👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Unicorns in public

Good morning.

AI is moving fast, and so are the questions around it. In the latest episode of Headlines by TechCabal, Eme Agbor and Muktar Oladunmade sit down with Abiodun Adetona, founder of Nigerian AI startup Decide, for a conversation about building AI from Nigeria, the future of work, and where all of this is heading. 

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Read smart insights about Francophone Africa’s tech ecosystem—weekly.

• MNT-Halan nears public listing
• High Court blocks Kenya’s stake in Vodacom deal
• SA police’s AI bodycams could breach POPIA
• Vodacom denies Safaricom has citizen database backup
• World Wide Web 3
• Opportunities

Fintech

Egyptian fintech unicorn MNT-Halan is getting ready to make its public debut

There must be something in the water that Egyptian fintechs drink, and we’re keen on finding out what it is.

Over the years, a few fintechs have gone public on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX); chief among them is Fawry, one of the country’s largest fintech companies. Now, MNT Halan, the Egyptian fintech unicorn, is eyeing a similar arrangement, but something more nuanced.

What happened? MNT-Halan has just cleared one of the biggest regulatory hurdles standing between it and an initial public offering (IPO). On Monday, the EGX approved the temporary listing of 1.6 billion shares in MNT Tech Holding for Financial Investments, the holding company for its Egyptian business. Only the Egyptian unit is going public. Its parent company, which also owns subsidiaries in Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, will remain private. The fintech’s shares will appear on the Egyptian stock exchange under the ticker “HALN.CA.”

Dear Egyptians reading TC Daily, before you start refreshing your trading app, though, this does not mean you can buy MNT-Halan shares yet. The temporary listing gives the company six months to complete the offering and meet the remaining listing requirements. If it does not, the listing lapses, although the regulator can extend the deadline.

Does this even matter? We think so, yes. MNT-Halan raised $400 million in 2023 to become a unicorn; overall, the company has raised so much funding, especially through securitisation—debt—that it’s now hard to track. Forbes estimated its total funding at $550 million. That funding has also translated into scale: it has disbursed over $15.5 billion in loans and serves over 8 million users. As of 2022, the fintech said it earned $300 million in revenue.

MNT-Halan’s public offer could be a big one. In June, Bloomberg reported that the fintech was considering an IPO that could value its Egyptian business at $900 million to $1 billion. The fintech itself was valued at $1.4 billion in a June funding round led by a National Bank of Egypt (NBE) investment arm, Al Ahly Capital.

The company has also been working with Citigroup and EFG Hermes on the potential transaction and has already started meeting investors. Its temporary listing signals that the IPO is gaining momentum.

What’s next? MNT-Halan still needs to complete the offering and satisfy the remaining regulatory requirements. But if it gets there, it could give the EGX one of its most closely watched startup listings in years, while giving investors a chance to own a piece of one of Egypt’s biggest fintech stories.

And after all the talk about African startups struggling to find exits, watching one of the continent’s biggest fintechs—backed by names such as Chimera Investments, Lorax, and DFIs like the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—make the jump from unicorn to public company should be pretty interesting.

Zoom out: Investors who own at least 10% when MNT-Halan lists will have to keep 51% of their stake for at least two financial years.

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M&A

Kenyan High Court blocks Vodacom’s $2.1 billion Safaricom deal

In July, we reported that Vodacom, one of Africa’s largest telecom companies, had completed the R35 billion ($2.1 billion) acquisition of an additional 20% stake in M-PESA operator Safaricom, a deal it had been chasing since December 2025. That deal gave Vodacom a 55% stake, giving it majority control.

However, Kenya has other plans.

On Tuesday, Kenya’s High Court ruled that the government’s sale of a 15% stake in Safaricom to Vodacom was unconstitutional and ordered the stake to be returned to the state. That could leave Kenya, already short on cash, having to refund about $1.9 billion it has received from the deal. 

Explain like I’m new here: If you’re wondering how we got here, this deal has been a saga. Vodacom spent months clearing competition reviews and fighting a court order that had temporarily stopped the transaction. The Court of Appeal lifted that order in June, allowing the deal to close. 

Now, the High Court has thrown another spanner in the works.

Why does this matter? Safaricom is not some random company Kenya can easily replace. It is East Africa’s biggest mobile network and one of the continent’s biggest fintech businesses, thanks to M-PESA. In the year ended March 2025, it earned KES 388.7 billion ($3 billion) in revenue and KES 69.8 billion ($540 million) in profit.

Between the lines: Vodacom now owns 55% of Safaricom, after buying an additional 20% from the Kenyan government and Vodafone International. But the court has ordered the 15% government stake to be returned to Kenya, which could leave Vodacom with its original 40% stake if the ruling survives the appeal. 

