Hola,
Victoria from Techpoint,
- KOKO creditors fac e a14-day deadline
- STANLIB gets approval to buy into Cassava ADC
- SongDis wants African musicians paid, properly
- Nomba acquires Canadian payments firm
KOKO creditors face a 14-day deadline
Kenyan clean-cooking startup KOKO Networks has now officially entered administration, with joint administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) taking control of the company and its Kenyan arm. Creditors have been given 14 days from the notice date to file claims so they can be counted in the insolvency process. The move follows the directors’ decision last week to appoint administrators as the company wound down operations.
PwC’s appointed administrators, Muniu Thoithi and George Weru, now handle all financial, strategic and operational decisions for both entities as they explore whether the business can be rescued or, if not, how to deliver the best possible outcome for creditors under Kenya’s Insolvency Act.
The administration notice comes on the heels of a dramatic collapse for KOKO, which abruptly shut down at the end of January after failing to secure crucial government approvals needed to monetise carbon credits, a core revenue stream that helped subsidise its clean bioethanol cooking fuel for low-income households.
KOKO’s model had allowed it to sell clean fuel at subsidised prices and deploy more than 3,000 smart fuel dispensers in towns and informal settlements. But the lack of a Letter of Authorisation from the Kenyan government to trade carbon credits in compliance markets left its finances severely strained, forcing the leadership into an orderly wind-down with administrators stepping in.
The collapse isn’t just a corporate story. It affects thousands of customers who depended on cheaper, cleaner cooking alternatives, hundreds of employees and agents who worked across its distribution network, and raises larger questions about how climate-focused business models and carbon markets operate in emerging economies. Analysts also point to recent public debate in Kenya around the credibility of cookstove carbon credits and revenue sharing with the government as adding tension to an already fragile situation.
Cassava ADC deal gets regulatory green light
South Africa’s Competition Tribunal has given the green light to STANLIB Infrastructure Fund II’s acquisition of a significant stake in Cassava Africa Data Centres, approving the deal without any conditions. The ruling follows a similar recommendation from the Competition Commission, which said the transaction is unlikely to harm competition or raise public-interest concerns.
Once the deal is fully in place, STANLIB will jointly control Cassava ADC, with the option of taking sole control later. Cassava’s data centre arm currently operates seven facilities across Africa, serving more than 400 enterprise and hyperscale customers and sitting at the heart of Africa’s fast-growing digital infrastructure market.
Victoria Fakiya – Senior Writer
Techpoint Digest
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The standout asset in Cassava ADC’s portfolio is its Samrand Data Centre in Johannesburg, widely regarded as the most advanced data centre on the continent. Built by Standard Bank in 2010 for R1.6 billion, the Tier 4 facility was designed to meet the extreme reliability and security needs of financial institutions, with its own power substation and full redundancy across power, cooling, and connectivity.
But that world-class quality came at a price. Maintenance costs reportedly ran into about R1 million a month, putting pressure on Standard Bank, which later tried unsuccessfully to sell the facility for around R2 billion. In 2020, Africa Data Centres eventually acquired Samrand, a deal that cemented its position as the largest pan-African provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral data centres.
The STANLIB deal also lands at a delicate moment for Cassava Technologies. While Africa Data Centres is expanding, sister company Liquid Telecoms is grappling with heavy debt and a recent Moody’s downgrade. Against that backdrop, the sale of a stake in Cassava ADC looks less like a routine investment and more like a strategic move, one that strengthens Africa’s data centre backbone while quietly helping stabilise the wider Cassava group.
SongDis wants African musicians paid, properly
For years, African music hasn’t had a visibility problem; it’s had a money problem. Songs blow up, rack up streams, cross borders, and still somehow leave the people who made them broke. That frustrating gap is exactly what Melody Nemeyer ran into as a music producer in Abuja long before “creator economy” became a buzzword.
Nemeyer had seen it up close. While working with an independent artiste, K Coco, he helped produce and push a track called Coco Gratitude. A simple lyric video on YouTube unexpectedly took off, crossing three million streams and triggering over 100,000 Shazam searches. The numbers were great. The money? Not so much. Monetising the song meant navigating foreign platforms, dollar payments, PayPal accounts, and royalty systems that many Nigerian artistes either couldn’t access or didn’t trust.
