Good morning. 
Last Friday, we published the second installment of our Class of 2016 project on Yoco, the South African payments startup. Before it onboarded a single merchant, its four founders spent a year trying to convince a bank to partner with them. When Mercantile Bank—now Capitec Bank, the largest South African commercial bank by customer base—finally agreed, the investor who had offered to fund the company walked away. The angel investors stayed and put in more.
Our Class of 2016 profile traces how Yoco grew to serve over 200,000 businesses.
Yesterday, we published what over 200 African startups founded in 2016 returned to investors. Together they raised about $1.89 billion. The best disclosed returns came from two Johannesburg software companies that raised under $10 million each, and the rest produced almost no liquidity or venture-scale exit.
Jump into that story here and read TechCabal’s Class of 2016.
Read smart insights about Francophone Africa’s tech ecosystem—weekly.
capital market
Quickmart and Dangote deals head to Kenya’s stock market
Kenya’s stock market has two different deals to be excited about this week: one is selling groceries, the other is selling access to Nigeria’s biggest refinery.
What’s buzzing? Quickmart, the Kenyan retail supermarket chain, has opened its public offer, selling 2 billion existing shares—about 50% of its business—at KES 7.50 ($0.058) each. The retailer is targeting a KES 15 billion ($116 million) raise in an initial public offering (IPO) valuing the company at KES 30 billion ($232 million). The offer closes October 30, with trading expected to begin November 12.
Separately, Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA), the country’s capital markets regulator, on Monday approved Renaissance Capital Kenya’s plan to offer global depositary receipts (GDRs) tied to Nigeria’s Dangote Petroleum Refinery. The approval comes five days after Renaissance Capital Kenya, an investment bank, said it was working on the GDR structure to give Kenyan investors access to the refinery’s Nigerian IPO. Renaissance will create the receipts after the IPO closes on October 13 and shares are allocated. Their eventual listing on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) will still require approval from Nigeria’s securities regulator.
Explain like I’m new here: On September 24, Quickmartfiled with the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), Kenya’s stock exchange, to go public. The filing came seven years after Adenia Partners and DEG-backed Sokoni Retail Kenya acquired Quickmart and later merged it with Tumaini Self Service in 2020. Quickmart has since grown to 72 stores across 16 counties and generated KES 50.4 billion ($390 million) in revenue in 2025. Sokoni is now taking part of the business it built privately to public investors, while retaining a stake.
Between the lines: Both Quickmart and Dangote deals solve different problems for the NSE. Quickmart gives investors another large Kenyan company to own. Dangote gives them access to a large non-Kenyan company. The latter has been possible on paper for years: in 2017, Kenya introduced approved rules allowing foreign shares to be packaged as depositary receipts and traded in Kenya, partly as a cheaper alternative to companies pursuing full cross-listings. The CMA said Dangote will be the first transaction under that framework.
State of play: The Dangote offer will test whether that nine-year-old framework can work. If the GDRs attract investors and trade actively after listing, Kenyan brokers could have a model for bringing future African IPOs to local investors without those companies pursuing full Nairobi listings. For an exchange that has spent years short of fresh listings, that gives the NSE another way to expand what investors can buy while it waits for more Quickmarts to come to market.
Zoom out: Kenya spent years starved of new listings. Now the NSE is trying to do two things at once: bring more Kenyan companies to market, and make African companies easier for Kenyans to own.
Happy customer service week.
Your success and ours are the same story. Happy Customer Service Week. This year’s theme is The Extra Mile, and it’s the only way we know how to do this. Visit: fincra.com.
companies
Six months later, Koko Networks struggles to find a buyer
After years of operating a clean-cooking business that helped Kenyan households cut their exposure to smoke, Koko Networks, the Kenyan startup, was placed under administration in February after it ran out of cash.
Placing it under administration allowed licenced professionals to temporarily take over the business and find a way to rescue it or maximise return for investors. As part of that legal insolvency process, PwC, the global consulting firm, was appointed as Koko’s Kenyan administrator. The business was eventually put up for sale in July. However, it has yet to find a buyer.
What happened? On Monday, the British arm of the collapsed Kenyan clean-cooking company said the business has failed to secure a buyer willing to pay a significant sum for its carbon credits.
Carbon credits are certificates for emissions that have been cut or removed from the atmosphere. Companies buy them to offset emissions they still produce.
PwC engaged with three potential buyers and five brokers before putting the credits on the market. While offers have come in, the consulting firm said they won’t generate a “meaningful return.”
Explain like I’m new here: Koko’s business partly relied on carbon credits to make cooking fuel affordable. Its business model relied on replacing dirtier cooking fuels with cleaner bioethanol to reduce emissions, creating carbon credits sold to companies seeking to offset or account for their emissions.
However, Koko needed government authorisation to sell those credits to international carbon markets; the Kenyan government withheld it.
Between the lines: Koko needs to sell at a higher price to cover investors’ claims. But if the sale is not profitable, it would struggle to repay what it owes. Koko owes FirstRand Bank, South Africa’s second-largest commercial lender by assets and Koko’s biggest creditor, about $60 million; other creditors have claims worth about £126 million ($167 million). PwC said it does not expect to recover the full amount.
Who is paying to shut Koko down? Koko UK has less than £280,000 ($379,000) in cash, and administrators estimate the wind-down will cost about £880,000 ($1.19 million) before their own fees. The company doesn’t have enough money to fund its own closure. Creditors have stepped in with about $659,000 in funding to keep the administration going. That money earns interest and is treated as an administration expense, meaning it gets paid back before unsecured creditors.
