to showcase its agentic AI-powered 5G-Advanced network slicing solution on live networks, starting with telcos du and Orange, at Mobile World Congress 2026.

Malaysian operator Tune Talk has taken a major step in its evolution from mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to fully fledged mobile network operator (MNO), partnering with Mavenir to run its own end-to-end network.

MoneyHash, a payment orchestration platform built for emerging and global markets, has announced a new partnership with Wayl, a local payment solutions provider, checkout engine, and merchant of record supporting global and regional businesses entering the Iraqi market.

Regional multilateral development finance institution the African Development Bank Group and the United Nations Development Programme have announced a “transformative" continental drive to accelerate responsible artificial intelligence adoption and inclusive digital economic growth across Africa.

The GSMA launched a new innovation fund on Monday to support small enterprises that use mobile and digital technologies to transition to green practices in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Tata Communications announced on Monday it is partnering with RailTel Corporation of India to fortify the latter’s fibre backbone infrastructure to support AI development in the country.

The Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) said on Friday it has granted Orange Money a separate license to operate as a mobile money service provider under new regulations requiring telcos to decouple from their mobile money subsidiaries.

Google has announced an investment of US$500 million in the construction of submarine cables and an international digital exchange port for the Dominican Republic. This will apparently be the company’s eighth digital exchange port in the world and the first in Latin America.

Bharti Airtel has strengthened its cybersecurity strategy by launching a new AI & Cyber Threat Research Centre in India, in partnership with US-based cloud security firm Zscaler.

Payment giant Visa says it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire two payment-related companies in Argentina – Prisma Medios de Pago and Newpay – from global private equity investor Advent International.

Ethio Telecom announced on Friday it has launched an internet-based video streaming service called “teleStream”, which it’s positioning as an alternative to satellite TV.

MTN Digital infrastructure – a.k.a. Bayobab – announced on Saturday that its subsidiary Bayobab Zambia has partnered with Vodacom Mozambique to interconnect their fibre networks at the Zambia–Mozambique border.

Indonesian mobile operator Telkomsel has officially implemented facial recognition as a verification tool for new prepaid SIM registrations, after almost a year and a half of trialling the technology.

Nigerian operators have settled a long-running unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) payment dispute with commercial banks. It seems that, five years after the dispute began, all outstanding payments have now been made.

Colocation data centre services provider, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres  (STT GDC) has announced the launch of its fourth data centre in the Indian city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, marking the expansion of its second campus in the city at Siruseri, a southern suburb of Chennai.

The Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) has reportedly secured conditional approval from the State Audit Bureau (SAB) to award a KWD19.9 million (US$64.8 million) contract for a project to modernise Kuwait’s fixed-line telecoms infrastructure.

Telkom Indonesia’s international arm Telin announced on Thursday it is partnering with IPification to commercialize its Mobile Network Verification (MNV) solution, which leverages Telkom’s network APIs to authenticate users without the need for OTPs.

Finnfund, the Finnish development financier and impact investor, says it has made a follow-on investment in a company called Communication & Renewable Energy Infrastructure (CREI) to scale up sustainable telecom energy infrastructure in South Sudan.

Terranova, the hyperscale data centre platform backed by the Actis infrastructure fund, described as one of the largest and longest-standing sustainable infrastructure investors globally, has launched its first data centre in Mexico.