Moonshot 2026, TechCabal's flagship conference for African technology, has wrapped up after two eventful days at the National Theatre in Lagos, Nigeria. Thousands of founders, investors, operators, policymakers and builders packed the venue for conversations stretching from artificial intelligence and fintech to capital markets, commerce, cybersecurity and the future of African technology. Organizers described packed stages, hurried hallway conversations, familiar faces, new connections and ideas that kept attendees talking long after the lights went out.

Acecore wins $10,000 at Moonshot 2026's TC Battlefield

Ten startups reached the final of TC Battlefield 2026, TechCabal's annual startup pitching competition, sponsored this year by Yango Group, a Dubai-based technology company. The founders pitched their businesses to investors and competed for $17,500 in equity-free funding. Equity-free means the money arrives without ownership strings — winners keep their cap tables intact — which is why such prizes are closely fought over by founders at the earliest stage of company-building.

Among the finalists:

• Fertitude, a healthtech startup, pitched a digital platform that combines reproductive health tracking, AI-powered guidance and access to healthcare specialists.
• Lena, an edtech startup, showed how it uses AI-powered games to help children learn subjects such as mathematics and science.
• Qiqi Farms pitched a technology-driven food distribution business that connects farmers to markets and uses cold-chain infrastructure to deliver fresh produce.

After the pitches, Acecore took home the $10,000 grand prize. The Nigerian climate-tech startup is building locally manufactured, AI-powered solar battery systems through its Powercell product. Paired with its Powercore app, the system allows users to monitor energy performance and manage their power supply, offering an alternative to unreliable electricity. That positioning matters in a market like Nigeria, where grid outages make backup power a routine part of running a home or business.

Supplya, a Nigerian startup that helps small retailers source inventory from manufacturers and access interest-free buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) financing, was first runner-up and won $5,000. Navidyn Limited finished third, taking home $2,500.

TC Battlefield is held as part of the Moonshot conference and gives early-stage African startups a platform to showcase their products and compete for equity-free funding and other growth opportunities. The competition has become a recurring feature of Moonshot: Ulé Homes, a Nigerian proptech startup that helps people finance rent payments, won last year's edition. Founders who missed out this year will have a chance at redemption — TC Battlefield returns at next year's Moonshot.

Moonshot day two: more than 7,500 attendees at the 'biggest gathering in African tech'

Over 7,500 people came through the doors of the National Theatre across the two days, and two large exhibition halls ran out of space. Uber drivers asked passengers whether they were heading to 'that event,' some attendees were confused about the venue on day one, and the tweets did not stop coming.

This was the fourth edition of Moonshot, and each one has been bigger and louder than the last, according to TechCabal's Muktar Oladunmade, who covered the event. He recounted running into his friend Kwadwo, who flew in from Ghana, only twice all day — and both times Kwadwo said he had never expected anything like this from TechCabal. That carries weight, Oladunmade noted, because Kwadwo works at the Bank of Ghana, which runs its own major tech event.

Some of the biggest crowds came for sessions featuring Fu'ad Lawal and Sir Demola Aladekomo; Salem King and Chude Jideonwo; and Jessica Hope, Nana Aisha and Victor Fatanmi. Those sessions filled the conference rooms, with many people standing.

Away from the stage, in the National Theatre's corridors, the conference did what it does best: old friends found each other again, founders and investors swapped numbers and closed deals, and startups walked away with $20,000 at TC Battlefield. Next year, Moonshot returns for three days, and TechCabal said attendees who missed sessions can catch up on the best of them on its website.

Herotel ordered to open its fibre network to rivals

Herotel built its fibre business like a private road: anyone who wanted to use the road also had to buy internet from Herotel. South Africa's competition regulator is now making it open the gates to rivals, according to reporting by MyBroadband (Herotel ordered to open up its closed-access fibre network to internet service providers).

Herotel, South Africa's third-largest fibre network operator, will begin selling wholesale access to its network to other internet service providers (ISPs). The change was imposed as a condition of Vumatel's takeover (Vumatel granted approval to acquire the operator), completed in June. Vumatel now indirectly owns 99.9% of Herotel. Third-party ISPs must also receive the same pricing, service quality and delivery terms offered to companies inside Vumatel's parent group.

Herotel started by connecting smaller towns and underserved communities using fixed wireless internet, before expanding aggressively into fibre in 2019. Unlike most large South African fibre operators, it kept the entire customer relationship to itself: it built and owned the fibre, then sold internet directly over it. Vumatel works differently — it builds fibre networks and lets dozens of ISPs compete to sell internet over those lines.

Open access changes Herotel's economics. It no longer gets every retail customer connected to its infrastructure, because another ISP can now win that customer. But every rival that sells a package over Herotel fibre also becomes a wholesale customer. That trade-off becomes more important as Herotel expands: the company wants to reach another 800,000 homes, taking its footprint beyond 1.4 million, largely in places bigger fibre operators have historically overlooked.

Fibre is expensive to build and cheap to leave idle. Opening Herotel's network gives more ISPs an incentive to sell connections over existing infrastructure, potentially increasing how many homes actually take up fibre. Herotel is losing exclusivity over its roads; the bet is that more traffic can make up for it. From here, the clearest signals will be practical ones: the wholesale terms Herotel puts in front of outside ISPs, how many of them sign on, and how connection numbers move as the 800,000-home expansion proceeds.

Banque du Caire's IPO is 27x oversubscribed

Investors are asking for far more shares than Banque du Caire has to give ahead of the Egyptian state-owned bank's initial public offering (IPO). The lender, Egypt's sixth-largest bank, has not gone public yet, but its retail offering has drawn overwhelming demand.

Retail investors ordered about 9.29 billion shares, even though only 343.1 million shares were available to them, making the retail portion of the IPO about 27 times oversubscribed. At the final price of EGP 5.30 ($0.10) per share, roughly EGP 49.2 billion ($921 million) was chasing just EGP 1.8 billion ($34 million) worth of stock. Investors will receive about 3.7% of the shares they requested. That allocation math is standard in heavily demanded offerings: when orders outrun the shares available, requests are scaled down proportionally rather than filled in full.

The IPO was due to 'execute' on October 29, while normal trading begins on November 2 — two different things. Execution does not mean investors are already trading Banque du Caire shares with one another. It is the step where IPO orders are finalised, shares are allocated to successful investors, and Banque Misr, Banque du Caire's owner, completes the sale. Once those shares sit in investors' accounts, regular trading can begin on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX).

Oversubscription only indicates that investors wanted the shares at EGP 5.30 ($0.095). The bigger test begins when trading opens and buyers and sellers can set the market price. Retail investors also have some protection: during the first 30 days of trading, they can submit shares for sale at the IPO price under a stabilisation arrangement. If Banque du Caire trades comfortably above EGP 5.30 ($0.095), Egypt will have something more useful than a heavily oversubscribed IPO — evidence that demand survived the jump from the order book to the open market.

The World Wide Web3

TechCabal's crypto tracker, the World Wide Web3, listed day and month price changes of –2.15%, –5.83%, –3.51%, –16.11%, –5.11%, –6.15%, –2.39% and –17.85% for the coins it tracks. Data as of 06:50 AM WAT, October 30, 2026.

Job openings

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Written by Yemi Kareem, Muktar Oladunmade and Emmanuel Nwosu; edited by Emmanuel Nwosu and Ganiu Oloruntade. Originally published as TechCabal Daily on October 30, 2026: TechCabal Daily – Acecore wins $10,000 at Moonshot