Chow. Buy airtime. Repeat

In Nigeria’s startup world, a popular saying goes: you either die a startup or live long enough to become a fintech. Today, Chowdeck, the YC-backed on-demand delivery startup, proved that point, as customers can now buy airtime and data directly from its app. Over 1,000 customers have already tried the feature on its first day, according to Chowdeck’s CEO.

At first glance, the move might seem puzzling, but it makes perfect sense. After dominating the food delivery market and crossing one million monthly orders, Chowdeck has reached the scale and high-frequency use where diversifying revenue is both logical and necessary, as the new feature marks the company’s first step toward becoming a super app.

Super apps aren’t new. When OPay entered the Nigerian market, it offered ride-hailing, payments, and food delivery before regulation forced it to focus solely on fintech. That period of diversification supercharged its growth and helped cement it as a daily-use app for millions. 

In Asia, super apps like Grab and GoTo have shown how far this model can scale. Grab reported $873 million in revenue in Q3 2025, while GoTo holds a $4.25 billion valuation. 

Across Francophone West Africa, I’ve seen how this playbook works in the past week of my travels. Yango, the Dubai-headquartered super app, bundles ride-hailing, food delivery, and payments under one roof. Jumia, too, has Jumia Pay. By expanding into payments, Chowdeck now owns more of the customer’s digital life. 

If Chowdeck adds ride-hailing, then you can buy food, pay bills, and order rides all from one app. Why would you not build your life around Chowdeck? The more services customers can access within a single app, the less likely they are to churn. 

What next: To maximise its super app ambition, Chowdeck could open its currently closed-loop system and let users transfer money between wallets, but doing so will plunge the startup into Nigeria’s murky waters of fintech regulation. Paystack’s ₦250 million ($174,000) fine over Zap operations can offer a cautionary tale. 

Right now, it seems like the company is integrated with a licenced mobile money operator (MMO) or payments service bank (PSB) that handles all the regulatory aspects, while Chowdeck built the user experience. If the company wants to eventually hold the licence in-house, it will need to fork out over ₦4 billion ($2.8 million) for a licence.

South Africa's Competition Commission has referred the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), the country’s major stock exchange, to the Competition Tribunal, a court of first instance concerning competition-related matters in South Africa, accusing it of using its market dominance to make competition more difficult for rival exchange A2X. The Commission wants the JSE fined up to 10% of its turnover and forced to change some of its trading rules. The case stems from a complaint filed by A2X in 2022.

The tea on why there’s a tribunal: A2X claims that the JSE’s broker-dealer accounting (BDA) system and the way it structures “matched principal” trades make it difficult for brokers to trade across both platforms, and that the JSE is allegedly abusing its dominant market position. In practice, this means it’s easier and cheaper to stay on the JSE, making it harder for other trading platforms (read: A2X) to compete. The Competition Commission will not stand for that.

So, what do they want? In addition to having the JSE fined up to 10% of its turnover, the Competition Commission wants the JSE to change its rules so the BDA system can work better with other trading platforms. It wants to level the playing field and restore fair competition rules.

#JSEWillNotBeSilent: The leading stock exchange company has come out to deny the allegations, saying it has legal advice that the claims lack merit. It says it will file an official plea in 2026.

Equinix, the global data centre provider that acquired Nigeria’s MainOne, wants to build a new $22 million data centre in Lagos, Nigeria, its first newly constructed facility in West Africa. The facility, named LG3, is scheduled to go live in Q1 2026.

Lagos is that babe! If you’re going to build data infrastructure anywhere in Nigeria, Lagos is the obvious landing spot. The state has over 18 million active internet users as of Q1 2024, the largest concentration of fintechs and enterprise customers in the country, and it’s where multiple subsea cables are laid. Nigeria’s data centre market is projected to grow to over $684 million by 2030, with Lagos holding over 30% of the market share.

Data centres are the new hot cake: The race to capture Nigeria’s digital future is accelerating as several players make significant investments in the sector. MTN is putting down $240 million on its own 9-megawatt (MW) tier III data centre. Airtel Nigeria is also betting $120 million on its 38MW data centre. Open Access Data Centres (OADC), a subsidiary of WIOCC Group, wants to expand its Lagos site to 24MW by 2027.

Equinix’s moves: The company officially entered the West African market in April 2022 through its $320 million acquisition of MainOne, a provider of telecom services and network solutions in Africa. The deal gave Equinix access to MainOne’s assets, including multiple operational data centres in Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire.LG3 slots neatly into Equinix’s broader play, which is to connect Africa directly into its global network of over 4,000 customers and 64,000 interconnections.

Can I still call this a daily dispatch if I missed day two? Blame it on Somone’s spotty network, endless cocktails, and the fact that I’m technically on leave.

Anyway, I’m at a retreat with a group of Africa-focused investors, and while using ChatGPT to talk to hotel staff, it got me thinking: how are these investors actually using artificial intelligence (AI) in their work?

AI has disrupted nearly every industry, and venture capital (VC) is no exception. In conversations with four Africa-focused investors, I found that many now rely on AI tools for a surprising range of day-to-day work.

First, you’ll have to forgive me for not naming names. I don’t have the luxury of waiting for approvals from half a dozen communications teams, and besides, some of the investors only spoke on background.

Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT tops the list. It’s used to draft investment memos, identify competitors, check spelling, analyse data, write emails, translate text, support research, generate interview questions, and handle routine administrative tasks.

A close second is Perplexity, favoured for deep research and data comparison. Other tools like Veo help create videos, Gemini refines emails, and Lovable is used to build products that automate repetitive, low-value work.

As AI reshapes corporate workflows, Africa’s investors are harnessing its power to cut noise and focus on what matters most: finding exceptional founders and backing startups built to last.

Source:

* Data as of 06.30 AM WAT, November 11, 2025.

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Written by: Muktar Oladunmade and Opeyemi Kareem

Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade

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