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.

Kenyan service provider Safaricom has been in the news this week for an initiative involving healthcare – and also for a sustainability-linked loan.

At the United Nations Summit of the Future 2024 in New York  on 21 September, ZTE Vice President Summer Chen delivered a keynote speech “A Digital Future for All” during ITU’s SDG DIGITAL on how ZTE’s solutions are able to provide connectivity in some of the world’s least developed countries as well as some of its most remote regions.

Data centre operator Raxio Group says it has inaugurated Raxio Côte d’Ivoire (CIV1), described as a state-of-the-art data centre, in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

Ethiopia’s state-owned service provider Ethio Telecom has announced that it is rolling out what it calls its Copper Switch-Off Strategic Initiative; its aim is to migrate 100,000 of the company’s copper-based customers to high-speed fibre optic connections during the current Ethiopian fiscal year.

Operator Vodacom South Africa has built an enablement platform for mobile virtual network operators and signed up its first MVNO client, declaring the platform open for business.

Axian Telecom was reportedly looking to acquire Kenya-based mobile, internet and TV provider Wananchi Group.

Safaricom and Mastercard announced on Thursday that they have signed a partnership to accelerate adoption of payment acceptance and cross-border remittance services in Kenya.

African cloud services provider ST Digital has announced its expansion into the Democratic Republic of Congo through a partnership with the Open Access Data Centres (OADC) Texaf – Kinshasa data centre, the Democratic Republic of Congo's first live open-access, carrier-neutral and Uptime Institute Tier-III certified data centre.

Vodacom South Africa unveiled the Mobicel S4 4G Cloud Phone in a bid to equip more subscribers with smartphones and migrate them to modern 4G networks.

Nokia has announced a strategic partnership with iSAT Africa to enhance rural connectivity in Liberia.

The GSMA launched in conjunction with 19 operators its Responsible AI (RAI) Maturity Roadmap to provide operators with guidelines to effectively and safely tap into the emerging technology.