Happy midweek.

For millions of informal workers in Central Africa, earning money is not the main challenge. Accessing credit is. This week in Francophone Weekly, we examine how Cameroonian startup BEE is using motorcycles and other everyday assets to help informal workers gain formal credit.

Meanwhile, Nigeria wants the government to become a much larger customer of local cloud infrastructure. Its new cloud policy makes cloud the default for government systems and outlines how ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) will procure cloud services, where sensitive data may be stored, and how the government plans to attract $750 million in private investment into the sector over two years.

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Standard Bank wants OPay pre-IPO stake

Absa eyes pan-African expansion

SA to telecom firms: make public-benefit websites free

New VAT rules proposed in South Africa

World Wide Web 3

Opportunities

Fintech

Standard Bank wants a piece of fintech company OPay

Standard Bank Group, South Africa’s largest lender with a market capitalization 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 known for its fleet of green handheld point-of-sale (PoS) devices, is working with underwriters including 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 grown to more than 50 million users and become a key part of Nigeria’s mobile money and digital payments economy. Its adoption accelerated sharply during Nigeria’s naira cash shortage in early 2023, when scarcity of physical banknotes pushed many Nigerians toward mobile payments.

Explain like I’m new here: Standard Bank would be buying into OPay before the fintech goes public. If OPay secures its $4 billion valuation on the US stock market, an early stake could become more valuable. Standard Bank would also gain a direct relationship with one of Nigeria’s biggest digital payment platforms. OPay, meanwhile, would secure a major African bank as a strategic investor as it prepares to present itself 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 also knows traditional banking scale is being challenged by fintech agility. By investing in 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 most notable example in 2025 was the partnership between FirstRand and Optasia.

If this deal closes and OPay completes 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 in which its key African markets—South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya—delivered solid results, tier-1 lender Absa Group is considering further expansion beyond its home markets, Bloomberg reported. Together, those three markets contributed 80% of its profit. Absa’s continental reach traces back to Barclays’ decades-old African operations; the business was rebranded as Absa in 2018 as Barclays sold down its shareholding.

Between the lines: In the six months to June, the bank recorded R58.8 billion ($3.60 billion) in revenue, up 4% from a year earlier. Its South African lending operations were the main driver of growth. During the period, Absa’s South African business grew earnings by 17% to R9.19 billion ($564.8 million).

The group reported half-year headline earnings of R12.8 billion ($788 million), an 8% increase from the previous year. It also said it would pay shareholders R8.5 ($0.52) in dividends per share.

Explain like I’m new here: Absa makes money through two broad engines: lending and fees. This time, South Africa, its biggest market, did most of the heavy lifting. 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 rates, banks typically earn less on the loans they issue, 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 turning that expansion into stronger earnings rather than simply a larger footprint.

The results highlight a tension in Absa’s African strategy: South Africa is currently carrying the group, even as the bank bets on the rest of the continent for future growth. That makes its next expansion moves worth watching closely.

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. It takes place 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 pop-up notification that you can browse it for free, you’ve encountered zero-rating.

It means network providers or third-party sponsors cover the cost of the data used to access those websites, and South Africa wants to extend that to thousands of public-interest websites.

Why? To ensure that people have 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 access to 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 that 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 — the country’s first high-demand spectrum auction in more than a decade, after years of policy and legal delays — giving them more room to operate.

In return for that new capacity, the licence conditions carried social obligations. One of them 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 must 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 does not mean those websites are available offline, but it does mean people can access them without paying for the data—the cost has been sponsored. Users get free access to selected PBO platforms, not unrestricted internet access.

Moonshot 2026 is coming! Join us at the National Theatre, Lagos on October 28 and 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 on your receipt that makes 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 process more digital.

What happened? The South African Revenue Service (SARS), the country’s tax authority, 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 sales and VAT in their accounting systems, then use that information to file periodic VAT returns with SARS. SARS wants businesses’ accounting and invoicing systems to do that work automatically, giving the tax authority 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 enables VAT transaction information to be sent digitally to SARS through e-Reporting, an online portal.

The proposal’s Interoperability Framework is the translator that allows a business’s accounting software, invoicing system, and SARS’s systems to communicate with one another. SARS would receive transaction data much closer to the time of sale, rather than waiting until a business submits its VAT return and then checking the numbers afterward.

Who wins? SARS would get a clearer picture of economic activity and a better chance of catching VAT evasion; businesses could eventually spend less time on reconciliation and manual compliance work. The direction of travel is global: Kenya’s revenue authority mandates its eTIMS electronic tax invoice system, Nigeria’s FIRS has moved to require electronic invoicing, and Italy has required business e-invoicing since 2019.

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 an expensive problem. Real-time transaction data could help curb fraud and recover lost revenue.

But businesses should not start changing their accounting software just yet. This is still a proposal. Businesses, accounting software companies, and other stakeholders have until October 16 to comment on it and share views on the safeguards needed for implementation.

CRYPTO TRACKER

The World Wide Web3

Source:

Coin Name

Current Value

Day

Month

• 0.25%

• 0.21%

• 1.04%

• 2.91%

• 53.64%

• 730.87%

• 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.

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Written by: Yemi Kareem and Zia Yusuf

Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade

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