Catching up with African Tech: June #2
This week: Bamboo relaunches remittance app with new name, Misan, Awadoc now serves 20,000 users in less than a month, teenagers will use less of instagram and Wecod receives funding from Google.org.
👋🏾 Hello, everyone. This is Sadie, and it is the weekly digest with Vizible. Let’s go through a roundup of all the important events that happened throughout the week in the African tech ecosystem, beyond the collective side eye at the iOS 26 drop.
Ready?
Time to dive in!
Product Launches And Updates
Bamboo’s remittance app, formerly Coins by Bamboo, is now Misan by Bamboo. The fintech has an Canadian MSB (Money Service Business) approval and is aimed at Nigerians looking to send money from Canada back home. The good news is, it is free, fast and frictionless and also has direct donation integration with dependable charities like WARIF and Chess 2 Slums. Misan by Bamboo will enter into other markets soon, like the UK and the US.
Awadoc records impressive numbers, one month after launch, Awadoc hit 20,000 users. AwaDoc strips away healthcare barriers with a blend of smart AI and familiar interface . Whether diagnosing a fever or nudging toward a doctor, the service proves that sophisticated virtual healthcare doesn’t need fancy apps, just a WhatsApp message. This rapid adoption highlights a growing appetite for accessible, user-centric health tech across Africa.
Instagram is really committed to user’s safety, it seems. Instagram’s global roll out of Teen Accounts has landed in Nigeria. It introduces a suite of safety-first features aimed at users under 18. Highlights include automatic private-account settings, restrictions on DMs from non-connections, hidden offensive comments, and a “sleep mode” that mutes notifications from 10 pm to 7 am — plus daily 60‑minute usage reminders. Under-16s need their parents to relax these limits, and even 16–17 year-olds must go through oversight to change settings.
Egyptian Fintech Pasky has launched a new payment service called “Pay by Bank”. This is a new solution that allows direct account-to-account payments and gives banks, merchants, and individual users access to bypass legacy payment routes and benefit from faster, yet cheaper and secure transactions.
Fundraising In The African Tech Ecosystem This Week
I love hearing great news from Senegal. Senegal remains one of my favorite west African countries, the landscape, the beaches, the jollof? Well, Senegal’s health tech space just got a major upgrade. Senegalese Moustapha Cissé owned AI startup KERA health platforms, has secured a US $10 million equity investment from the IFC. The deal will support KERA’s mission to digitize and connect fragmented health data, from EHRs and lab results to pharmacy records and insurance, empowering clinicians and patients alike with smarter insights.
South African Agri-tech startup, Nile, focused on simplifying produce trading for farmers has raised US$11.3 million in fresh funding to expand its operations across Southern Africa. This fresh funding round was led by the Cathay Africinvest Fund with additional backing from FMO, the Dutch development bank and eiting investor, Platform Investment Partners.
Product Spotlight: Blumefy
Blumefy is the all-in-one platform African migrants need to go when they need to navigate the complexities of global migration. Blumefy offers tools and services that help simplify the process of migrating abroad, whether for work, study, or other opportunities. Blumefy offers seamless access to visa-sponsored job listings, expert immigration guidance, and even financial tools or services to send and receive money and pay bills. You can read more about Blumefy here.
Some Worthy News This Week
Say bonjour to binge mode across 24 Sub-Saharan African countries; CANAL+ and Netflix just extended their partnership from Europe to Africa, marking a game-changing move for the region’s entertainment landscape. Starting July, CANAL+ subscribers in French-speaking African countries will be able to access Netflix directly through their CANAL+ subscriptions. CANAL+ already delivers over 400 live channels (28 made just for African audiences), but this move cements its rep as the ultimate content aggregator . This is Netflix’s first regional operator partnership in Africa, riding on CANAL+’s wide footprint to deepen access and reach. From Squid Game to King of Boys, viewers will no longer have to choose between local and global, they can now stream both, seamlessly.
12,000 learners. 2 countries. One big leap for AI literacy in Africa. Google.org is backing South African tech academy WeThinkCode with a $2M grant to roll out an ambitious AI skills program across South Africa and Kenya. Running through 2026, the program splits into two tracks: one for aspiring software engineers, and another for non-tech workers across sectors like health, law, and education, because why should AI mastery be just for coders?
WeThinkCode, known for its tuition-free, aptitude-based training, is aimed squarely at young people from underserved backgrounds. As the global job market evolves, Africa’s talent is getting ready, not just to participate, but to lead.
Opportunities: Fellowships, Programs and Accelerators
D‑Prize Global Competition is now open for applications until June 29. This year’s contest is offering grants up to US $20,000 to early-stage startups that aim to tackle extreme poverty in areas like health, water, agriculture, livelihoods, energy, public services, and education. Successful applicants will deploy their pilot projects in poverty-stricken regions worldwide, gaining not just funding, but global support to scale real-world solutions. If your startup is already tackling critical challenges, from clean water delivery to digital education tools, then you should apply .
Musings
What Exactly will be the next leap for iOS?
Apple skipped launching iOS 19 and went 7 steps higher, with iOS 26, and it has a whole new interface, called Liquid Glass, with transparent layers and shape shifting controls, the redesign also aligns all updates across all Apple devices. iOS 26 will be compatible with most recent and slightly older iPhones, including the iPhone SE 2nd generation launched in 2020.
But many African users have expressed dissatisfaction with the new software update and some users have taken to social platforms like X to ask questions like:
Well… has Apple’s innovation plateaued? While many hardware and core processing upgrades may not be extravagantly visible, Apple has undertaken serious updates and refinements. Over the years, Apple’s updates haven’t always screamed innovation, no foldable, no mind-blowing reveals, but that doesn’t mean nothing’s changed. Under the hood, the iPhone has gotten faster, cooler, and smarter.
Each upgrade has refined thermal efficiency, power management, security architecture, and device longevity. Face ID now works from more angles, apps launch in milliseconds, and battery optimization is less guesswork, more algorithm. iPhones from 2020 (like the SE 2nd Gen) are still getting support because that’s how future-proofed the ecosystem quietly became.
So while iOS 26 may not feel revolutionary at first glance, it’s part of a long game, polishing the machine until it feels invisible.
Innovation doesn't exactly have to be loud or mind-blowing.
So… is Apple’s innovation now just aesthetic? Has functionality taken a backseat? Or are we just collectively over it?
Lemme know what you think in the comments 👀
Signing Out:
So guys, this is where I place my anchor. The ship is still running, but we will set sail again next week. Can't wait to see you again, my vizibodies.
Ciao 🤸🏾♀️