Nigeria's consumer protection and antitrust watchdog is investigating Uber's sudden shutdown of its Nigerian operations. Meanwhile, South Africa's communications regulator has opened an inquiry into streaming and messaging platforms, South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority has fined three former executives of Africa Bitcoin Corporation, and Kenya's Sun King has launched a financed smartphone.

Ride-hailing

Nigeria's consumer protection watchdog is investigating Uber's abrupt exit

People have been calling it the "Uber rapture." One minute the app was there; the next, riders in Nigeria opened it to find no trips available. Now Nigeria's competition and antitrust regulator wants to know what happened—and whether Uber left some unfinished business behind.

What happened? Nigeria's Federal Competition & Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) says it is probing Uber's abrupt exit from Nigeria on September 2, particularly whether customers were left with unfulfilled services. This could mean that anyone caught mid-trip when the shutdown email went out may face problems.

Background: The US-based ride-hailing giant shut down its Nigerian operations last week, ending a 12-year run in the country. Uber also exited Uganda and announced a planned company-wide layoff affecting 3,300 employees.

The commission has not accused Uber of breaking any law yet. It is trying to establish whether Uber's abrupt switch-off left Nigerian customers with unresolved obligations, and whether the company met its consumer-protection responsibilities before packing up.

This is not the FCCPC's first encounter with the ride-hailing sector. The commission has previously examined platform practices in Nigeria's gig economy, and its enabling law—the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act of 2018—gives it a mandate that covers both antitrust enforcement and consumer redress, which is what makes a post-exit probe of this kind possible at all.

There is a bigger precedent at stake: if companies can switch off a service overnight and simply move on, that creates one standard for entering a market and another for leaving it. Uber may be the company under the microscope today, but how this ends could set the tone for every platform that comes to Nigeria, builds a customer base, and one day decides it is time to leave. In the meantime, riders and drivers have shifted to rivals still operating in the market, including Bolt and inDrive.

Streaming

Netflix and WhatsApp caught in regulatory crosshairs in South Africa

South Africa's communications regulator is turning its attention to streaming and online entertainment platforms.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has launched an inquiry into the impact of streaming and messaging services—over-the-top (OTT) platforms—such as Netflix, WhatsApp, and other internet-based services that appear to compete with traditional broadcasters and telecom operators.

Background: OTT services are the apps that deliver content over the internet instead of through traditional broadcasters or telecom networks—think Netflix instead of DStv, or WhatsApp instead of SMS. The catch is that while they ride on infrastructure built by local operators, they generally are not regulated in quite the same way.

Catch up: For months, industry lobby groups, including South Africa's Association of Communications & Technology (ACT), whose members include MTN and Vodacom, have been asking the regulator to review the impact of OTT platforms. They have long argued that telecom operators invest heavily in expanding fibre networks and broadband access for consumers, only for streaming platforms to rely on that infrastructure, offer competing services, and take a share of the market.

Why now? Telecom operators have been pushing the "Fair Share" argument: if Netflix, WhatsApp, and their peers generate enormous amounts of traffic, shouldn't they contribute to the networks carrying that traffic? It is a compelling argument until one remembers that consumers already pay operators for the data and connectivity they use to access these services. The same debate has played out in Europe, where telecom lobby groups have pushed the European Commission to consider making big platforms pay network costs, and regulators there have so far declined to mandate it.

It is ultimately a business question: telecom operators would be unlikely to keep making heavy capital investments in a market where they saw no path to a return. Even if they play the long game, that return remains the goal.

This makes it a divisive debate. Do telecom operators have a point, or is the consumer's need for more options being overlooked? And if these foreign OTT businesses pay their taxes, is that enough commitment to the market, or should there be other forms of compensation?

Zoom out: It falls to the South African regulator to act as judge and jury. ICASA's interest in the fight could also relate to giving local broadcasters like the SABC a more level playing field. Its inquiry could become a much bigger fight over who gets to participate in South Africa's digital economy, and under whose rules.

The regulator said the review could take nine months to a year or longer. By then, the question may no longer be whether OTTs have disrupted traditional broadcasting—that has already happened. The real question is whether regulation can catch up without making the internet more expensive or less innovative.

Capital Markets

FSCA fines Altvest executives $564,000 and bans them for 20 years

South Africa's capital market regulator has fined three senior figures at Africa Bitcoin Corporation (ABC), a Bitcoin treasury company formerly known as Altvest Capital.

On Friday, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) handed the former executives a combined R9 million ($564,000) penalty for manipulating the company's shares in 2022, banning all three from the financial sector for 20 years.

