👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Amazon wants space in Kenya

Happy midweek.

The FIFA World Cup kicks off in 37 hours, and I have already reached the stage where I’m reading research papers about footballs. This year’s Adidas match ball has deep grooves, a kind of technology that will make its flight path more predictable. Researchers who tested it in wind tunnels say long-range shots might not travel quite as far as they did with previous World Cup balls.

The ball also needs to be charged before every match because it contains a sensor that tracks touches, spin, and movement in real time. We started with a leather ball and somehow ended up with a rechargeable data-collection device that occasionally gets kicked into the top corner.

There’s tech in everything.

Speaking of football, while they’re called the “Big Four” in venture capital folklore, two of those countries are standing a little short at this year’s tournament. 

—Emmanuel

Starlink, the Elon Musk-owned satellite Internet company, arrived in Kenya in 2023, signed up more than 22,000 subscribers, became the country’s eighth-largest Internet provider, and spent over two years proving that Africans are willing to pay for satellite Internet. Amazon wants to test that theory for itself.

Competition is the name of the game: Amazon, a multinational technology company, is seeking regulatory approval to build a satellite ground station in Kenya through Amazon Leo, its satellite broadband project formerly known as Project Kuiper. The facility would serve as the link between Amazon’s satellites in orbit and Internet users in East Africa

This is bigger than a ground station: Sure, it’s great that Amazon wants to build one, but what it is really doing is positioning itself for a direct challenge to Starlink. In April, Amazon applied for a Network Facilities Provider (NFP) Tier 2 licence in Kenya, which would allow it to build and operate telecommunications infrastructure nationwide. Combined with this latest move, Amazon clearly wants a seat at the table.

The challenge? Starlink already has a head start. Beyond subscriber growth, Starlink has won customers with flexible hardware rentals and installment-payment options that lowered the barrier to entry for households and businesses.

Amazon may have a secret weapon: In March, Vodafone signed an agreement to use Amazon Leo’s satellite network to connect remote 4G and 5G mobile towers across Europe and Africa. The multinational telecoms company plans a phased expansion across Africa through its African subsidiary, Vodacom Group—the parent company of Vodafone Kenya, which holds a 55% stake in Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecom operator.

While that is not a guarantee of success, nor is it any indication that Safaricom will distribute Amazon’s satellite services, existing relationships with major telecom operators could give Amazon a useful advantage as it enters the market.

One week after raising $215 million, one of the largest disclosed investments in Africa’s electric mobility sector, Spiro, a Nairobi-based e-mobility startup, has named a new chief executive with experience building the kind of infrastructure it hopes to scale across the continent.

What happened? On Tuesday, the electric motorcycle and battery-swapping company appointed Anant Badjatya as Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He joins from Indofast Energy, a joint venture between IndianOil and SUN Mobility, where he oversaw a network of over 1,800 battery-swapping stations serving about 90,000 vehicles daily across India. Kaushik Burman, the former CEO, will now lead Spiro’s mobility services business, which handles EV deployment, rider leasing, battery subscriptions, and fleet operations. 

State of play: The hire is notable because battery-swapping, not the motorcycles themselves, is becoming the battleground for Africa’s electric mobility startups. Spiro said it has deployed over 100,000 electric motorcycles and built over 2,500 swapping stations across seven African markets. Scaling that network further will require expertise in energy infrastructure, logistics, and operations as much as vehicle sales.

The timing is no coincidence. Fresh off its $215 million raise, Spiro, which acquired UK e-bike manufacturer Coexlion in May, is entering a phase where it is trying to do two things: build e-bikes tailored for African roads and tightly control its supply chain there, and expand its distribution network for swapping proprietary battery products, giving it last-mile reach and removing adoption constraints. 

Building electric mobility businesses in Africa means solving a distribution problem, an infrastructure problem, and a financing problem all at once. Badjatya has done part of that before, albeit in a different market. India is one of the world’s most mature battery-swapping ecosystems. Africa is not.

Market leader Battery Smart operates more than 1,600 battery-swapping stations in India alone, with over 90,000 riders completing more than 100 million battery swaps. SUN Mobility operates over 620 stations. By comparison, while Spiro says it has more than 2,500 battery-swapping stations across Africa, riders have completed only 30 million swaps to date. 

Zoom out: With Badjatya’s experience, the challenge now is whether lessons from a market with thousands of charging and fuel distribution points can be adapted to one where the infrastructure still has to be built from the ground up.

A state-owned commercial bank just invested in a fintech unicorn. That’s not something you see every day.

In a statement on Monday, MNT-Halan, the Egyptian-founded fintech that became a unicorn in 2023, said it secured an undisclosed investment from Al Ahly Capital, the investment arm of the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), Egypt’s largest state-owned commercial bank. The deal lifts MNT-Halan’s valuation to $1.4 billion and marks the first closing of a broader funding round.

MNT-Halan, founded in 2018, lends to small businesses and consumers who struggle to access traditional bank credit. It also offers e-wallets, prepaid cards, and financing products through its Halan app. Since its launch, the company says it has disbursed over $15.5 billion in loans and served over 8 million customers across Egypt, Türkiye, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

State of play: With the new funding, MNT Halan said it plans to deepen its presence in Egypt and continue its expansion into new markets in the Gulf region.

Why did NBE directly back a fintech? The investment stands out because of who is making it. NBE has backed Egypt’s fintech sector before, but mostly through investment vehicles such as Nclude, a fintech-focused venture fund launched in 2022. Direct equity investments into individual startups have been far less common.

More importantly, MNT-Halan has spent years building partnerships with more than 30 Egyptian banks. Yet no commercial bank had previously taken an ownership stake in the company. Founder Mounir Nakhla called the transaction a “particularly important milestone” because it marks the first time a bank has become an equity partner in the fintech’s journey.

The shift says something about the state of Egypt’s fintech market. A few years ago, banks viewed fintechs as challengers nibbling at parts of their business. Today, Egypt’s largest bank appears willing to treat them as partners, distribution channels, and investment opportunities.

International investors helped prove that MNT-Halan could become a billion-dollar company. NBE’s investment signals something different: Egypt’s traditional financial establishment now believes fintech is a sector worth owning, not merely watching.

The Kenyan subsidiary of Uber, the ride-hailing giant, has applied to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) for a National Courier Operator licence, which would allow it to deliver parcels nationwide. 

If approved, it could push the ride-hailing giant into Kenya’s courier market, placing it in direct competition with traditional logistics companies and even the country’s state-owned postal service.

Posta’s long reinvention arc: In its heyday, Posta was how Kenyans sent letters, documents, and parcels. Then the Internet happened, and emails replaced letters, and like other postal services across the continent, letter volumes fell. According to official data, domestic letter volumes in Posta fell by 5.7% in 2025, and it shut down 125 of its 625 post offices to save running costs. 

Posta did try to reinvent itself as a logistics and parcel-delivery company. The problem is that just as it pivots towards e-commerce deliveries, a technology company with more users and drivers wants a piece of the same market.

Uber is prepared for the market: Uber already operates its food delivery arm, Uber Eats, across six cities in Kenya, which generated KES 534 million ($4.1 million) in additional revenue for restaurants in 2023. It also already operates courier services in markets like Nigeria through Uber Connect, allowing users to send packages using the same app they use to order rides. 

Uber already has drivers, routing technology, payment systems, and customers, which gives it an advantage, as many courier companies have to build those from scratch.