👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – My OneApp, zero access

TGIF.

If you’re seeing this email on a Friday, this is your sign to step out and show up!

HERtitude, Zikoko’s women-only party, happens tomorrow, bringing together women to unwind, connect, and show up fully. This year’s theme, Main Character Energy, says it all. Our ladies are eager to party!

If you’ve been putting it off, now’s the time—use code BESTIE15 for 15% off and grab your ticket.

You can also catch up on what you missed on Headlines by TechCabal, our talk show breaking down African tech. A new episode drops tomorrow. For sponsorships, speak with our partnerships team.

Let’s dive in.

As an experienced banking specialist, Chukwuemeka Mbachu believes banking is no longer just evolving, it’s being rebuilt; from products to platforms, from transactions to relationships, and from dashboards to something far more powerful: confidence. He is building at the centre of that shift, reimagining how people experience money in a digital-first world.

• Explain what you do to a 5-year-old.

I make digital journeys easier, so that when people use an app to manage their money, get insurance, or access any financial service, it actually feels like it was built for them.

• What is the biggest misconception Africans have about insurance that you find yourself correcting over and over?

That Insurance is optional. I think it is one of the most important financial safety nets a person can have, yet it’s widely seen as a luxury or an afterthought. 

Superpool exists precisely because of that gap. Once people see insurance as protection rather than cost, the decision becomes obvious. We’ve seen it firsthand at Superpool: the moment the framing shifts, so does the behaviour.

• You have a microphone to African tech. What do you want to say?

Build for real people, not just scale. The next wave of innovation won’t come from what looks impressive; it will come from what people actually understand, trust, and use. Scale without clarity is just noise.

On April 2, Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telco, unveiled its My OneApp, a platform meant to merge the M-PESA and mySafaricom apps with overlapping features. 

As part of its FinTech 2.0 strategy, Safaricom wants to keep customers locked in one app where they can do everything from buying airtime, sending and receiving money, investing, and accessing loans. It will enable the company to track user behaviour in a single view.

One app to rule them all… if you can log in: While it’s a thoughtful initiative to curb app switching, Safaricom’s My OneApp has already begun facing crucial performance tests, and so far, the results have been… underwhelming. Only a week after launch, users have begun reporting login failures, incomplete setups, and being locked out entirely. 

Safaricom has acknowledged the issue, saying fixes are underway, but for an app that is supposed to replace two core platforms in six months, this is not the smoothest first impression.

What this app is trying to be: My OneApp is Safaricom trying to future-proof itself. The app pulls together payments, telecom services, investments, and about 80 third-party services, including train bookings and M-TIBA health insurance, into one ecosystem. It is built on a setup that can process up to 6,000 transactions per second, according to the telco’s marketing.

So, why is it glitching? The issues point to a few things. The M-PESA app has over 6.5 million users, and the mySafaricom app has under 3 million users. Moving millions of users and their data from older apps into a new system is never clean, and the system might still be catching up. 

Safaricom’s all-in-one app has the potential to propel the company forward in Kenya’s fintech sector, but it’s asking millions of users to trust a new home for their money. And for an app meant to replace everything, people expect it to at least let them log in.

The perfect girl’s day out is almost here.

Since 2021, Zikoko has brought women together for HERtitude, the biggest women-only party in Nigeria, built around celebrating women, their accomplishments, and the joy of simply being in a space full of them. With great music, games, a fashion show, and food and drinks, HERtitude 2026 is one you shouldn’t miss. Save 15% on tickets with the code “BESTIE15”. Secure your tickets here.

Nigeria pushes for shared local cloud infrastructure

The JNB11 data center on Vantage Data Centers’ developing 80MW campus in Johannesburg, South Africa (Image source: Business Wire)

At GITEX Africa, the global tech conference held this week in Morocco, the conversation of data control was on the front burner. Nigeria made a point that Africa is generating a lot of data, but doesn’t control where that data lives. 