According to local publication TechCentral, the three executives—chief executive officer Warren Wheatley, his wife and the company's media and investment relations head Tatum Keshwar-Wheatley, and chief investment officer Akshay Karan—have since stepped down or been suspended from their roles at the company.

What happened? In its statement, the FSCA said that between September 5 and 8, 2022, Wheatley, Keshwar-Wheatley, and Karan coordinated trades that artificially inflated Altvest's share price or created the false impression of demand and trading activity. Wheatley and his wife were also trading through companies that collectively owned 51% of Altvest at the time, the regulator said.

Background: Africa Bitcoin Corporation is a South African-listed financial company, originally an SME-lending firm that reinvented itself around Bitcoin in 2025. The company is now building a Bitcoin treasury strategy—buying and storing Bitcoin, holding it on its balance sheet for the long term, and giving retail and institutional investors a way to access the cryptocurrency by investing in its shares.

The company has since been listed on South Africa's Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), as well as in other markets including Namibia, Germany, and on the commodities board in the United States.

Zoom out: The timing makes the case particularly notable. The conduct occurred years before Altvest became Africa Bitcoin Corporation, but two of the people involved were central to the company. The regulator has not said that ABC or its current Bitcoin business was involved in any wrongdoing, but three former senior figures have now been hit with hefty penalties and 20-year bans. For a company trying to build investor confidence around a new Bitcoin-focused identity, that history could raise uncomfortable questions and potentially unsettle some investors. The case is also a reminder that South Africa's market regulators have increasingly turned their attention to crypto-adjacent businesses as the sector grows. For now, it is a wait-and-see situation.

Consumer Tech

Sun King is now making and financing smartphones in Kenya

Sun King made its name by helping Kenyan households access solar products without paying the full cost upfront. Now the off-grid solar company is applying the same model to smartphones.

What happened? Sun King, which raised nearly $200 million in debt and equity funding in 2025, has launched the EZ 3, a smartphone that requires a KES 2,299 ($18) deposit, followed by daily payments of KES 55 ($0.43) for 365 days. By the end of the payment plan, customers will have paid KES 22,374 ($173). The launch comes less than a year after Sun King opened its first African manufacturing facility in Kenya.

Background: Sun King entered Kenya in 2009 as Greenlight Planet, selling off-grid solar products to households through small, recurring payments that allowed customers to own the products without paying the full cost upfront. That pay-as-you-go financing model became a major part of its business.

In October 2025, it opened a factory in Tatu City, Kenya, with the capacity to produce up to 700,000 units annually. For its next act, it is combining local assembly with the financing and distribution network it has spent years building.

How does buying one work? Sun King is selling access to the phones through a financing contract. Customers enter a financing agreement, make the deposit, take the phone home, and pay the remaining balance in daily installments. As payments continue, the phone remains usable. This is also Sun King's second branded smartphone. In February 2026, it launched the EZ 1, which required a KES 2,999 ($23) deposit and KES 60 ($0.46) daily. The EZ 3 is the cheaper sequel.

Kenya's financed-phone market: Sun King is entering a crowded field. M-KOPA, the Kenyan-born asset-financing company, has built a business around financing smartphones and uses repayment history to offer customers loans, data, and device protection. Watu, better known for financing motorcycles and tuk-tuks, also finances Samsung smartphones through its Watu Simu business.

Zoom out: Smartphone and consumer-product financing is becoming more popular in markets where formal credit remains out of reach for many consumers. For off-grid and lower-income households, a financed smartphone is often also the primary gateway to mobile money, government services, and the digital economy—so device affordability is a bigger question than hardware alone. Sun King is now betting that its phones, payment plan, and distribution network can win customers.

Events

The Building Beyond You Institute will host the second edition of the Building Beyond You Conference on September 25, 2026, at the Eko Convention Center in Lagos. Convened by House of Tara founder Tara Fela-Durotoye, the one-day event will bring together founders, business owners, and executives to discuss building companies that can scale beyond their founders, with GTBank co-founder and FATE Foundation Chairman Fola Adeola as the headline keynote speaker. The conference expects 2,500 attendees, up from 1,381 at its sold-out 2025 edition, and will explore succession, governance, leadership, and later-stage business transitions.

Also in the news:

• Nigeria's police Vigilant app raises questions about cycle of duplicate fraud reporting platforms
• From 70 million to 317 million: How Serigne Dioum plans to turn every MTN subscriber into a MoMo user
• Uber's $14 ride problem in Nigeria

Written by Yemi Kareem and Emmanuel Nwosu; edited by Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade.