Author: Kaluka wanjala

Mdundo has announced that it saw impressive growth in Q4 of 2021.The Pan-African music streaming service saw its user base grow by 22% in the last quarter of 2021 reaching 20 million users. The company says that growth has been fuelled by strong partnerships with telecommunications firms and leading consumer brands such as MTN Nigeria, Vodacom Tanzania, Guinness, Standard Chartered Bank and Safaricom that has seen the service increase its audience in the mass, mid-income market especially among the 18-24 age bracket. “We have noted increased demand for music served online mainly among the youthful consumer segment, an audience that…

Equity bank has today announced that their USSD service (*247#) can now be accessed by all customers on all mobile networks. The USSD service gives users access to a seamless banking experience. With the revamped USSD service, customers on Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom and Equitel can easily access Equity bank services. This announcement comes a few weeks after Equity introduced one till number that will allow merchants to receive digital payments efficiently. Through this till number, merchants will be able to receive payments from different channels or mobile wallets from the single till number. Some of the new features on the…

Showmax has released the first-look trailer for the highly-anticipated second season of the hit Kenyan procedural and legal drama Crime and Justice.

Brand Finance has named Huawei one of the top 10 most valuable brands for 2022 in its recently published Brand Finance Global 500 2022 report. The report showed staggering year-on-year growth of 29% in Huawei’s brand value to US$71.2 billion, allowing the company to rise more than twofold from its previous position of 21 in Brand Finance’s 500 ranking last year, to 9th this year. Every year, Brand Finance puts 5,000 of the biggest brands to the test, and publish nearly 100 reports, ranking brands across all sectors and countries. The world’s top 500 most valuable and strongest brands are…

In 2021, the global smartphone market grew by 5.7% compared to 2020. This is according to data released by market research firm, IDC. In total, over 1.35 billion smartphones were shipped in 2021. Q4 of 2021 saw a decline in shipments with 362.4 million phones shipped in that quarter. This represents a 3.2% decline from the same period in 2020. During the last quarter of 2021, Apple led the pack with 84.9 million shipped. This was a decline of 2.9% compared to the same period in 2020. This is right around after the release of the latest iPhones and sales…

In a move aimed at enticing people to use its platform, Jumia has announced that it will offer free delivery on all orders above Ksh 1,000 to customers in Nairobi.

Safaricom introduced the M-Pesa Super App back in 2020. This app is meant to complement the existing mySafaricom app and is for those who just want to conduct M-Pesa transactions. The app has grown in numbers really fast and according to the company, total downloads have reached 5 million. This is impressive and makes the M-Pesa Super App the most downloaded and the most used Kenyan app ever. The app was buggy at some point and even though it is still not perfect, it has really improved over the months. Through the M-Pesa app, users can send money, request money,…

If you use WhatsApp on Android, you may soon be forced to pay for Google cloud storage if you want to keep your chat histories backed up. Some changes in the WhatsApp code have been spotted by WABetaInfo. The changes have been spotted in an in-development version of WhatsApp. With these changes, users will have the option of deciding the data from their WhatsApp chat histories that they would like to back up. These changes should help users not hit their Google Drive storage limits. With WhatsApp chat backup, users are able to store updated copies of their chats and…

Huawei had confirmed that it planned to launch the new Huawei nova 9 in Kenya sometime this month. The company did not have an exact date but we now know that will be happening in a couple of weeks. For those who want to be the first ones to own this phone, it is currently available in pre-order through Amaya, Huawei’s official distributor in Kenya. The phone is retailing at Ksh 66,000. I am not sure if you can pre-order it offline but I am sure that can be facilitated through Huawei retail stores across the country. Huawei Mobile Kenya…

TLcom has today announced a first close of $70mn for its $150mn Africa focused tech fund, firmly positioning the investor to become the largest independent VC firm fully dedicated to the continent. With a first close in line with the total size of its TIDE Africa Fund closed in 2020, TLcom’s second fund sees participation from Allianz, the world’s largest insurance company, through AfricaGrow, its joint venture with DEG Impact (German Investment Corporation), as well as a host of new and returning investors including Bertelsmann, King Philanthropies, the TLcom team and FBNQuest from the private sector, and major DFIs such as…