Good morning.

Welcome to another capitalism-filled work week. I’m (begrudgingly) on lede duty all week, so you’re stuck with me until Friday. Since you have no choice but to give me your attention, here’s a question for you:

We’re near the end of the 2026 World Cup, and despite not being much of a football fan myself, I can’t escape the debates. So, who are you backing to lift the trophy (no, you can’t change your answer after the final whistle)? Before someone starts another ‘Messi vs everybody else’ debate, here’s today’s dispatch.

— Yemi

If Africa’s tech ecosystem had a town crier, it would echo what the players already know: investors are becoming more selective. Startups are finding that building a product is one challenge, but raising enough money to keep building it is another.

What happened? Gigbanc, a Nigerian fintech that built cross-border payment products for freelancers, is winding down its operations after three years. Customers have until July 31 to convert their balances to Naira and withdraw non-fraudulent funds to Nigerian bank accounts free of charge. The startup also said that it is in talks to be acquired.

The ecosystem has money problems: Gigbanc’s closure comes at a curious time for African startups. Funding into the continent ticked up slightly in the first half of 2026, but the number of disclosed deals fell sharply from 252 in H1 2025 to 146 this year. Meaning that investors are still writing cheques, but they’re writing them for fewer companies. 

Where Gigbanc fits in: Gigbanc said it struggled to raise fresh capital while operating a business that is expensive to run. Cross-border payments require customer verification (KYC), compliance, banking relationships, and payment infrastructure, all of which cost money even before a startup becomes profitable. The startup tried to change tack away from cross-border fintech operations, but didn’t secure enough money to fund that ambition. 

Like Chimoney, another Nigerian-founded cross-border payments startup, that shut down in May after its founder said the startup could not raise additional funding. Early-stage startups need capital to build products, acquire customers, prove their business works, and reach the scale investors want to see. But investors now want to see the scale before writing the cheque. That leaves many founders stuck in the middle. 

Zoom out: Gigbanc said it processed more than ₦10 billion ($7.2 million) in payments, served 150,000 users across more than 30 countries, and built products for Africa’s growing freelance economy. Yet, even that wasn’t enough to guarantee survival.

If you’ve ever gone through passport control at an airport, you’ve probably seen an officer scan your passport, take your fingerprints, and know almost immediately whether you should be allowed through. South Africa wants that same experience to happen on the street. 

What’s happening? South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs (DHA), the government department responsible for immigration, citizenship, and civil registration, wants to buy 600 handheld devices that will let immigration officials scan fingerprints and faces, then check in real time whether someone is legally in the country. Instead of relying on passports or permits that could be forged, officials would verify a person’s biometrics directly against the DHA’s database. 

Explain like I’m new here: The idea isn’t entirely new. Since April 2024, the DHA has been live-scanning people arrested on immigration grounds into its Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), allowing officials to identify repeat offenders and people previously deported. The new handheld devices simply take that same system into the field, so officers can verify someone’s status within seconds instead of taking them to an office first. 

Today, immigration enforcement often depends on physical documents and follow-up checks that can take time. The proposed system shifts the focus from documents to identity itself. If your fingerprints or face already exist in the DHA’s records, officials can immediately confirm your immigration status. If they don’t, your biometrics can be captured and stored for future enforcement. 

Why now? Immigration has become one of South Africa’s most politically charged issues. The DHA says deportations have increased—over 53,000 people had been processed for deportation or voluntary repatriation by July 11—as it invests heavily in border technology, while anti-immigration groups continue to pressure the government to crack down on undocumented migrants. Faster biometric checks are meant to make enforcement quicker and reduce reliance on physical documents that can be forged or borrowed. 

The catch: Buying scanners is easier than fixing the immigration system behind them. The technology assumes the DHA’s records are accurate, up to date, and accessible wherever officials are conducting operations. Mistakes, outdated records, or connectivity problems could leave people wrongly questioned or detained. Even if the system works perfectly, identifying more undocumented migrants only helps if detention centres, tribunals, and deportation processes can keep pace.

Zoom out: South Africa is moving immigration enforcement closer to real-time policing, where identity can be verified almost instantly. Whether that makes the system fairer or simply faster will depend less on the scanners than on the institutions behind them.

If you filed your income tax return in Kenya this June, you probably did it via Excel. From 2027, you won’t have to. That upgrade is the real story running underneath KRA’s headline numbers, which arrived after a turbulent few months at the authority. Humphrey Wattanga was ousted as Commissioner General in April and later appointed to a diplomatic posting, while his successor, Adan Mohamed, only took office in May.

Explain like I’m new here: Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the country’s taxman, collected a record KES 2.844 trillion ($22 billion) in the 2025/26 financial year, which ended on June 30, narrowly missing its target by 4.8%. But the bigger story isn’t the number itself. It’s how KRA got there. 

Instead of relying on new taxes, the authority has been turning tax collection into a technology business. More than 750,000 taxpayers are now onboarded to its electronic Tax Invoice Management System (eTIMS), businesses can interact with Shuru, KRA’s AI-powered WhatsApp assistant, and data analytics are doing the work that once depended on manual audits. 

The next upgrade: KRA says the familiar Excel templates many Kenyans use to file returns will disappear from 2027. They’ll be replaced with a web-based filing system that automatically pulls information KRA already has—from eTIMS invoices, pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) records, customs declarations, and other tax data—to pre-fill returns. Kenya is planning for a version of the future where taxpayers will spend less time entering figures manually, while the taxman spends less time chasing inconsistencies. 

Between the lines: Parliament rejected several proposals in the Finance Bill 2026 that would have expanded KRA’s enforcement powers. Yet, the authority still posted its highest-ever collections. That’s an early sign that better data and automation may be proving more valuable than giving tax collectors bigger sticks.

Zoom out: KRA now has an even bigger assignment: collecting KES 2.985 trillion ($23 billion) this financial year. Technology has helped it squeeze more revenue out of Kenya’s formal economy. The next challenge is bringing millions of informal businesses into that same digital tax system without making compliance harder than it needs to be. 

Portugal and Morocco want to join forces to trade electricity

It’s a familiar experience to borrow sugar from your neighbour when you run out in the middle of baking. Replace sugar with electricity, and you’ll understand what Portugal and Morocco are doing.

Both countries are planning to build an undersea electricity cable that will stretch across their shared border. This proposal was floated in 2016 but never gained serious momentum until a decade later. 

Why? Officials never publicly gave a single reason for the delay, but projects like these typically stall because of their enormous costs, technical complexity, and the need for political agreement between multiple parties. This project would involve a 220-kilometre undersea cable with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW), estimated to cost about $742.3 million.

Portugal wants what Spain and Morocco have: Spain and Morocco have been connected by electricity cables beneath the Strait of Gibraltar, a waterway separating Europe from Africa, since 1997, allowing power to flow in both directions depending on demand and supply. Portugal is now exploring whether having its own direct connection could improve resilience. This could give it another source of electricity when the domestic supply comes under pressure.

What is interesting about Morocco’s electricity? Morocco has become one of Africa’s renewable energy heavyweights. Over the past decade, it has invested heavily in massive solar and wind projects, including the Noor-Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, which is the world’s largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant (it uses the sun’s energy).

Why should you care? The more countries trade electricity, the fewer blackouts they may face. Today it’s Morocco and Portugal, tomorrow it may be a connection between Morocco and that African country that has refused to provide a consistent power supply.