Happy midweek. 
For millions of informal workers in Central Africa, earning money isn’t the problem. Getting a loan is. This week in Francophone Weekly, we look at how Cameroonian startup BEE is using motorcycles and other everyday assets to help informal workers get formal credit.
Meanwhile, Nigeria wants the government to become a much bigger customer of local cloud infrastructure. Its new cloud policy makes cloud the default for government systems and sets out how ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) will buy cloud services, where sensitive data can be stored, and how the government plans to attract $750 million in private investment into the sector over two years.
Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read previous editions here first and subscribe below.
Fintech
Standard Bank wants a piece of fintech company OPay
Standard Bank Group, South Africa’s largest lender with a market cap of R534 billion ($33 billion), is in talks to acquire a stake in Chinese-backed OPay, ahead of the fintech’s planned initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, where it is seeking a $4 billion valuation.
What happened? OPay, the Nigeria-focused fintech famous for its army of green handheld point-of-sale (PoS) devices, is working with underwriters such as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan to list in New York later this year.
According to Bloomberg, Standard Bank is seeking a pre-IPO stake in the company. Backed by SoftBank and Sequoia, OPay has scaled to over 50 million users, becoming a cornerstone of Nigeria’s mobile money and digital payments economy.
Explain like I’m new here: Standard Bank would be buying into OPay before the fintech goes public. If OPay gets its $4 billion valuation on the US stock market, an early stake could become more valuable, and Standard Bank gets a direct relationship with one of Nigeria’s biggest digital payment platforms. OPay, meanwhile, gets a major African bank as a strategic investor just as it prepares to make its case to global investors.
Between the lines: This is a strategic hedge. In H1 2026, Standard Bank reported record headline earnings of R26.1 billion ($1.59 billion), but it knows that traditional banking scale is being challenged by fintech agility. By buying into OPay, the old guard could be paying for a seat at the table of the new guard that has mastered high-volume, low-margin transactions in Nigeria.
Zoom out: This is bigger than Standard Bank wanting a slice of OPay. Africa’s banks and fintechs are moving from competition to coexistence: banks bring capital, licences, and institutional trust; fintechs bring distribution, speed, and millions of digital customers. The biggest example of this in 2025 was FirstRand and Optasia’s partnership.
If this deal closes and OPay pulls off its US listing, one of Africa’s biggest banks will have effectively bought a front-row seat to the next version of African banking.
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Banking
Absa’s home ground keeps the lights on
After a strong half-year performance where its key African markets—South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya—powered it to a good result, Absa Group, the tier-1 bank, is eyeing further expansion outside its home markets, Bloomberg reported. Combined, its three main African markets contributed 80% of its profit.
Between the lines: In the six months to June, the bank recorded R58.8 billion ($3.60 billion) in revenue, growing 4% compared to the previous year. However, it was its South African lending operations that accounted for its growth, more than in other African countries. During the period, Absa’s South African business grew its earnings by 17% to R9.19 billion ($564.8 million).
The group recorded R12.8 billion ($788 million) in half-year headline earnings, increasing by 8% from the previous year. Celebrating its run, the bank said it would pay shareholders R8.5 ($0.52) in dividends per share.
Explain like I’m new here: Absa makes money from two broad engines: lending and fees. South Africa, its biggest market, did most of the heavy lifting this time. Earnings from its other African operations fell 10%, partly because interest rate cuts in markets such as Kenya—early in the year before they steadied—and Ghana squeezed lending income. When central banks cut interest rates, banks typically earn less on the loans they give out, narrowing the spread between what they charge borrowers and what they pay to fund those loans.
State of play: Absa still wants to grow outside South Africa. It sought to increase its stake in Absa Bank Kenya to 85% through a $238.7 million tender offer, but only raised its stake to 71.99% after minority shareholders took up 21.1% of the shares offered. It is also looking at Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia as part of its wider pan-African expansion strategy. The challenge is making that expansion translate into stronger earnings rather than simply a bigger footprint.
The results show an interesting tension in Absa’s African strategy: South Africa is currently carrying the group, even as the bank is betting on the rest of the continent for future growth. That makes its next expansion moves worth watching closely.
Naira Life 2026 is here!
The Naira Life Conference 2026 is bringing together Nigeria’s top finance minds, industry leaders, creators, and business strategists for a full-day of specialised sessions and masterclasses designed for ambitious Nigerians who want to make, keep, grow, and pass on real wealth. Happening on August 22 at the Jewel Aeida, Lekki, Lagos. Secure a seat in the room.
