👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Somalia’s accidental bank
TGIF 
It’s the weekend, my favourite time of every week. While I plan to bed rot and catch up on my 11th season of a show they made years before I was born, you should be planning to get your Naira Life tickets before they sell out, so you can learn the ins and outs of money and how to build wealth in Nigeria.
—Zia
Get smarter about Francophone Africa with our newsletter, Francophone Weekly—the startups, tech policies, and institutions building the pipelines for ecosystem growth.
- Quick Fire
with Gbolahan Adebayo - Lesaka’s Bank Zero acquisition delayed
- Somalia’s banks are growing, but not as fast as telecoms
- Who secured tha bag?
- World Wide Web 3
- Opportunities
features
Quick Fire with Gbolahan Adebayo
Image: Gbolahan Adebayo, senior data analyst at Sanlam Fintech, South Africa
Gbolahan Adebayo is a data and business intelligence analyst who specialises in turning complex data into clear, actionable insights through visualisation. He currently works as a Senior Data Analyst at Sanlam Fintech in Johannesburg, South Africa, and has previously built dashboards and analytics infrastructure for MAGNiTT, Aspire, and Subway across Nigeria, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and the United States.
- Explain your job to a five-year-old.
Have you ever gotten food from someone who sells jollof rice and puff-puff by the roadside?
Some days, the whole street shows up, and everything finishes before noon. Other days, she cooks plenty, and it just sits there. If she’s only guessing, she either runs out or she wastes food and money she can’t get back.
My job is to quietly remember everything for her, how much sells, when the rush comes, whether rain brings more buyers, and then build her a small board that watches it all and tells her plainly, “Friday is busy, cook more rice.” Now she’s not guessing. She just looks at the board, and she can make better decisions.
- What does a business intelligence analyst actually do day-to-day that people don’t expect?
People expect it to be all about building a pretty dashboard. That’s the last 20%. The rest is detective work and translation of business questions. A lot of my day-to-day work is asking annoyingly basic questions, like “if this number moved, what would you actually do?”
I spend lots of time cleaning and chasing down why two “correct” numbers refuse to match. And the bit nobody expects: a good part of the job is just saying no. The craft people see is the visual. The craft they don’t see is deciding what deserves to be shown at all.
- How can someone break into business intelligence analytics, and where do they even start?
You need a free tool and one real question. Start with SQL, because that’s the actual workhorse, and a visualisation tool like Tableau, which has a free public version. And lean on AI tools as you learn. They’re the fastest tutors you’ll ever have, explaining a concept, getting you unstuck on a query, and making you understand concepts even faster.
Then here’s the part people skip: go and build something real, and put it where people can see it. Don’t wait until you feel ready, because you never will. Pick a question you genuinely care about, answer it with data, publish it, and ask people better than you to give feedback.
- How long did it take you to get to where you are, and what did that journey actually look like?
My journey started at an early-stage startup where I was the sole analyst and chart maker, steering the ship on how insights were derived. From there, I worked under a manager who knew so much that he sharpened the need for me to understand the business deeply before trying to solve anything.
Then I moved into consulting, brought in to drive big business intelligence changes across platforms while training in-house analysts along the way. And now I sit within a specialised data and AI team inside a larger corporation, finding ways to help different business units make sense of what they have and pull the maximum value out of it.
The journey has been less about collecting tools and more about getting closer to understanding businesses and combining that with my technical ability to help stakeholders make business-driven decisions.
- You co-founded the Lagos Tableau User Group and mentor across multiple programs. What’s driving that investment in the community?
Honestly, for me, I think it’s the simplest thing in the world. I am a product of community. I didn’t get here through some private mentor or an expensive programme.
I got here because folks on the Internet looked at my work, told me where it was weak, and pulled me up. Building community is just me trying to be that for the next person, except closer to home. There’s so much raw talent in Nigeria and across Africa. What’s usually missing isn’t ability; it’s access, visibility, and someone a few steps ahead saying, “here’s how.”
We Have Secured the Bank of Ghana EPSP Licence.
Fincra has officially secured its Enhanced Payment Service Provider licence. This regulatory milestone authorizes Fincra to directly collect, process, and settle payments in Ghanaian Cedis, offering a highly streamlined financial pipeline for businesses operating within the region. Start here.
companies
Lesaka’s plan to buy Bank Zero is taking longer than expected
Image: Tenor
There’s a lesson some fintechs will eventually learn, which is that acquiring a digital bank is easier to announce than it is to complete. Just ask Lesaka.
In June 2025, the fintech announced its plans to acquire Bank Zero, the South African digital bank, for about R1.1 billion ($61.4 million), but it appears to be running late.
What’s the hold-up? Lesaka has extended the deadline for the acquisition of the digital bank by nearly six months, moving it from August 2026 to January 2027. The reason? Regulators. While competition authorities have already approved the transaction, Lesaka is still waiting for some of the banking-specific approvals required before the acquisition can officially close.
Why does Lesaka want Bank Zero? Bank Zero is a fully licenced digital bank, and owning it would give Lesaka access to banking infrastructure that would take years and regulatory effort to build from scratch. More importantly, it would help Lesaka bring more of its financial services operations under one roof.
Why this deal needs to close ASAP: Acquisitions create value when companies start working together, and this one is sitting in regulatory limbo. The longer an acquisition takes to close, the longer companies have to wait before they can start integrating products or generating the benefits that justified the purchase in the first place. Lesaka would have to wait longer than expected to execute a strategy it first announced a year ago.