Vodacom said it will appeal the decision and seek to pause the order while the case is heard. For now, the company still controls Safaricom, but that control is hanging on the outcome of another court battle. Messy.

In an interesting turn, the fight is now shifting to what happens to the shares, the $1.9 billion Kenya has already received, and whether Vodacom can keep control of Safaricom. 

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Emerging Tech

South African police want AI face-recognition bodycams. The data regulator says not so fast

Last week, we discussed the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) grand plan: it wants to run bodycams. The law enforcement agency wants AI-powered bodycams that can match faces against a database. SAPS argues that the technology could improve accountability and preserve evidence during encounters with the public. 

A little hiccup: But the Information Regulator has told local publication TechCentral that some of the processes involved in this request may violate South Africa’s consumer protection act, the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). 

Explain like I’m new here: On September 10, the State IT Agency (SITA) published a tender for a three-year contract covering body-worn cameras, vehicle dashboard cameras, and the software that manages them. 

SAPS is not new to bodycams. It has been procuring and rolling out body-worn cameras as part of its technology upgrade, including a 2024/25 plan to distribute 100 body-worn and dashboard cameras. Its new plan goes a step further: the police want bodycams that can recognise faces and connect to security platforms. 

And facial recognition is not new to SAPS either. The police rolled out facial-recognition cameras through its National Population Information System in 2017. What is new here is putting that capability on cameras worn by officers as they move around and interact with people. 

So, what does POPIA have to do with your face? Quite a lot. POPIA classifies biometric information as special personal information, giving it stronger protection than ordinary personal data. Section 26 generally prohibits processing it unless one of the exceptions in Section 27 applies, including certain cases involving consent, legal rights or obligations, or public interest.

The problem is that SAPS’s tender does not spell out what the facial-recognition feature would actually do when an officer points the camera at someone.

And this is where things get interesting. A normal bodycam records an encounter. Add facial recognition, and the camera can potentially identify the people it records, too. SAPS says its wider technology push is about improving officer safety, situational awareness, accountability, and the use of evidence. Those are reasonable goals. But a bodycam that can identify people raises a different question: who gets identified, what happens to that biometric data, and how long does SAPS keep it?

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Telecoms

Vodacom denies Safaricom keeps a backup of Kenya’s citizen database

Local South African publication MyBroadband reported on Tuesday that Safaricom, which operates M-PESA and is partly owned by Vodacom, had been accused of keeping a “shadow” copy of Kenya’s national citizen registry to verify customers when the government’s system goes down. 

What happened? Vodacom, one of Africa’s largest telecom companies, faced questions from MyBroadband over allegations that Safaricom maintained a “shadow” copy of Kenya’s national citizen database. Vodacom referred the questions to Safaricom, which denied the allegations. 

Explain like I’m new here: Kenya’s government has a National Population Data Management system that holds identity information about people in the country. Public and private organisations can use it to verify someone’s identity. It also supports electronic know-your-customer (eKYC), the process of checking that a customer is who they say they are when signing up for a financial or telecom service. Safaricom said it doesn’t download and store that database. 

Instead, it uses a government-provided application programming interface (API). Safaricom can send a customer’s details to the government system for verification and receive a response, without taking the government’s entire database.

Why is the allegation serious? The allegation suggests that Safaricom could have its own copy of the government’s identity database to fall back on when the official verification system is unavailable. That is an allegation, not something the report establishes as fact. But if such a backup existed, it would mean a private company was holding a duplicate of one of the country’s most sensitive databases.

Owning the copy would raise questions about who could access it and who would be responsible if it was leaked or breached. Right now, there is an allegation and a denial, and no evidence that a secret backup database exists.

CRYPTO TRACKER

The World Wide Web3

Source:

Coin Name

Current Value

Day

Month

– 0.08%

+ 22.90%

– 0.85%

+ 32.45%

+ 0.73%

+ 21.12%

– 0.18%

+ 33.82%

* Data as of 06.30 AM WAT, September 16, 2026.

Opportunities

• The Citi Foundation is offering $500,000 grants to 50 organisations that help low-income young people build AI and other job skills. The grants can support programmes that teach skills such as prompt engineering and digital content creation, help young people find jobs, provide access to devices and software, or add AI tools to existing employment programmes. Applications close on October 6, 2026, at 5 p.m. Lagos time. Apply here.

• Francophone Africa’s fintech boom solved access, not financial inclusion
• Terrahex wants to build Bitcoin mines around Nigeria’s stranded power
• The picture in her head: How this blind creator teaches AI to be her eyes
• Where in the world is the iPhone cheapest?

Written by: Emmanuel Nwosu and Yemi Kareem

Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade

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