Good morning. 
Senegal has moved past the hype of minting its first unicorn (Wave) to achieve a more difficult feat: building a tech ecosystem that is as inclusive as it is resilient. While the headlines often focus on the massive capital influx into major players like Wave, the real story in Dakar is the deliberate construction of a “funding ladder” where state-backed heavyweights like DER and FONSIS are actively de-risking innovation in the country’s tech ecosystem, alongside global VCs like Partech.
From micro-financing female rural entrepreneurs to structuring multi-million dollar debt rounds for logistics scale-ups like Logidoo, Senegal is proving that a public-private strategy can keep the taps open even in a challenging market. We explore this S-curve shift for Senegal, analysing how the ecosystem will grow in the coming years. Read it on Francophone Weekly by .
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- Outage for Standard Bank customers
- Fynd finds its way to South Africa
- WIOCC’s $65M data centre push
- Cool Stuff
- World Wide Web 3
- Opportunities
Banking
Major outage for Standard Bank customers in South Africa
When bank apps misbehave, they can quietly cripple payments in ways nobody enjoys. On Monday, that reality hit customers of Standard Bank, South Africa’s largest bank by assets, after an outage disrupted mobile and online banking, delayed transactions, and blocked new account openings.
The root cause was not a Standard Bank system failure, but a problem at Sage, the UK-based payroll, accounting, and business software provider whose platforms plug directly into bank data feeds. Sage confirmed it was experiencing a major outage in South Africa affecting its Business Cloud Accounting product and its connection to Standard Bank via Yodlee, the data-aggregation layer many fintechs rely on to pull bank information.
As a result, Standard Bank customers saw limited app functionality, slightly outdated balances, and missing features like transaction histories, airtime, and electricity purchases. New customer onboarding was also affected. Sage said its alternative Standard Bank connection was still working for some account types, but most users felt the impact. Customer reports spiked on Downdetector through the morning as payments slowed and access became patchy.
Outages like this are more than an inconvenience. When balances lag and transactions hang, customers start retrying payments, double-checking transfers, and calling support, increasing the risk of errors and reconciliation headaches across the system. In a market where digital banking is the primary rail for everyday commerce, small technical failures can ripple quickly.
Sage’s last update, posted at 11 a.m. UTC, said: “We are engaged with Standard Bank and our third-party provider, Yodlee, to resolve this issue for our customers as soon as possible.” But for Standard Bank and its customers, it was a bad day at the office.
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Companies
India’s Fynd picks South Africa as its African entry point
Fynd, a Mumbai-headquartered AI-powered unified commerce platform backed by Reliance Retail Ventures, has launched in South Africa, signing the 29-year-old luxury fashion retailer with 94 boutiques across the country, Surtee Group, as its first strategic partner.
The timing makes sense: South Africa’s e-commerce market is pushing into a more mature phase, with online retail sales projected to hit nearly $7 billion in 2025, roughly 10% of total retail spend. The figure shows that the region presents a fertile ground for tech-enabled retail growth and makes it a strategic entry point into the continent.
So, what’s Fynd bringing to the table? Unification. Through its partnership with Surtee Group, the company is rolling out its full commerce stack, including digital storefronts, order management, warehouse management, and clienteling tools, to stitch together online and offline operations. The goal is real-time inventory visibility, ship-from-store fulfilment, faster order processing, and more personalised in-store engagement.
Fynd has been moving around: The move follows a steady global expansion by the company. Fynd entered the Middle East in September with a launch in the Gulf Cooperation Council and established a presence in Dubai, and then pushed into the UK in November through partnerships with Bridgehead and Incrementum, companies that help startups scale. The platform already supports more than 20,000 stores globally.
Zoom out: Fynd’s bigger play is infrastructure. As consumer expectations tilt toward seamless shopping, the company is betting that retailers need fewer and smarter tools that are stitched together properly to create a seamless customer experience.
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Companies
WIOCC adds $65 million to deepen its African infrastructure push
The West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) Group, a digital infrastructure provider managing over 100,000 km of submarine and terrestrial fibre optic networks across Africa, has secured R1.1 billion ($65 million) in debt financing to expand its connectivity and data centre footprint across the continent.
The funding was obtained through a sustainability-linked debt facility, meaning the loan is structured around performance targets tied to environmental and social goals, and is backed by development finance institutions, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Proparco, and the Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund (EAAIF).
What is WIOCC up to? Simply put, the capital will be used for network expansion, infrastructure resilience, and open-access data centres. With this new fund, we can expect deeper investments, more fibre capacity, tighter fibre to data centre integration, and growth in high-demand markets across the continent from Wiocc
The raise builds on a series of recent moves. Through its data centre arm, Open Access Data Centres (OADC), WIOCC has committed about $240 million to expand its data centre in Lagos. In January, the group also signed a $10 million MoU with Nigeria’s Federal government aimed at extending broadband access to roughly three million homes. Since 2008, Wiocc has invested more than $750 million in digital infrastructure, terrestrial fibre, submarine cables, and carrier-neutral data centres across the continent.
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COOL STUFF!
Imagine using something that is potentially life-threatening (tobacco use leads to an estimated 2.5 million deaths globally) to save lives.
This is Cape Biologix Technologies, the production subsidiary of Cape Bio Pharms (a biotech company spun out of University of Cape Town’s research unit).
The company is flipping the script on tobacco. Instead of using the plant for cigarettes, the company is using it as a “bioreactor” to grow complex proteins. These proteins are harvested from the leaves and used to build rapid diagnostic kits for diseases like HIV and Dengue. It turns out tobacco plants are incredibly efficient at producing these life-saving molecules cheaper and faster than traditional factories.
That’s cool stuff. Shout-out to the team.
CRYPTO TRACKER
The World Wide Web3
Source:
|
Coin Name |
Current Value |
Day |
Month |
|---|---|---|---|
 Bitcoin |
$85,842 |
– 4.21% |
– 10.42% |
| Ether |
$2,922 |
– 6.46% |
– 8.95% |
| GaiAI |
$0.1910 |
+ 6.97% |
+ 168.39% |
| Solana |
$126.12 |
– 4.35% |
– 10.92% |
* Data as of 06.25 AM WAT, December 16, 2025.
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OPPORTUNITIES
- The Growth Talent Accelerator Programme (GTAP) is alGROWithm’s flagship training experience designed to turn ambitious professionals, operators, and teams into world-class Growth Engineers. If you’re an individual looking to upskill and become indispensable in 2026, or a company looking to strengthen your team, optimise operations, and increase revenue, GTAP 2026 is the right place to start. Apply for the Lite stream as an individual or nominate your team for the Pro stream.
- Every startup has a story worth hearing. My Startup in 60 Seconds by offers founders a one-minute spotlight to share their vision, challenges, and achievements. Beyond visibility, it connects you to investors, customers, and Africa’s tech ecosystem. Apply to be featured or explore other advertorial opportunities. This is a paid opportunity.
- Win $30 Weekly This Christmas! This December, cross-border payment company Accrue is giving away $30 weekly, and you could be one of the lucky winners! Getting started is simple: just download the Accrue app from the App Store or Google Play Store and jump right into the challenge, and maybe even snag a little holiday cash while you’re at it.
- One-click debt-trap: How product design fuels predatory lending in Nigerian fintech
- Ask an Investor: After investing £1 billion in Africa in 2024, BII’s Africa head explains the sectors driving its biggest bets
- Presidency backs Solly Malatsi in BEE reform fight
Written by: Emmanuel Nwosu and Opeyemi Kareem
Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade
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