Naira Life 2026 is here!
The theme for this year’s Naira Life Conference by Zikoko is “All About Wealth.”
Join 2,000+ in Lagos on August 22 for a day of practical money conversations and workshops designed to move you from simply earning an income to building lasting wealth. Get 15% off early bird tickets.
banking
Somalia’s banks are growing, but not as fast as its telecom counterparts
Image source: Tenor
In 2025, the Central Bank of Somalia re-licenced 11 commercial banks in late 2025 and has been actively issuing new regulatory frameworks. The country’s financial sector is rebuilding at a meaningful pace. What it hasn’t yet built is reach. As of 2023, only 8.8% of Somalis had access to formal banking services, whileover 89% used mobile money as their primary financial tool. The gap between those two numbers is the company Hormuud Telecom built.Tcblabber
Hormuud’sEVC Plus platform, launched in 2011, now processes155 million transactions worth $2.7 billion a month in a country where physical cash is so scarce thatan estimated 95-98% of Somali shilling notes in circulation are counterfeit or unauthorised. EVC Plus also powershumanitarian aid disbursements for over 145 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating across the country, with agencies able to transfer up to $1 million in a single click through Hormuud’s humanitarian portal. In March 2026, Hormuudsigned an agreement with GIZ, Germany’s development agency, to deepen cross-border payment infrastructure and AI integration. In the same month, Somaliaformally joined PAPSS, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System.
How did we get here: When Somalia’s civil war dismantled its financial infrastructure in the 1990s, the institutions that survived were too damaged and too distrusted to rebuild quickly. When Hormuud launched EVC Plus in 2011, it wasn’t disrupting banking; it was stepping into a vacuum that conflict and institutional collapse had created. With no accessible bank branches, no credit history infrastructure, and millions of Somalis dependent on humanitarian assistance, a mobile wallet on a basic phone was the most credible financial product available. Trust followed utility, and by the time the Central Bank started actively rebuilding the formal sector, Hormuud already had 89% of the population.
What’s the problem? Concentration risk.More than 70% of Somalia’s population is covered by Hormuud’s 4G network, and the company is simultaneously the primary financial rail for humanitarian aid, everyday commerce, and remittances. In a 2025article for the Overseas Development Institute, Central Bank of Somalia Governor Abdirahman M. Abdullahi flagged that reducing “single-network fragility” is a priority—an acknowledgement that the system’s greatest asset is also its greatest vulnerability.
What now? Hormuud is nowfinancing 100,000 smartphones for low-income users by the end of 2026. The phones cost a $19 deposit, no formal credit history required, default rates below 4% in the pilot. Somalia’s formal banks are building. But Hormuud seems to be way ahead.
Insights
Funding tracker
Image Source: TechCabal Insights
Agenz, a Moroccan Proptech startup, raised $5 million in seed funding from Breega, Attijariwafa Ventures, and Saviu Ventures. (June 12)
Here are the other deals for the week:
- ARRW, an Egyptian Ride-Hailing startup, raised $4 million in a growth funding round from Tasheed Egypt. (June 14)
- Flutterwave, a Nigerian fintech startup, raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Ripple. (June 18)
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more funding announcements. Before you go,Who Owns Africa’s Sky?. Find out here.
Showcase Your Brand at Moonshot by TechCabal
Founders. Investors. Policymakers. Enterprise leaders. Moonshot 2026 brings together the people shaping Africa’s technology ecosystem across AI, commerce, climate, enterprise, and culture. Spotlight your brand today.
CRYPTO TRACKER
The World Wide Web3
Source:
|
Coin Name |
Current Value |
Day |
Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | $62,662 |
– 1.81% |
– 18.75% |
| Ether | $1,694 |
– 1.78% |
– 20.21% |
| XRP | $1.13 |
– 2.87% |
– 17.25% |
| Solana | $68.60 |
– 3.26% |
– 18.99% |
* Data as of 06.54 AM WAT, June 19, 2026.
Opportunities
- The Stellar Development Foundation has launched its first accelerator programme targeting Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, partnering with blockchain venture firm CV Labs to back ten early-stage startups building payments infrastructure, tokenised assets, and decentralised finance applications. The 12-week programme, beginning August 2026, will run primarily remotely but includes an on-site component in Cape Town and concludes with a demo day at Stellar’s Meridian conference in Lisbon in October. Each selected startup can receive up to $150,000 in XLM, Stellar’s native token, in initial funding. Apply by July.
- Accelerate Africa is investing between $250,000 and $500,000 in early-stage African startups through its founder-focused programme, with no upfront equity commitments required or application fees to apply. Built by the team that advised Andela, Flutterwave, and Moove, the initiative selects 12 founders per cohort. Applications open until July 25.
- The Female Founders Growth Programme is accepting applications from Nigerian women-led businesses. The investment readiness programme provides strategic support, investor preparation, and access to a network of funders, with qualifying participants eligible for up to $2 million in combined debt and equity financing. Selected businesses will also pitch to investors and financial institutions at a flagship Demo Day. Applications are open until June 22, 2026..
- Fintech Yoco thinks South Africa’s small businesses need fewer apps
- Delve into AI:What Ruto’s meeting with Sam Altman tells us about Kenya’s AI ambitions
- AmCham Kenya taps former markets regulator as US investment grows
Written by: Success Sotonwa Opeyemi Kareem and Zia Yusuf
Edited by: Ganiu Oloruntade
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