Nigeria pumped 71.5 million liters of petrol per day through the system after NNPC imported extra stock to cover Christmas demand and clear a backlog of vessels that got delayed from the previous month. The spike followed weaker September and October supply levels that sat below what the country actually needed, so the regulatory authority said NNPC stepped in as the backup supplier to prevent shortages during the peak holiday season.
Daily petrol consumption dropped to 52.9 million liters from 56.7 million liters the month before, and stock levels climbed to cover 16.65 days compared to 11.1 days earlier. Only four of six small refineries kept running through the period, with Waltersmith hitting 63 percent capacity while Edo Refinery...
Kogi State Governor Ahmed Ododo rolled out plans for the Ajaokuta Economic City free trade zone with Chinese and Turkish investors at a meeting in Abuja, and the project is supposed to pull in 500 million dollars per year while creating 50,000 jobs. The governor thanked President Bola Tinubu for backing the initiative and said local universities would supply skilled workers for the 4,000-hectare site that already has power infrastructure, rail connections, and waterway access locked down.
Chinese delegation head Li Zhensheng called the zone a flagship deal between Kogi and Hunan Province and promised manufacturing and logistics support. Turkish investor Hasan Güngör from ÖZTÜRK HOLDING said his company would fund oil and gas projects...
Zain KSA teamed up with KoçDigital to push Industry 4.0 tech into Saudi factories, and the deal is supposed to help manufacturers modernize their operations while fitting into Vision 2030 goals. KoçDigital brings Platform 360 with use cases for supply chain optimization and quality control, while Zain handles connectivity and cloud infrastructure across the kingdom.
The partnership combines Zain's local market knowledge with KoçDigital's industrial IoT and AI analytics capabilities to speed up digital transformation in manufacturing. Both companies want to make Saudi plants smarter and more competitive globally by rolling out digital twins and supply chain planning tools.
stc Bahrain is hooking up Bahrain Development Bank with AWS cloud management and cybersecurity stuff as part of a deal to beef up tech infrastructure for the financial sector. Chief Business Officer Hesham Mustafa said the move is supposed to help BDB run things faster and more securely while opening up room for banking innovation. Chief Technology Officer Said Abdelhamid from BDB mentioned their strategy centers on secure cloud adoption and digital infrastructure that props up SMEs.
The partnership gives BDB integrated business solutions meant to streamline operations and tighten security so they can handle client services with less friction. stc Bahrain is pushing this as another step in backing digital transformation across...
Mozambique's telecom regulator INCM kicked off training for their ThinkLab startup incubator program with sessions from the ITU and their own stats department. Mohamed Ba from the International Telecommunication Union talked about how incubators fit into digital transformation and what regulatory stuff matters for keeping tech startups alive, while Ana Priscila from INCM showed people how to actually use communications data for planning instead of just having numbers sit around doing nothing.
The whole thing runs hybrid with both in-person and online options, so incubators outside Maputo can join without having to travel. INCM wants to build up local tech solutions and get entrepreneurs plugged into the regulatory framework early, so...
The African Telecommunications Union and African Subsea Ecosystem Forum ran a workshop for 240 people from 42 countries about how Africa depends on underwater fiber cables that keep breaking. Secretary General John Omo said the cables carry up to 99 percent of international data traffic, and outages last year in March knocked out service for over a dozen countries when multiple Atlantic systems failed at once. Most of the 150 to 200 annual cable faults happen in shallow water under 100 meters, where fishing boats and anchors cause accidental damage.
Speakers pointed out that Singapore treats subsea cables like critical infrastructure with strict no-anchor zones, while Malaysia dropped cabotage rules to speed up repairs. The 2Africa...
Kenya hit 60.2 million mobile data subscriptions by the end of September, and the Communications Authority says nearly four out of five connections are mobile broadband. Most people are running 4G, which makes up almost 85 percent of broadband users, while 5G subscribers are burning through 40 gigs per person compared to 14 gigs for 4G folks. Smartphone penetration reached 59.5 percent of the 75 million phones hooked up to networks across the country.
Mobile money accounts climbed to 48.6 million with a penetration rate of over 92 percent. The government cyber team detected 842 million threats during the quarter, which sounds like a lot until you realize that number dropped 81 percent from the previous period, when they saw 4.6 billion...
Bayobab just hired Peter Nwankwo to run commercial stuff for their fiber division starting next year, and he brings over two decades of telecom experience to the gig. The guy worked on MTN's fiber-to-the-home push and helped cut costs by renegotiating supplier deals. He also ran cable landing station operations back in the day and sat on subsea cable committees for MTN.
Nwankwo is chasing a doctorate at Heriot-Watt while holding an MBA in strategy from the same school, plus he has a computer science degree from Ibadan. He is stacking certifications like PMP and agile scrum master on top of his technical background in optical transmission systems from stints at MTN Nigeria and Alcatel-Lucent.
Eutelsat pulled in 670 million euros from a rights issue that got way more interest than they expected, and the money is going toward their low Earth orbit satellite stuff plus the IRIS² constellation they want to build. The share sale moved about 496 million new shares at 1.35 euros each, and demand hit around 892 million euros for a subscription rate over 133 percent.
This cash dump is part of a bigger 1.5 billion euro fundraising push that already saw 828 million come in from the French government, Bharti Space, the UK government, CMA CGM, and some strategic fund back in November. The whole package is supposed to bankroll around 4 billion euros worth of spending through 2029, and it should bring their debt ratio down to 2.5 times...