Telecoms
South Africa’s mobile operators have five months to make websites free
If you’ve ever opened a health or government website and received a notification pop-up that you will be browsing (that website) for free, you’ve encountered zero-rating.
It means that the network providers or third-party sponsors cover the cost of data used to access those websites, and South Africa wants to make that available to thousands of public-interest websites.
Why? To ensure that people get unrestricted access to important information that may be contained on such websites.
What is the country doing? South Africa’s telecom operators, including MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, Rain, Cell C, and Liquid Intelligent Technologies, are now required to stop charging customers for accessing eligible content from public benefit organisations (PBOs) by January 15, 2027.
DG Murray Trust (DGMT), a South African philanthropic organisation, warned that operators are running out of time and implementation is lagging. It says only 15 organisations have been zero-rated across the major operators.
Explain like I’m new here: The zero-rating policy dates back to South Africa’s 2022 spectrum auction, when the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the country’s telecoms regulator, sold mobile operators additional space on the country’s radio frequency airwaves, giving them more room for operation.
In return for getting this new capacity, the licence conditions had social obligations. One was that operators must zero-rate mobile content from PBOs, including government websites.
What websites get the free data? A PBO is a qualifying organisation that provides a public benefit, such as education, healthcare, employment support, or other social services. Organisations have to apply to ICASA and have their content assessed before it qualifies for zero-rating.
Why does this matter? Having network coverage is not the same as being able to afford it. ICASA said more than 89% of rural populations had 3G and 4G/LTE coverage in every province in 2025.
However, data prices in South Africa are still higher than in 27 other African nations. Zero-rating doesn’t mean those websites are available offline, but it does mean people can access them without paying for the data—the cost has simply been sponsored. Users can get free access to selected PBO platforms, not unrestricted Internet access.
Moonshot is back!
Moonshot 2026 is coming! Join us at the National Theatre, Lagos on October 28 & 29 for two days of tech and innovation. Grab your early bird tickets now and get 15% off.
Economy
South Africa’s taxman proposes new value-added tax (VAT) rules
You know that value-added tax (VAT) line in your receipt that seems to make what you bought more expensive?
Businesses collect it on behalf of the government and later report how much VAT they collected and paid. Now, South Africa’s tax authority wants to make that whole process more digital.
What happened? The South African Revenue Service (SARS), the country’s taxman, is proposing a new digital VAT model that would change how businesses create invoices, send VAT information to the agency, and keep records.
Explain like I’m new here: Normally, businesses record their sales and VAT in their accounting systems, then use that information to file VAT returns with SARS periodically. SARS wants businesses’ accounting and invoicing systems to do that work automatically, giving the taxman access to structured VAT information in real or near-real time.
What will the new regime be like? Under the system, e-Invoicing would turn businesses’ invoices into a digital record that will enable VAT transaction information to be recorded digitally to SARS through e-Reporting, an online portal.
The proposal’s Interoperability Framework is the translator that allows the business’s accounting software, invoicing system, and SARS’s systems to communicate with one another. SARS would get transaction data much closer to when a sale happens, rather than waiting until a business submits its VAT return and then checking the numbers afterwards.
Who wins? SARS gets a clearer picture of economic activity and a better chance of catching VAT evasion; businesses could eventually spend less time on reconciliation and manually dealing with compliance.
Between the lines: VAT is a major revenue source for SARS, which collected about R500 billion ($30 billion) in the 2025/26 financial year. But a 40.6% reporting gap makes VAT fraud, under-reporting, and other leakages a very expensive problem. Real-time transaction data could help curb fraud and recover lost revenue.
But don’t start changing your accounting software just yet. This is still a proposal. Businesses, accounting software companies, and other stakeholders have until October 16 to comment on the proposal and share opinions on what safeguards the implementation needs.
CRYPTO TRACKER
The World Wide Web3
Source:
|
Coin Name |
Current Value |
Day |
Month |
|---|---|---|---|
 Bitcoin |
$64,293 |
+ 0.25% |
+ 0.21% |
| Ether |
$1,911 |
+ 1.04% |
+ 2.91% |
| Bitway |
$0.5406 |
+ 53.64% |
+ 730.87% |
| Solana |
$76.86 |
+ 1.57% |
+ 1.12% |
* Data as of 06.40 AM WAT, August 19, 2026.
Opportunities
- Creative Economy Accelerator Programme. The programme is open to African startups building in music, film and media, design, and creative tech. Selected startups will receive between $20,000 and $50,000 in funding and support. Apply here by August 28.
Written by: Yemi Kareem and Zia Yusuf
Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade
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