After helping more artistes wrestle with the same problems — manually uploading songs, chasing royalties, and figuring out withdrawals — Nemeyer realised the issue wasn’t talent or reach, but infrastructure. That insight led to SongDis, a homegrown music distribution and creative operations platform built specifically for African artistes, labels, producers, and songwriters.
Founded by Nemeyer and software developer OB Ogle, SongDis helps African creatives distribute their music to over 200 global platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, TikTok, and even physical music stores. But it doesn’t stop at distribution. Artistes can manage releases, track real-time analytics, pitch for editorial playlists, and receive royalties directly, with withdrawals in local currencies, cutting out the dollar bottleneck that has locked many creators out of earnings for years.
The platform also leans into AI, offering tools that resize album artwork, generate cover art, break down analytics in plain language, and give data-backed tips to improve visibility. In short, SongDis is trying to be less of a distributor and more of a creative operating system for African music.
If you’re curious about how SongDis actually works behind the scenes, and what it means for the future of music monetisation on the continent, check out Delight’s latest deep dive on Techpoint Africa.
Nomba acquires Canadian payments firm
Nigerian fintech Nomba has quietly acquired a licensed payment service provider in Canada. This move gives it regulatory cover to move money locally and plug Canadian dollar payments directly into African markets. The acquisition was completed in Q2 2025, though Nomba didn’t disclose the company’s name or the deal value. It says it will invest up to $2 million to strengthen and scale the new infrastructure.
What this really means is control. By owning regulated rails in Canada, Nomba can now offer African businesses local CAD accounts, faster settlement into naira and other African currencies, and near-real-time cross-border payments, without relying heavily on slow, expensive correspondent banks. The infrastructure is built specifically for business-to-business trade payments, not consumer remittances.
CEO Yinka Adewale says that distinction is deliberate. While consumer remittances have improved over the years, cross-border trade payments for African businesses remain clunky, opaque, and unpredictable. Owning licensed infrastructure, he argues, allows Nomba to strip out layers of friction and offer businesses something they care deeply about: reliability and speed.
That matters because African businesses trading globally often lose time and money just trying to get paid. One early user of Nomba’s Canada–Africa rails, a Nigerian oil and gas services firm, previously waited up to five days for payments to settle through correspondent banks. With Nomba, it now receives same-day settlement into a dedicated CAD account and can immediately pay staff, suppliers, or reinvest locally. Nomba estimates its setup can cut FX and transaction costs by 40–60%.
The Canada move is part of a bigger play. Nomba says Canada offered the fastest and cleanest path to building a global payment infrastructure compared to the more complex US regulatory environment. With Canada secured, the company is now eyeing the UAE and Singapore to open up Middle East and Asia-Africa trade corridors, all in pursuit of one goal: making African businesses structurally ready to trade with the rest of the world without the usual payment headaches.
In case you missed it
- MTN eyes fintech acquisitions to accelerate payments, lending and remittances push
What I’m watching
- The last advantage humans have over AI | Carnegie Mellon University Po-Shen Loh
- Silence, the Universal Medicine | Pico Iyer | TED
Opportunities
- Spend Valentine’s Day meaningfully at no cost with Let Love Lead, a free cultural experience promoting unity through art and music, now open for registration on EventPark here.
- Credpal is hiring for several roles. Apply here.
- Lagos Business School is recruiting a Programme Officer (Delivery and Coordination). Submit a cover letter and your CV here.
- Kuda Technologies is looking for a Head of Product (Credit). Apply here.
- MTN Nigeria is hiring a Specialist – International Remittance (Product Manager). Apply here.
- Moniepoint is hiring for several roles. Apply here.
- Bamboo is hiring a quality assurance manager. Apply here.
- Paystack MFB is hiring for a few roles. Apply here.
- Don’t miss the Cavista Technologies Hackathon happening between February 21 and 22. Register your team and go home with cash prizes here.
- Kuda is recruiting a Head of Product (Credit). Apply here.
- Jumia is looking for a Senior Key Account Manager. Apply here.
- MTN is hiring a Specialist, International Remittance (Product Manager). Apply here.
- Moniepoint is hiring for over 100 roles. Apply here.
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Have a superb Thursday!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa
