MonieWorld, MonieExit

Howdy. ☀️

Quick question: What does it actually take to build an AI product in Africa? 

In our latest episode of Headlines by TechCabal, hosts Eme Agbor and Muktar Oladunmade sat down with Saheed Azeez, founder of YarnGPT.ai, to get into the messy, fascinating business of building AI for the continent—finding the right data and figuring out what users actually want. There’s also a conversation about where that data comes from, and what happens when the Internet’s public conversations become part of the mix. 👀

Watch the episode on YouTube.

Less than 18 months after launching MonieWorld, Moniepoint, the Nigerian fintech, is pulling the plug on its United Kingdom remittance business. MonieWorld was its first major attempt to build a business outside its African markets, and Moniepoint spent millions of dollars setting up the infrastructure to make that expansion possible.

Explain like I'm new here: Moniepoint launched MonieWorld in April 2025 to let people in the UK send money to Nigerian bank accounts directly from a MonieWorld account, a British bank account, cards, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. At launch, Moniepoint showed how quickly the service could move money, pitching competitive exchange rates that put it directly in the ring with other remittance startups, such as Grey and LemFi.

Didn't it spend millions? It absolutely did. Moniepoint incorporated its UK subsidiary, Moniepoint GB, in February 2024. By December that year, it had spent $1.26 million on administrative and infrastructure costs. It also invested $2.51 million in acquiring Bancom Europe, a UK Financial Conduct Authority-authorised electronic money institution (EMI). Regulatory filings show Moniepoint had earmarked $7.39 million for its UK expansion. The investment was meant to build the regulatory and technical machinery for a much bigger diaspora play, not just one remittance app.

MonieWorld was doing well, right? Moniepoint says monthly transaction volume among its UK users grew 70%, and the UK-Nigeria remittance corridor was worth £2.76 billion ($3.69 billion) in 2021. Moniepoint hasn't disclosed how much MonieWorld processed or how much revenue it generated. The company is not saying the product failed. Instead, it said a review of its portfolio and long-term priorities showed that its resources would be better deployed in its core African markets.

New plan: go where the product is already working: In 2025, Moniepoint processed $294 billion in annualised transactions in Nigeria. In March 2026, it accelerated its data operations ambitions, acquiring Orda, a restaurant-management company that operated in Kenya and Nigeria. In Kenya, it acquired 78% of Sumac Microfinance Bank and appointed former Branch Kenya CEO Rose Muturi to lead the business. Moniepoint is signalling plans for a bigger, deeper African payments play, rather than spending another few million dollars convincing the UK that it needs another remittance app—where it likely has a weaker moat. 

Yet, a few questions remain: what happens to its MonieWorld tech and intellectual property (IP), and how will the acquired Bancom continue to operate—folded into Moniepoint’s existing operations or continue as a standalone business?

Riders on ride-hailing and courier service apps such as Uber, Bolt, and Glovo in Kenya are about to become something more than delivery drivers. From September 20, they could also become part of the country's surveillance and tax enforcement system.

Kenya's Communications Authority (CA), the country’s communications regulator, has introduced new rules requiring app-based courier platforms to verify and record parcel contents, as well as sender and recipient details. The records must be made available to the regulator, the taxman, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), and the police upon request.

Why? The immediate goal is straightforward: stop drugs, firearms, and other prohibited goods from moving through the rapidly growing on-demand delivery economy. But this is a bigger shift.

Explain like I’m new here: Kenya is not inventing parcel scrutiny from scratch. Postal and courier operators have long had to record what they carry and who is sending it. The big change is that Kenya has created a new “Courier Hailing Service Provider” category, complete with licencing fees, real-time parcel tracking, identity verification, and compensation rules for lost or damaged goods. Platform operators, such as Uber and Bolt, must pay KES 5,000 ($38.63) for licence application and KES 100,000 ($772.56) in initial fees to obtain a 10-year licence.

For years, ride-hailing and delivery apps have treated parcel delivery as a natural extension of moving people around cities. Now Kenya is formally turning that business into a regulated courier category.

It also lets regulators get a new window into a part of the informal economy that has largely lived inside apps. Online traders increasingly use riders to move goods to customers, and those transactions could now leave a much clearer regulatory trail. 

Zoom out: Africa's super apps keep expanding into logistics because moving parcels is becoming as important as moving people. Kenya is now asking a different question: when a ride-hailing app becomes a courier company, what exactly should the government be allowed to see?

The answer, at least in Kenya, is increasingly quite a lot.

MTN already has Nigeria’s phone users. Now it wants more of them to use its financial services too. Now, Africa’s largest telecoms company is targeting as many as 30 million fintech customers in Nigeria over the medium term, up from about five million today.

What happened? Ralph Mupita, MTN Group chief executive officer, said that the company sees a path to converting 30%—and potentially 50%—of its Nigerian telecoms customers into fintech users. To get there, MTN is bringing in technology from Alibaba, Alipay, and Ant International, while preparing to expand beyond payments into lending.

Explain like I’m new here: MTN’s fintech business started with mobile money and payments—often through partnerships with banks. The company is now trying to sell more services, including payments, lending, remittances, and insurance, to the people already using its mobile network. In Nigeria, that means growing in a market where OPay, PalmPay, MoneyPoint, and other digital fintechs are already competing for customers.

State of play: Five million customers becoming 30 million would mean adding roughly 25 million people to MTN’s Nigerian fintech base—six times its current size. Across Africa, MTN’s MoMo monthly active users rose 12.1% to 70.8 million in the six months ended June 2026, while fintech transaction value reached $330.5 billion in constant currency. 

Nigeria is only one part of that business, but it is an important test of whether MTN can turn its enormous telecom distribution network into a financial services advantage. The next stage is riskier. MTN currently works with partner banks that use customer data to assess borrowers, but Mupita said the group increasingly intends to lend from its own balance sheet. That could give MTN more control and more credit risk. The company says it will move incrementally.

Zoom out: MTN is not trying to build another standalone fintech app and hope people download it. It is using its existing network, customer relationships, and merchant base to push financial services deeper into everyday life. If you ask us, it is primarily asking its mobile network users in Nigeria to learn a new habit: ‘don’t just see us as a call and data provider; use us to move money, too.’ That ambition already shows in how it has built and scaled its app, myMTN NG. 

MTN, however, is not juicing up on irrational optimism: its competitor Airtel Nigeria’s mobile money revenue and users grew to $9 million and 2.7 million, respectively, in the year ended March 2026—growing both metrics by at least 59%. MTN thinks it can do better.

Nigeria is getting two new satellites

Nigeria is adding two more satellites to its digital toolbox. The government has approved the acquisition and deployment of NIGCOMSAT-2A and NIGCOMSAT-2B, which are expected to improve Internet access and reduce the country’s reliance on foreign satellite capacity.

What happened? Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the project, and Nigeria’s satellite agency, NIGCOMSAT, says the satellites are expected to launch between 2027 and 2028. Two companies, Thales Alenia Space and Israel Aerospace Industries, will build them, according to NIGCOMSAT. They are high-throughput satellites, enabling them to carry more Internet traffic than older systems.

Explain like I’m new here: Nigeria has been trying to use satellites to reach places that fibre and mobile towers cannot easily reach. NIGCOMSAT is already working with the government on Project 774, which aims to connect all 774 local government council secretariats. The new satellites are the next step in that effort: more capacity in orbit should give the agency more room to serve rural communities, businesses, and government offices.

Between the lines: This is about more than faster Internet. Nigeria currently depends partly on foreign satellite infrastructure; adding domestic capacity gives it more control over an important piece of its communications system. It also gives NIGCOMSAT more capacity to sell broadband services and support public institutions, provided the agency can turn the approval into a working, commercially useful service.

Zoom out: Nigeria still has to build and launch the satellites, secure the right orbital slots, and connect people to the service on the ground. But the direction is clear: the country is putting more of its connectivity infrastructure in its own hands, one satellite at a time.

Written by: Yemi Kareem, Emmanuel Nwosu, and Zia Yusuf

Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade