Absa, but make it Nigerian

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You're probably used to seeing Nigerian banks announce their next African expansion every other month. This time, a South African bank is looking in the opposite direction.

What happened? Absa Group, South Africa's third-largest lender by assets, is considering turning its Nigerian representative office into a merchant bank, which could give it a larger role in financing Nigerian businesses. Absa will be able to receive corporate deposits, provide loans, and offer investment banking and project finance. 

Explain like I'm new here: Absa already has a presence in Nigeria, but it currently operates through a representative office and separate subsidiaries covering capital markets and securities. Its Nigerian operations offer trade finance, investment banking, and market products. Absa’s chief executive officer Kenny Fihla said the group is exploring converting the representative office into a merchant banking operation.

A big fish entering a busy ocean: Absa is not exactly a small player testing the waters. The group operates across Africa, with banking operations in markets including South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique, Mauritius, and Seychelles. It serves more than 13.4 million customers and reported R58.79 billion ($3.61 billion) in total income for the six months to June 2026. 

Between the lines: Nigeria's banking sector has grown, with its market capitalisation reaching ₦10.5 trillion ($7.7 billion) in 2025. Absa would be entering a market already crowded with tier-1 Nigerian banks such as Access Holdings, Zenith Bank, and First Bank, while also facing South African rivals Standard Bank and FirstRand.

The playbook: South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana generated more than 80% of Absa's profit in the first half of 2026. Nigeria gives it another large corporate and financial market to tap into. Merchant banking is a separately licenced business in Nigeria, so Absa would need regulatory approval before it can start taking deposits and offer loans as a merchant bank. For Absa, this is bigger than changing the sign outside its office in Ikoyi, Lagos.

When you have just raised a huge pile of money, there will be signs. For Terra Industries, the Nigerian defence-tech startup, one of those signs is hiring a former SpaceX executive to help take its defence technology into more countries.

What happened? Terra has appointed Ben MacWilliams as vice president of strategy. MacWilliams joins from SpaceX, the Elon Musk-owned space-tech company, where he led Starlink's market-access efforts across Africa. At Terra, he will lead market entry, licensing strategy, and government partnerships.

Explain like I'm new here: At SpaceX, MacWilliams’ job was getting governments to say yes to Starlink. That meant working through licencing requirements, regulators, ministries, and government officials in countries where Starlink wanted to operate. 

MacWilliams helped navigate that process across Africa and previously worked on market access in the Middle East and Central Eurasia. His remit covered all 54 African markets, and he helped launch Starlink in more than 20 of them.

What is Terra building and why does it need MacWilliams? Terra develops autonomous systems that help governments and infrastructure operators monitor critical assets, such as power plants and mines. Its products include long- and mid-range autonomous drones, interceptor drones, sentry towers, and unmanned ground vehicles. 

The company closed $52 million in seed funding this week, opened a London office, and is building a manufacturing facility in Ghana. Terra said it plans to extend its manufacturing footprint across the Gulf, South America, and South Asia. 

MacWilliams has likely spent years dealing with the sort of bureaucracy Terra will encounter, including negotiating with regulators and governments, securing drone-operating licences, and navigating other market-entry rules. He will now contribute to the company/s next growth and expansion drive.

MultiChoice, Africa's largest pay-TV company, is aggressively clearing out the dusty corners of its linear TV library to build a bigger moat around its crown jewel: live sport. 

The Canal+-owned operator isoverhauling its channel line-up, cutting underperforming entertainment slots, including local content channels, to make more room for a sports-first future.

What happened? On Wednesday, MultiChoice launchedSuperSport Extra 2 (channel 217) to handle overflow sports events, while rebranding generic Variety slots into sport-specific homes likeSuperSport Football Plus and SuperSport KickOff. However, the expansion comes at a cost to general entertainment: DStv isshutting down four channels on September 16, including M-Net Movies 1 and Mzansi Bioskop, bringing its total channel cuts to 11 so far in 2026.

Explain like I’m new here: DStv is moving from being a jack of all trades to a master of sport. By ditching expensive, low-engagement linear channels and creating dedicated homes for football and African sport, MultiChoice is trying to make its premium packages easier to navigate and harder to cancel. 

Streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video arguably beat DStv on movie content library; where they fall short is live sport. MultiChoice knows this.

State of play: MultiChoice wants to sustain turnaround. After losing over 1.2 million subscribers in an eventful 2025, the company is rebounding in 2026, under Canal+. Trimming defunct movie channels helps steady the ship for a group that sawrevenue fall 9% to R50.8 billion ($3.12 billion) in 2025.

Zoom out: MultiChoice keeps building a thesis around live sports. Yet, accessing exclusive sports content on its linear over-the-top platform, DStv Stream—only available on its Compact Plus plan—is quite expensive. 

Right now, its advantage in exclusive sports remains intact because streaming and free-to-air platforms aren't putting up much of a fight. When that happens, could MultiChoice reassess its premium sports strategy? Likely. Yet, even that reality will take a while for streaming apps to achieve.

The free lunch is over for South African businesses using WhatsApp to talk to customers. Meta is overhauling its WhatsApp Business pricing, ending free customer service replies and introducing a per-message fee that could add a new cost for companies using the app at scale. 

What happened? Starting October 1, every WhatsApp Business reply will include a bill. In South Africa, a simple bank alert or shipping update will now cost 12 cents ($0.0075), while marketing messages will cost 62 cents ($0.0379). The change will affect businesses of all sizes, from small merchants to large companies, including banks, telcos, and ecommerce platforms, that use the WhatsApp Business application programming interface (API) as a customer communication channel. 

Explain like I’m new here: Since launching WhatsApp Business in 2018, Meta has allowed businesses to reply to customers for free within a 24-hour window. It was a freemium strategy to get everyone—from banks to airlines—hooked on using WhatsApp as their primary service desk. Now that the platform has a96% reach among South African Internet users, Meta is flipping the switch. 

Every outgoing support reply or transactional update will now be billed on a per-message basis, just like a traditional SMS, but with the high-engagement moat that only WhatsApp provides.

State of play: This is the aggressive phase of Meta’sglobal monetisation strategy for a "WhatsApp Business Economy" projected to reachover $45 billion in 2026. 

Here's a back-of-the-napkin maths: A South African retailer sending 10,000 marketing messages will now pay up to R6,200 ($385) in messaging bills. For a bank processing millions of automated service replies, the 12-cent utility tax could translate into millions of rands in new operational costs. Interestingly, South Africa is getting a relatively good deal; the marketing rate inNigeria is significantly higher at $0.0516 per conversation.

Zoom out:This marks the end of the experimental era for enterprise messaging in Africa. As WhatsApp becomes the definitive operating system for customer interaction, businesses are being forced to decide whether the platform’s 98% open rate is worth the new per-message premium.