While Africa accounts for 250 data centres that make up 0.6% of the global capacity, services such as payments, AI signals, apps, or transactions still sit on infrastructure belonging to foreign players, such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

A shared cloud infrastructure: The conversation championed the idea of a shared system—a kind of cloud of clouds where different African countries can run their own infrastructure but connect it into one interoperable network; similar to Gaia-X, Europe’s decentralised cloud infrastructure.

What this looks like: Nigeria or Kenya would host their data locally, but the data can still interact seamlessly with systems in South Africa or Rwanda, without first routing it through Europe, operating like a shared cloud system that communicates across the sovereign countries.

Africa’s internet connection already runs on shared infrastructure and subsea cables such as SAT-3/WASC and the 2Africa subsea cable, which connect multiple countries and move data across the continent. Most of these connections were built by private companies pooling resources because no single country can justify the cost of building such infrastructure alone. Now, 416 million people are using mobile internet in Africa. 

Can this work? On paper, it is sound. Yet, in a very generous instance, assuming regulators give the tech and infrastructure the go-ahead it needs, aligning on standardisation can be a blocker. Every country has its own data protection laws and policies. For a shared infrastructure to work, these policies would have to cooperate somehow.

Funding tracker

Image source: TechCabal Insights

Lucky, an Egyptian fintech startup, secured $23 million in a Series B funding. The round was led by Disruptech Ventures, DPI Venture Capital via Nclude fund, with participation from Suez Canal Bank and OneStop. (Apr 7)

Here are the other deals for the week:

• Z Systems, a Moroccan retail-tech startup, raised $1.65 million in a seed funding round led by Azur Innovation Management, with backing from MNF Ventures, Witamax, and Harambeans Prosperity Fund. (Apr 7)
• Reme-D, an Egyptian biotech startup, raised $500,000 in funding from Global Innovation Fund. (Apr 7)
• Kilimo Fresh, a Tanzanian agrictech startup, raised $200,000 in pre-seed funding from Madica. (Apr 8)
• Hakimu, a Kenyan legal tech startup, raised $200,000 in pre-seed funding from Madica. (Apr 8)
• Biovana, a Nigerian healthtech startup, raised $200,000 in pre-seed funding from Madica. (Apr 8)

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more funding announcements. Before you go,how are women scaling impact in Africa’s tech economy? Find out more here.

The World Wide Web3

Source:

Coin Name	Current Value	Day	Month
Bitcoin	$72,014	+ 1.71%	+ 2.82%
Ether	$2,192	+ 0.76%	+ 7.62%
XRP	$1.34	+ 0.95%	– 3.10%
Solana	$83.16	+ 1.58%	– 3.91%

* Data as of 06.12 AM WAT, April 10, 2026.

Events

• The voices shaping Africa’s digital future are taking the stage. From AI and IoT to cloud, connectivity and smart infrastructure, IOT West Africa | Data Centre & Cloud Expo Africa 2026 brings together the leaders building the continent’s next digital chapter. This is where the ecosystem meets, and we’ll see you there. The event kicks off on April 28–30 at the Landmark Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos. Register here to attend.
• All roads lead to Nairobi on May 7, 2026. Gathered at the Sarit Expo Centre, senior leaders from across Africa’s fintech and payments ecosystem will gather for a day of meaningful connections, market insights, and cross-border collaboration. The focus of the Africa Fintech Live event is on driving real engagement, bringing together industry leaders and emerging innovators to spark strategic conversations that will shape the future of finance on the continent. Secure your early bird ticket now at 50% off.

• Delve into AI: South Africa chose flexibility over control in its new AI policy
• Kenya’s cyber threats surge 441% in three months as defence gap widens
• M-KOPA unlocks $22.5 million in credit in South Africa as women drive uptake

Want more of TechCabal?

Sign up for our insightful newsletters on the business and economy of tech in Africa.

• The Next Wave: futuristic analysis of the business of tech in Africa.
• Francophone Weekly by TechCabal: insider insights and analysis of Francophone’s tech ecosystem

P:S If you’re often missing TC Daily in your inbox, check your Promotions folder and move any edition of TC Daily from “Promotions” to your “Main” or “Primary” folder and TC Daily will always come to you.