Ohayo,
Victoria from Techpoint here,
Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
- Uber wins backing for Glovo deal
- The startup that tried to digitise Danfos
- Kenya court blocks 18% ride-hailing cap
Uber wins backing for Glovo deal
The food-delivery world is getting a little smaller. Delivery Hero’s management and supervisory boards have backed Uber’s €13 billion takeover offer, clearing an important hurdle in the deal that would bring brands including Glovo, foodpanda, Talabat, and HungerStation under Uber’s wider delivery business. Uber announced the deal on July 16, 2026, offering €41.50 per share for the remaining Delivery Hero shares it does not already own. If completed, the combined business would span 99 countries and have $236 billion in gross bookings in 2025. The deal still needs shareholder and regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the second half of 2027.
For Africa, this is a big deal because Glovo is a major part of the package. Uber is set to take over Glovo’s operations in several African markets, including Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, and Tunisia, while some of Delivery Hero’s overlapping businesses in other regions will be sold separately to SSW Partners to ease regulatory concerns. That means Uber could eventually have both its ride-hailing service and Glovo’s food and quick-commerce operations under the same roof in several African markets.
And this comes at an interesting moment for Uber in Africa. Just two days before the board backing was reported, Uber announced that it was ending its ride-hailing operations in Nigeria and Uganda on September 2, 2026, after 12 years in Nigeria and 10 years in Uganda. Uber said the decision followed a review of its business priorities, while the company is simultaneously restructuring globally and shifting more investment towards autonomous vehicles and robotaxis. On September 2, it also announced plans to cut about 3,300 corporate jobs, while the following day it launched Wayve-powered robotaxi rides in London. So, while Uber is walking away from its traditional ride-hailing business in two African markets, it is simultaneously preparing to take over major food-delivery operations across parts of the continent.
The Delivery Hero story has also been building for months. In May 2026, Uber increased its stake in Delivery Hero and became its largest shareholder, holding 19.5% of the shares plus options. It initially said it had no immediate plans to take control, but by July it had agreed to make the €13 billion takeover offer. Uber already held a substantial position, while Prosus, Delivery Hero’s other major shareholder, agreed in July to sell its remaining 16.8% stake into the offer. The deal comes amid a broader food-delivery consolidation: DoorDash acquired Deliveroo in 2025, while Prosus acquired Just Eat Takeaway the same year.
For African consumers and businesses, the interesting question is what happens after the deal. Uber says the combination will give merchants and couriers access to a larger platform while giving customers more mobility and delivery services in the same ecosystem. But bringing two major platforms together could also reshape competition in markets where Glovo and Uber already operate side by side. And because the transaction is not expected to close until the second half of 2027, there is still plenty of regulatory and shareholder scrutiny ahead. For now, the board’s backing is another step towards creating a much bigger Uber, even as the company is pulling back from some African ride-hailing markets and betting heavily on robotaxis elsewhere.
The startup that tried to digitise danfos
This investigation is really about a question Lagos’ latest transport digitisation push raises: what happened the last time someone tried to take cash out of the danfo system? Seven years before Lagos officials called their new pact with NURTW and RTEAN a breakthrough, GONA had already built a digital ticketing system for yellow buses. The startup launched in January 2019 after a group of Chinese founders with experience at Huawei Africa, DiDi, and Morgan Stanley came to Lagos to tackle the chaos around fares, cash and bus operations.
GONA started at UNILAG, where it tested QR-code payments on buses and found a willing audience among students. By February 2019, it had extended the route to Bariga, using free rides, student ambassadors and its digital wallet to get commuters on board. Things looked promising enough that, by August, the company had raised a multi-million-dollar pre-Series A round and was processing almost 10,000 transactions daily. It also launched GONA Premier, putting air-conditioned Toyota HiAce buses on the Obalende–Victoria Island route. But the nicer buses soon attracted the attention of agberos, who, according to people who worked at GONA, began harassing drivers and chasing passengers away.
