Stakeholders demand six-month NIN-SIM linkage deadline extension
Temiloluwa O’Peters
Stakeholders in the telecom space have called for further extension of the National Identification Number and Subscriber Identity Module integration exercise by six months.
They noted that the eight weeks extension given by government on Tuesday would not be enough going by the number of Nigerians yet to be registered, as well as other challenges with the NIN enrolment.
Reacting to the extension, the National Coordinator, Alliance for Affordable Internet, Olusola Teniola, stated that the April 6 deadline would not be sufficient to register every single NIN.
Teniola observed that the SIM registration database at present could not represent all Nigerians, saying it would represent at most 65 to 95 million Nigerians.
Tech start-up funding surpasses $700m in Nigeria, others
Temiloluwa O’Peters
The year 2020 was a record-breaking one for African tech start-ups, with 397 companies securing $701.5m worth of investments.
According to the sixth edition of the annual African Tech Start-ups Funding Report 2020 released by Disrupt Africa, 2020 was a record year for investment into the African tech start-up ecosystem, with more start-ups raising more money from more investors than ever before.
The report found that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of startups and the total funding gathered were up substantially on the previous year, with the number of funded start-ups increasing 27.7 per cent as against 2019, and the funding total growing by 42.7 per cent.