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Lagos is the commercial capital of Nigeria. This is because of its massive population which makes an ideal market for startups to scale. Bike-hailing companies came into the picture offering a cheaper way to beat the notorious Lagos traffic. Also offering safer alternatives to traditional commercial motorcycles (popularly known as Okadas). But for some time now, ride-hailing companies have had a series of tussles and faced bottlenecks from regulatory authorities. For instance, in July, the authorities proposed regulations that would compel bike-hailing companies to pay an annual licensing fee of N25 million ($70,000) per 1000 bikes....

As Winston Churchill puts it “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” Before I (and the entire TechPost team) set out to burn midnight oil and light sabers in rewriting the African story marred by poverty porn, bad publicity and biased international media coverage, I looked upon the already established whistle-blowing pan-Africanists. These were the new breed of savvy youth who were using the power of new media to bridge the disparity overtly set by the hugely biased western media....

A global fuel crisis saw fuel prices steadily increase in Uganda. This was worsened after a fuel shortage sent prices skyrocketing, as hundreds of trucks were held up at the border with Kenya. Ride-hailing app, SafeBoda brought some relief to motorists by offering discounts for fuel at selected fuel stations as long as you paid using SafeBoda’s wallet. How SafeBoda’s fuel discount works Visit any of the fuel stations offering discounts on SafeBoda....

If Spotify is your go-to platform to stream music, it might interest you to know that you can enable the car mode feature on Spotify to make it easy to interact with your Spotify app while you drive around town. You get larger icons in the Home view and you can easily tap the playing bar at the bottom of the screen. The feature essentially allows you to tailor your app experience for your car....

The Chinese government has announced a new timeframe which will see the country migrate from Windows to Linux-based operating system. The time frame consists of 15% of government computers being switched to Linux per year according to opensource news site themukt.com. The site reports that a report by Ni Guangnan outlining the transition, won government approval and by 2020 the Chinese Government’s transition to Linux should be complete. This developments comes with no surprise at all considering that earlier this year the Chinese government officially banned Windows 8 from use on all government computers citing security concerns....

Shopify Shopify is a dedicated web platform that has been designed to helps you build your online ecommerce store to your taste. It provides different templates that customers can choose from which meets their business branding requirements. Currently, Shopify powers over 600,000 online stores. One major benefit of using Shopify is that users without any design, technical or coding skills can create a store to their taste. Also, Shopify allows users to edit the HTML and CSS of their website, this means that users with coding skills can customize their stores better....

Previously, we reported Google’s intent to notify users of mobile subscription scams through its next update. This new update, Chrome 71, is finally out with the earlier said feature and other security features such as Autoplay audio blocking & filtering of abusive web experiences. Asides these features, the Chrome 71 includes fixes to as much as 43 security vulnerabilities present on the browser’s previous edition, Chrome 70. Well, here’s a look at the three new security features:...

Data bundles. We love them and we hate them too. We love data bundles because they give you quick and fast access to the internet on the go when and where you need it. Like when you have to do that live-tweeting gig at an event, post to instagram or quickly reply an email. But when you want to stream movies and shows on Netflix or Watch live games or take a Skype call, bundles just don’t cut it....

Say, you bought airtime worth UGX 500, the retailer will charge you UGX 100 extra.The more airtime you buy, the higher the topup is, believe it or not. Most affected are people living in the countryside. Being Uganda, we wouldn’t be surprised if this trend catches fire until underlying issues are finally resolved. How Airtime scratchcards are distributed Before we continue, let us explain the distribution chain for airtime scratchcards. Telecoms send PIN data in electronic form to Card Printers....

The average size of smartphones has leveled at around 5 inches for some time now. Well that is according research by this guy at least. Furthermore, according to some tree huggers, approximately 80,000 to 160,000 trees are cut down daily worldwide many of which end up as paperbacks. While only ardent book readers understand that heavenly smell of books, the times are changing fast. Should we cut down forests just to inhale the books literally and figuratively?...

SuperSport , DStv’s sporting lineup, has launched a new app that has been designed to provide users with a more exciting experience and to make content discovery easier. Relating it to the DStv Now app, all the standards like live scoring, fixtures, results, tables, news and short-form video highlights still available, but the navigation is being refined. The major difference is that SuperSport’s live channel streaming is hosted at the DStv Now app, ensuring the breadth of DStv’s channel offerings are contained at a single destination....

NITA-U launched the eCitizen portal, a one-stop online centre for Government online services. Its main objective is to enhance Government service delivery to citizens, non-citizens, businesses and to Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). The portal has been designed to aggregate all Government services which are offered online and present them on a single portal. In future, the portal will enable citizens to apply for government services and monitor progress of their applications online with ease....

Blockchain can be perceived by many as being revolutionary. It can also seem a little too complicated and a hard topic to grasp. However, you should not be afraid of learning its fundamentals or getting its concepts. You might have heard of “ Bitcoin “. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that uses blockchain as its underlying technology. Today, there are thousands of cryptocurrencies with some sitting on the same blockchain system....

Farmcrowdy, since it was launched has connected thousands of small scale farmers across Nigeria with access to finance sourced from individuals and corporates via its online platform. The startup has now decided to branch out into eCommerce with the launch of Farmcrowdy Foods, an online platform that will allow users to buy fresh food directly from farmers. The eCommerce space seems to be a lucrative one, as we are seeing more startups in Nigeria testing the waters — Flutterwave’s recent online store launch comes to mind....

The 3rd annual Community innovation awards by Orange Uganda held on 8th August rewarded innovative students for the mobile applications they developed for social good under health, agriculture and education categories. This year’s challenge attracted 72 entries from which 20 made it to the final round. With a mandate to fulfill a corporate social responsibility, Orange Uganda partnered with various organisations such as; Huawei as a technology partner, Vision Group as media partner, College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology as academic partner and CEOSummit as training and mentoring partner....

Perhaps you haven’t yet noticed but one of Uganda’s leading online breaking news website silently rolled out a redesign at the end of last month (July). In a bid to stand out of the quickly crowding online publishing sphere, Chimpreports has repackaged its content in a complete redesign. The state of web design in Africa, of recent, has been mostly abysmal. For example the site of Al-Ahram, Egypt’s largest daily newspaper, looks like it was designed in 1996....

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Live and Apple’s AirPods Pro are two of the latest and most-advanced true-wireless earbuds in the market today. And I think the most interesting things about both earbuds is that they both take fundamentally different design approaches, redefining how an earbud should look. This surely leaves a lot of people wondering which earbuds are better and is the right one for them. In this post, we will show you how the new Galaxy Buds Live compares to the AirPods Pro....

The first devices with support of WiFi 6(802.11ax) the next WiFi standard are now starting to trickle into the market starting with the newly released Samsung Galaxy S10. The Galaxy S10 specifically the S10+ has been one the most anticipated phones in 2019 thanks to its long tail of impressive specs such as whooping 12GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, Wireless powershare, support for upto 5 cameras and ofcourse WiFi 6 support....

MTN Uganda’s 4G LTE MiFi has got us excited for a number reasons. Good and valid reasons that if you are an ardent internet user like ourselves will agree to. For starters, the dark days of the USB dongle or modem are finally behind us. Yes we are well aware that the USB dongle was at one time our only fast gateway to the internet — and we are grateful to our old buddy for being light and cheap to buy....

I watched Watched i/o yesterday. There was nothing splashy or cool to show expectant devs except to go through the motions; Android, Google cloud, Smart assistant and VR/AR. AI/ML I was probably most impressed about Google’s advances in compute infrastructure particularly to support it’s AI-first ambitions. Google’s biggest push has been it’s Assistant integrated in products such as Google Home, Google Keyboard etc. It uses AI/ML to make witty suggestions and make your life slightly easier....