👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – The 50 most consequential people in African tech

Despite the news, it might not be all gloom for MultiChoice, at least in Kenya. 

The country’s pay-TV market posted a rebound in the first quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, with broadcasting subscriptions climbing 13.7% quarter-on-quarter to 1.68 million active users by the end of September 2025. 

The growth drivers: The recovery was driven largely by MultiChoice Kenya, a subsidiary of the South African pay-TV giant, whose DStv and GOtv brands recorded strong growth after a bruising period earlier in the year. GOtv led the charge in the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) segment, as subscriptions jumped by 41.2% due to flexible pricing and localised content that continues to resonate beyond urban centres. 

On the Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite segment, DStv crossed 270,000 subscribers, a 43% increase from the last quarter, helped by the return of major sports leagues, especially the English Premier League (EPL), and steady demand for live content.

Why does this matter? This growth follows a reset. Earlier declines were amplified by a change in how “active” subscriptions were counted. In the previous quarter, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) defined active subscription as accounts that had generated revenue within the last 90 days. 

This made the reported figures for DStv plummet to a low of 188,824, along with inflation pressure and repeated price hikes. The latest numbers suggest stabilisation and growth, a sign that a core base of users is sticking around despite the implementation of new price tiers in July 2025.

BasiGo, a Kenyan electric bus company, has opened a new electric vehicle fast-charging site at Shell Athi River, a key commuter and logistics corridor in the country. The site becomes BasiGo’s third charging location hosted by Vivo Energy Kenya, a pan-African retailer and distributor of fuels and lubricants, following earlier rollouts along Shell Waiyaki Way and Shell New Gatitu in Thika, and is aimed at supporting electric buses already operating on the Nairobi–Kitengela–Machakos route.

New station specs: The new station can charge up to four vehicles at once and supports multiple charging standards, making it compatible with a wide range of electric buses. The focus is speed and reliability, and reducing downtime for public service operators by making electric buses workable on tight daily schedules.

Why this matters: Charging remains a bottleneck for commercial electric vehicle (EV) adoption as buses need predictable access to power while en route. The move also places BasiGo among a growing field. Roam rolled out fast-charging depots for electric motorcycles and buses in November. On December 8, Ampersand Energy, a Tanzania-based e-mobility startup, launched a new battery-swapping expansion and is betting on fast battery swaps over plugs for two-wheelers. As more EV charging models come online in Kenya, the more the country’s EV sector starts to look more operational and infrastructure-ready.

If your crypto education came from WhatsApp broadcasts, Twitter threads, and one unlucky friend who “entered early,” Luno thinks it is time for an intervention.

The UK-based crypto firm, which operates in four African countries, has partnered with AltSchool Africa, the Nigerian edtech platform, to train 15,000 Nigerians through a fully funded beginner course called “Demystifying Crypto for Africans,” which kicks off in March 2026 and will run in three cohorts across the year.

State of play: Luno’s rationale for a consumer-facing learning programme hinges on two considerations: crypto adoption in Nigeria is high, yet understanding is uneven. Many users know how to buy and sell, but not how wallets work, how to assess risk, or how scams actually happen. It says that this gap is expensive.

Between the lines: The course is designed to last three to four weeks and focuses on practical use. Learners will interact with wallets, exchanges, stablecoins, and research tools like CoinGecko and Etherscan. Once learners complete the course and pass the assessments, they receive an AltSchool certificate.

Luno frames this as a safety play. The company says better education leads to safer participation, especially as more Nigerians use crypto for savings, remittances, and cross-border payments.

Yet there are limits. Luno is opening the course to 15,000 students, which is a small number relative to Nigeria’s crypto population, and education alone will not clean up an industry full of bad actors. But formal, structured learning is still better than guessing. At the very least, fewer people may have to learn the hard way.