E-Business
Smile Identity Raises $7m to Build KYC and Identity Verification Tools for Africa

Smile Identity, the company that enables ID verification and KYC compliance through Artificial Intelligence designed for African faces and identities, announced today that the company had secured $7 million in Series A funding.

Smile Identity Logo
Smile Identity is providing the Identity Verification, Digital KYC, User Onboarding, Document Verification, Liveness Checks, Face Verification, Anti-fraud, and Identity Data Deduplication tools powering the rapid growth and expansion of businesses and startups across Africa.
The investment was co-led by Costanoa Ventures and the pan-African venture firm, CRE Venture Capital, along with participation from LocalGlobe, Intercept Ventures, Future Africa Ventures, and Angel Investors from across Africa and around the world. Existing investors, including Khosla Impact, ValueStream Ventures, Beta Ventures, 500 Startups, and Story Ventures also participated.
The round, which marks the largest investment into an identity verification company focused on Africa, brings Smile Identity’s total funding to over $11M.
The company plans to use the new funding to improve its services, expand across more markets, add support for more ID types and hire more engineers and support staff across Africa.
In conjunction with this round, John Cowgill of Costanoa, will be joining Smile Identity’s board.
Smile Identity launched in 2017 with a mission to make it easy for Africans anywhere to quickly and easily prove their identity online, while providing startups and established enterprises with the tools and software they need to automate customer onboarding, verify identities, and prevent fraud.
Africans spend an inordinate amount of time trying to prove or verify their identities in order to gain access to financial accounts, loans, SIM cards, address proofs, and social services; and an estimated 500 million Africans have no formal identification at all.
“We believe anyone should be able to prove their identity easily, anywhere in the world and that access to a modern digital lifestyle should not depend on the origin of your ID Card or IP address,” said Mark Straub, Smile Identity’s Co-founder and CEO.
To standardize identity verification across the continent and provide a single solution for a new generation of African companies, Smile Identity works with local ID authorities and has built a platform that combines ID validation with proprietary face verification and liveness checks to support non-surveillance, consent-based access and financial inclusion.
The company performs over 1 million identity checks every month across Africa and its software is used in banking, fintech, ride sharing, worker verification, public social welfare programs, and telecommunications.
Its customers include payments companies like Paystack, Paga and Chippercash; neo-banks like Kudabank and Umba; traditional banks like Stanbic IBTC; cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Luno, and Paxful; and even supply-chain businesses like Twiga.
“Smile Identity has powered our hyper growth across Africa, accelerating our ability to acquire real users and build a great KYC user experience for our customers. With Smile Identity, we were able to automate our compliance process and reduce KYC completion time by 99%, from 2 days to 2 minutes. Within 6 weeks of turning on Smile Identity’s automated KYC solution, we catapulted to #1 in the South African app store.” Said Chippercash Co-founder and President Maijid Moujaled.
With subsidiaries, branch offices and engineers in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda and counting, Smile Identity’s growing team is made up of people from 12 countries, including 8 African nations.
E-Business
Galaxy Backbone Celebrates the Federal Government’s Paperless Civil Service Milestone

Galaxy Backbone (GBB) aligns with and celebrates the successful announcement by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation on the achievement of a Paperless Civil Service, a significant milestone in Nigeria’s public sector reform and digital transformation agenda.

The milestone was formally highlighted at a press briefing led by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, who commended Galaxy Backbone for its sustained support and contribution throughout the implementation of the programme.
GBB has played a critical role in enabling this transition by providing secure, scalable, and shared digital infrastructure that supports the digitisation of government processes across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Through the 1Government Cloud, MDAs have been empowered to migrate from paper-based workflows to digital platforms, improving efficiency, collaboration, data security, and service delivery across the Federal Civil Service.
In addition, GovMail, GBB’s secure government email platform, has strengthened official communication, enhanced records management, and reinforced cybersecurity standards—key pillars in sustaining a paperless operating environment.
Galaxy Backbone acknowledges the collective efforts of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Permanent Secretaries, Directors of ICT, consultants, partners, and dedicated public servants whose commitment and collaboration ensured the smooth delivery of this initiative.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Backbone, Prof. Ibrahim Adeyanju, was represented at the press briefing by Akintayo Bamisaye, Acting Group Head, Research, Digital Innovation and Skills Department (RDIS).
GBB describes the achievement as a strong close to 2025 and reaffirms its commitment to supporting the Federal Government in building a modern, efficient, and digitally enabled public service.
E-Business
Jumia CEO says Black Friday Signals Nigeria’s E-Commerce Maturity

At the close of 2025, Temidayo Ojo, the CEO of Jumia Nigeria, reflected on a year-end shopping season that points to the growing maturity of the country’s e-commerce market. “Black Friday is no longer a single, short-lived spike in activity,” he said.

“It has become a familiar, anticipated moment in the retail calendar, where consumers shop deliberately and with confidence.”
Preliminary KPIs for the two months ended November 30, 2025, show strong year-on-year growth in both orders and Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), with GMV growth outpacing order growth. This indicates that customers are placing fuller, more considered baskets rather than shopping in fragmented transactions. Nigeria ranked among Jumia Group’s better-performing markets, with engagement remaining steady throughout the Black Friday period rather than spiking briefly and tapering off.
A key factor behind this performance is the growing familiarity of consumers with online shopping. Customers are increasingly leveraging platform features such as saved carts, brand stores, and price comparison tools to plan purchases in advance. This trend suggests that digital commerce is becoming embedded in everyday habits rather than being viewed as a one-off event.
Ojo also highlighted the role of Jumia’s JForce network in connecting digital commerce to local communities. “Our agents are critical to ensuring that customers across Nigeria, including secondary cities and smaller communities, have access to variety, consistent pricing, and reliable delivery,” he said. “During peak periods like Black Friday, JForce agents can respond faster, serve more customers efficiently, and build stronger local relationships. This isn’t just a distribution channel—it’s a pathway to sustainable income and inclusion.”
Reflecting on the overall performance, the CEO concluded: “What we’re seeing this year-end is steady engagement across categories, stronger consumer confidence, and partners like our JForce agents benefiting from increased activity.
“It confirms that Nigeria’s e-commerce ecosystem is maturing, growing in a more structured and resilient way. As the December Holiday Sale continues, we expect these patterns of familiarity, trust, and participation to sustain momentum and drive both commerce and community impact across the country.”
E-Business
Galaxy Backbone Tops FG’s Website Performance Ranking

Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) has been ranked first overall in the 2025 Federal Government Website Performance Scorecard.

This is a landmark achievement for Nigeria’s digital economy.
The ranking, conducted by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), is the definitive benchmark for digital excellence and transparency across all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).
Professor Ibrahim Adepoju Adeyanju, managing director and CEO of Galaxy Backbone, received the award during a ceremony in Abuja.
He described the feat as a validation of the agency’s“Nigeria First”data sovereignty strategy and its relentless pursuit of service excellence.
This recognition comes as the Federal Government intensifies its push to achieve a fully paperless civil service by December 31, 2025.
GBB has been the primary architect of this transition through its 1Gov Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform, which now hosts the operations of almost all federal MDAs.
The award adds to a growing list of accolades for Galaxy Backbone in 2025, following its recent win of the “International Standard Excellence Award for Best IT Service Provider.”
As the central hub for government shared services, GBB’s performance serves as a blueprint for other agencies currently undergoing digital transformation.
With its expanded fiber-optic backbone now covering over 13 states and its secure cloud solutions, Galaxy Backbone remains the cornerstone of Nigeria’s vision to become a leading digital nation by the end of the decade.
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