How did Koko get here? Koko’s Kenya cookstove credits were offered at about $16 per tonne at the start of 2025. By December, offers had fallen to about $5. When Koko entered liquidation in February, it had reportedly issued 15 million credits; at the most recent carbon market price, it would have grossed $75 million. Falling credit prices and Koko’s inability to unlock more lucrative markets weakened its economics.
Zoom out: Koko’s clean-up (pun intended) is not over. It still needs a buyer for the carbon credits, while lawyers work out whether there is a path to claw back more money.
Don’t miss Moonshot 2026 for anything in the world!
True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Join us on October 28 & 29, 2026. Get your ticket.
regulations
Senegal wants new rules for satellite operators
Telecom regulation was easier when networks stayed on the ground. Operators built towers, buried fibre, bought spectrum, and regulators knew where to find them.
Then Starlink showed up from space. SpaceX’s satellite Internet service has pushed Senegal into a question regulators across Africa are only beginning to confront: when a telecom operator no longer needs towers, cables, or even much local infrastructure, should it still play by the same rules as everyone else?
What happened? Senegal’s Telecommunications and Postal Regulatory Authority (ARTP), its telecom regulator, is reviewing how satellite companies should be licenced and regulated in the country, and wants telecom industry players to weigh in. In a new consultation, running until October 21, the regulator will examine market access, spectrum use, data localisation, quality of service, and how satellite operators should coexist with traditional telecom networks.
Explain like I’m new here: Starlink’sFebruary launch in Senegal quickly became a regulatory fight. Sonatel challenged the satellite provider’s authorisation, arguing that Starlink was entering the market without carrying the same weight as terrestrial operators. Its complaint centred on entry fees and licence charges, as well as obligations around coverage, universal service, quality of service, and interconnection.
Unions representing workers at other telecom firms Sonatel, Yas, and Expresso also questioned the terms of Starlink’s entry. By September, the dispute had reached Senegal’s Supreme Court, which temporarily suspended Starlink’s authorisation while it heard Sonatel’s challenge.
South Africa, for example, has the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) rule, requiring Blacks and historically disadvantaged groups (HDGs) to own 30% in foreign ventures. This has kept Starlink locked out of the country since. However, in Senegal’s case, Starlink plays a deep-seated role in a country that had about 60.6% Internet penetration at the end of 2024. On September 7, its government said it planned to acquire 5,000 Starlink kits at preferential rates to connect underserved areas, schools, and local authorities.
Zoom out: Together, these create a wrinkle for the country. Senegal wants cheaper, wider Internet access, but it also needs rules that do not leave traditional operators—which have operated for years and built much of the telecom infrastructure the country runs on today—carrying costs and obligations their satellite rivals can avoid. How it resolves that tension could set the tone for how the country regulates the next wave of connectivity.
AI
Zimbabwe takes its AI push to rural communities
Zimbabwe wants its AI ambitions to stretch beyond Harare, the country’s capital city. The government has opened its first rural AI, digital, and innovation hub at the Nyamuroro Vocational Training Centre in Gokwe North, a rural district in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. The centre, built with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and technology nonprofit Uncommon.org, has enrolled 52 young people and received 20 laptops. Learners will get training in AI, coding, and other digital skills.
Explain like I’m new here: Gokwe has become a testing ground for Zimbabwe’s rural digital push. In April 2025, the government launched its Presidential Internet Scheme there, promising broadband across all 2,400 administrative wards and distributing 2,000 Starlink kits for schools, clinics, and other public facilities. In the same year, the government also launched a programme to train 1.5 million young Zimbabweans in skills including programming, data science, and cybersecurity. In March 2026, it followed with a national AI strategy that puts skills and access to computing infrastructure at the centre of its plans.
Why it matters: Africa cannot build an AI workforce only in its biggest cities. Millions of young people live and study elsewhere, and excluding them shrinks the pool of people who can use AI at work or build businesses around it. Zimbabwe’s rural hubs are one way to take those skills to where people already are.
CRYPTO TRACKER
The World Wide Web3
Source:
|
Coin Name |
Current Value |
Day |
Month |
|---|---|---|---|
 Bitcoin |
$85,891 |
+ 0.97% |
+ 7.71% |
| Ether |
$2,701 |
+ 0.26% |
+ 10.23% |
| Doppler Finance |
$0.02055 |
+ 2.51% |
+ 28.01% |
| Solana |
$120.25 |
– 0.44% |
+ 18.22% |
* Data as of 06.40 AM WAT, October 5, 2026.
Events
-
The Loveworld Trade and Investment Forum (LTIF) 2026 is a two-day business and investment summit convening founders, investors, policymakers, and business leaders to Accra, Ghana, on October 6 and 7 (today and tomorrow). Held at the Ohene Konadu Auditorium at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), the forum will focus on trade, investment, production, and how African businesses can build stronger economic links across the continent. Register here for free to attend the event in Ghana.
Written by: Yemi Kareem and Emmanuel Nwosu
Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade
Want more of TechCabal?
Sign up for our insightful newsletters on the business and economy of tech in Africa.
- The Next Wave: futuristic analysis of the business of tech in Africa.
- Francophone Weekly by TechCabal: insider insights and analysis of Francophone’s tech ecosystem
P:S If you’re often missing TC Daily in your inbox, check your Promotions folder and move any edition of TC Daily from “Promotions” to your “Main” or “Primary” folder and TC Daily will always come to you.
Comments
Post a Comment