👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Maziv moves in with Vodacom

A deal nearly four years in the making finally received a green light yesterday. That is about as long as it took to lay the 15,000 km undersea cable stretching across the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Mediterranean.

Vodacom has received approval to acquire a co-controlling stake in Maziv, the company behind Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa. The decision follows three and a half years of negotiations, court battles, and regulatory review, with authorities attaching strict conditions to address competition concerns in fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fixed-wireless services.

Who stands to gain? Consumers could see faster fibre rollout in underserved areas, funded by billions in new investment. 

The deal requires Maziv to keep its fibre network open for use by smaller internet providers. This means they can offer services without having to build their own cables, which helps keep broadband prices competitive. As part of the deal, Maziv must also give free fibre connections to public libraries, clinics, and police stations.

Between the lines: The merger could become a reference point for future telecom transactions in South Africa. Regulators have set conditions that include capital spending targets, affordable pricing commitments, and governance rules to limit anti-competitive bundling between Vodacom and the soon-to-be-acquired Maziv. These requirements could guide how other big industry deals are assessed in the future.

Zoom out: Bundling Vodacom’s mobile reach with Maziv’s fibre dominance could make it easier for customers to get mobile and home internet from one provider. But this play will concentrate market power, so regulators plan to keep a close watch.

Kenya’s banking sector is attracting interest from the west and the south. It must be doing something right—but what is it?

On August 13, Bloomberg reported that FirstRand Bank, South Africa’s second-largest commercial bank with R2.3 trillion ($131.32 billion) in assets, is eyeing a Kenyan entry. This comes amid interest from Nigerian tier-1 bank, Zenith, which is also planning to make a splash in the country.

Why the interest in Kenya? The country’s banking sector is undergoing a recapitalisation exercise. In February, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) raised minimum bank capital tenfold to KES 10 billion ($77 million). Only 14 of 39 banks are expected to meet the new threshold, according to the CBK, leaving the rest to merge, get acquired, or face licence downgrades.

Foreign banks have sniffed this opportunity. On July 1, Kenya lifted a ten-year moratorium on new banking licences, allowing foreign banks to set up brand new operations—not just buy into existing ones. This “open door” policy is especially attractive for foreign lenders eyeing SME and retail banking, a contrast to Nigeria’s recapitalising sector, where large indigenous players dominate and new foreign entrants face stringent capital requirements.

In Nigeria, most foreign interest is limited to acquiring stakes; Citibank Nigeria and Standard Chartered are the only foreign banks with commercial banking licences, with Citibank focusing on servicing corporates, multinationals, governments, and institutional clients.

Here’s FirstRand’s CEO, Mary Vilakazi: “We’d like to go to Kenya. They have increased capital requirements significantly, and not even because of Basel III, but just because that’s what you can do when you want to drive consolidation, so hopefully we’ve got an opportunity there.”

The big picture: A FirstRand entry into Kenya will increase competition with rival Standard Chartered Bank, South Africa’s largest bank by assets, which already operates in the country.

Ajua, a Kenya-based customer experience (CX) startup, has merged with Rate My Service (RMS), a local firm that develops tools for businesses to track and improve customer and staff interactions. 

So what? The deal highlights a rising trend among Kenyan tech companies to consolidate capacities and expand regionally amid growing competition from local and international customer experience platforms. Ajua and RMS face competition from rivals like Africa’s Talking and Emalify, which also offer customer engagement platforms. The merger between both startups will help combine tools and client bases that will position the entity to expand into more East, West, and Southern African markets while maintaining its hold on Kenya’s CX market. 

State of play:  Ajua’s CEO, Nyasha Mutsekwa, will retain his role as the CEO of the newly formed entity. Rate My Service’s CEO, Ashkay Shah, will become the CTO of the newly formed entity. He will lead the product development. The combined company now claims to hold 80% of Kenya’s customer experience market. Ajua brings its established client base and experience across multiple African markets to the new entity. It also brings its mobile money integration features, while RMS will bring its real-time feedback and analytics tool to the new company. 

Zoom out: Merger and acquisitions (M&A) are becoming a growth strategy for established companies on the continent seeking to expand their market share, technology, and talent pool. For the first half of the year, the ecosystem saw the highest number of M&A deals on record. This is a signal of a maturing market where companies need to join forces to ensure their sustained survival