GONA then changed tactics. Instead of trying to replace the existing danfo system, it partnered with unions and trained drivers to accept digital payments, even supplying smartphones to some of them. But getting drivers and unions comfortable with a cashless system proved difficult. Drivers sometimes demanded cash from passengers who had already paid digitally, while GONA eventually resorted to collecting digital fares and paying drivers in cash. That created another problem: agents carrying cash became targets for robbery, particularly around places such as Oshodi. At the same time, the company was dealing with internal fraud, rising union demands and mounting operating costs. By late 2019, GONA had reportedly been reduced to one active route before finally folding in the early months of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What makes the story interesting now is that the technology was apparently not the biggest problem. GONA had already shown that Lagos commuters could use digital payments for buses; the harder part was navigating an ecosystem built around cash, informal power structures and union levies. The startup reportedly paid union leaders regularly just to keep operating, with demands increasing in some parks as word spread. Years later, Lagos is trying to digitise the same system through a formal agreement with NURTW and RTEAN. So what really happened to GONA, and what can its story tell us about Lagos’ latest attempt to digitise the danfo?
Read more to find out the full story.
Kenya Court blocks 18% ride-hailing cap
Imagine being told for years that your ride-hailing app can only take 18% of every trip, and then, suddenly, a court says that rule shouldn’t have been enforced in the first place. That is the position Uber and Bolt now find themselves in Kenya after the High Court blocked enforcement of the 18% commission cap on ride-hailing platforms. The ruling, delivered on September 2, 2026, came from a petition filed by Bolt in 2025 challenging parts of Kenya’s 2022 transport regulations.
For drivers, though, this isn’t necessarily the win it sounds like. The 18% ceiling was introduced in 2022 after drivers complained that platforms were taking commissions of around 25% to 30% of trip earnings. The court has now found that the government did not provide enough evidence or conduct the required regulatory impact assessment to justify imposing the price cap. It said the restriction interfered with platforms’ contractual freedom and amounted to an unjustified limitation on their property rights. The court has suspended its declaration for 12 months, giving the government time to review the rules.
There’s another important part of the ruling: passenger data. The same 2022 regulations required ride-hailing companies to retain detailed trip and payment information for three years and hand it over to the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) when requested. That included information such as passenger and driver identities, pickup and drop-off locations, trip times, payment methods and fares. Justice Florence Muigai Aburili found the requirement unconstitutional and disproportionate, describing it as creating a form of continuous surveillance and conflicting with Kenya’s Data Protection Act.
The commission fight has been brewing for years. In March 2025, for instance, local ride-hailing company Yego told Parliament that the 18% cap should actually be lowered to 15% for boda bodas and three-wheelers, arguing that lower-value trips and rising operating costs made the existing limit too high. Uber, on the other hand, had argued that the cap could hurt platforms’ revenues and reduce one of the ways companies compete for drivers. The debate also became messy in 2023 when Bolt faced questions from NTSA over an additional 5% booking fee, although Bolt maintained that this fee was paid by passengers rather than deducted from drivers’ earnings.
So, for now, Uber and Bolt have more room to decide what they charge, but that does not automatically mean drivers will suddenly earn more. The government has 12 months to conduct public participation, carry out the required regulatory assessment and fix the regulations; otherwise, the contested provisions will cease to be enforceable. The court also declined to immediately scrap the entire regulatory framework because doing so could disrupt Kenya’s ride-hailing sector, including driver verification and safety rules. In other words, Kenya’s fight over who gets what share of every ride is far from over.
In case you missed them
- Uber offers Nigerian drivers ₦40,000 ($30.28) each in conditional payouts after exit
- Why Africa is yet to have its own tech billionaire class
What I’m watching
- We’ve Solved Many Medical Mysteries. Where Are the Cures? | Saloni Dattani | TED
- Andrew Huberman: My Exact Routine To Optimize Brain & Body, I Do All Of These Every Day!
Opportunities
- Flutterwave is hiring for several roles. Apply here.
- Moniepoint is hiring for over 100 roles. Apply here.
- Follow Techpoint Africa’s WhatsApp channel to stay on top of the latest trends and news in the African tech space here.
Have a productive week!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa
