Africa: Technology

South Africa's buy-now-pay-later sector faces heightened regulatory scrutiny as the Reserve Bank flags potential household financial stress risks. As BNPL products blur the lines between payment innovation and consumer credit, the debate centers on whether current regulatory frameworks adequately address affordability assessments, bureau reporting, and consumer protection in this rapidly growing market.

Digital lending in Nigeria has revolutionized access to finance through mobile platforms offering instant unsecured loans, but this rapid growth has sparked intense debate over pricing practices and consumer protection. As regulators scrutinize high interest rates, hidden fees, and complex terms, lenders defend their models as necessary responses to elevated credit risk and operational costs. The central question remains: how can Nigeria balance innovation-driven financial inclusion with meaningful safeguar

South Africa's National Treasury and SARB have released draft Capital Flow Management Regulations that would fundamentally reshape how cross-border capital flows are regulated, with particular focus on crypto assets. The proposed framework raises critical questions about implementation detail, proportionality, and whether the broad provisions align with the stated policy objective of moving toward a more positive-bias system with fewer pre-approvals and greater reliance on reporting.

Nigerian technology businesses face a critical challenge in AI governance: data poisoning attacks that embed harmful patterns during model training, before traditional guardrails can detect them. This analysis examines how adversarial manipulation of training data creates legal, cybersecurity, and procurement risks that existing controls may miss. Understanding where poisoning enters the AI pipeline and how Nigerian law applies to these threats is essential for organizations deploying AI systems.

Digital lending in Nigeria has revolutionized access to finance through mobile platforms offering instant unsecured loans, but this rapid growth has sparked intense debate over pricing practices and consumer protection. As regulators scrutinize high interest rates, hidden fees, and complex terms, lenders defend their models as necessary responses to elevated credit risk and operational costs. The central question remains: how can Nigeria balance innovation-driven financial inclusion with meaningful safeguar

In today's digital economy, data has emerged as one of the most valuable corporate assets. Businesses routinely collect, process, store, and transfer vast amounts of personal information relating to customers, employees, contractors, and other stakeholders. While corporate governance discussions have focused on financial performance, regulatory compliance, board effectiveness, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations, data protection has often been treated as a purely technical or operational concern.

When actress Anita Joseph used AI to swap her face onto content creator Caramel Plug's birthday photograph, it sparked a viral controversy that exposed critical gaps in how Nigeria's creative industry understands copyright ownership. Under the Copyright Act 2022, the photographer—not the subject—typically owns the image, while AI-generated derivatives exist in a legal gray zone that may leave no one with enforceable rights.

Agentic AI systems operate autonomously, making decisions and processing data in ways users cannot predict or control. This creates a fundamental mismatch between existing data-protection frameworks built on notice-and-choice principles and the reality of how these systems collect, infer, and share personal information. The article examines whether current consent models, controller definitions, and liability frameworks can adequately govern AI agents that independently chain data sources

From national legislations to sector regulations, Nigeria is building a layered approach to internet governance. Nigeria's technology regulation has, over the past few years, undergone a quiet but consequential transformation.