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AfDB Coding for Employment Program Marks Milestone with 130,000 Users Across Africa

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On International Youth Day, the African Development Bank announces the enrolment of 130,000 users in its Coding for Employment digital skills program.

The milestone comes as Coding for Employment works to equip African youth with information and communication technology, entrepreneurship and soft-skills training to compete in a digital economy.

The program’s online platforms offer in-demand technical courses such as web development, design, data science and digital marketing – for free.

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in lockdowns and school closures across the continent, the Coding for Employment platforms experienced dramatic increases in the number of users.

During a one-week period in September 2020, registrations skyrocketed by 38.5%. Through the Bank’s partnership with the Government of Nigeria to launch the Digital Nigeria eLearning platform during the pandemic, Coding for Employment has hit a combined total of 130,000 students. Registered students are achieving a course completion rate of more than 80%.

“To win the battle against poverty in Africa, we must equip our youth with digital skills that empower them for the jobs of the future,” said Martha Phiri, Director of the Bank’s Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development Department.

Students who took the online courses in the wake of Covid-19 in Africa said learning or honing digital skills helped them advance their careers.

“During the lockdown period, I taught myself MS Excel, using the Coding for Employment platform. Participating in the training not only smoothed my rough Excel skills but also gave me the platform to network and push myself,” said program graduate Hajara Ayuba in Nigeria.

“Thanks to the Coding for Employment program, I met one of the major criteria – data fluency and MS Excel skills – at my present NYSC place of primary assignment in Borno State Board of Internal Revenue Service. I was later retained in the job,” Ayuba added.

The Coding for Employment main digital training platform was launched in December 2019 in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation and Microsoft. It is accessible on mobile devices, even in low internet connectivity settings and has an affordable, easy-to-navigate, secured and private interface.

“The online training program started in tandem with the opening planned upgrade of physical Coding for Employment-branded Centers of Excellence piloted in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. The Bank aims to scale up to 130 centers across the continent in a decade.”

“The pandemic accelerated the adoption of online learning as a necessity. Coding for Employment swiftly leveraged its online digital skills platform to continue to offer a gateway for African youth to become more digitally capable,” said Hendrina Chalwe Doroba, the Bank’s Division Manager for Education and Skills Development.

Following the pilot program, Coding for Employment online courses are now available in 45 countries. Some 300 beneficiaries, like Shaawanatu Shuaibu, linked Coding for Employment to getting jobs. Shuaibu a Coding for Employment program graduate from the Gombe State Center of Excellence in Nigeria, said the course had broadened her understanding of content writing.

“I was able to organize the content of my CV, which secured me a call for an interview at Jaiz Bank Plc. My performance at the interview and fluency in communication got me posted to the Customer Service Unit of the Bank,” she added.

Coding for Employment aims to create over 9 million jobs and reach 32 million youth and women across Africa. The Coding for Employment Program is part of the Bank’s Jobs for Youth in Africa Initiative.


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FG Unveils AI Public Services Platform

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Federal government has launched GovGuideNigeria, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital platform designed to streamline access to public service information through WhatsApp and the web.

The platform consolidates information from more than 35 federal ministries and over 60 government agencies, marking a significant step in Nigeria’s drive to expand AI-enabled public infrastructure and digital government services.

According to Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation and digital economy, the initiative aims to simplify interactions with government services, particularly for underserved communities that often face challenges navigating complex public-sector systems.

Developed in collaboration with the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Meta, and Publica AI, GovGuideNigeria uses conversational AI to provide real-time responses via WhatsApp and a web interface in English, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.

Sade Dada, head of public policy at Meta, said the multilingual rollout highlights the growing use of natural language processing within African public institutions to improve digital inclusion and broaden access to services.

Ignatius Willie, chief executive of Publica AI, said the platform demonstrates how Africa’s next generation of digital public infrastructure can be developed locally using African languages.

GovGuideNigeria is intended to address longstanding challenges in Nigeria’s public information system, where citizens often struggle to access reliable guidance because of fragmented government websites, poor communication channels and the expense of travelling to physical offices.

Through AI-driven automation, users can obtain information on immigration procedures, documentation requirements, public programmes and agency-specific services through chat-based interactions.

The launch also reflects Nigeria’s broader ambition to integrate AI into digital governance, while strengthening partnerships between government agencies, global technology companies and local AI startups to modernise public service delivery.


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Elon Musk to Become First World’s Trillionaire with SpaceX Historic IPO

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Elon Musk is poised to become the world’s first trillionaire after  SpaceX, his company, confirmed plans to go public.

Elon Musk to Become First World’s Trillionaire with SpaceX Historic IPO

Elon Musk

Because Musk owns the majority of the shares, it could push his net worth over the trillion dollar mark.

The entrepreneur is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and xAI.

Musk has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025; as of May 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be $788 billion.

SpaceX has filed for a blockbuster public listing in the United States, paving the way for what could become the largest stock market debut in Wall Street history.

The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, announced plans to begin trading under the ticker symbol “SPCX” as early as next month.

The listing values SpaceX at about $1.25 trillion, with Musk’s majority ownership potentially worth more than $600 billion alone.

Combined with his existing holdings in companies including Tesla, the IPO could push Musk’s personal wealth above the $1 trillion mark.

The long-awaited filing also offered investors a rare look into SpaceX’s finances.

The company reported $18.6 billion in revenue last year but recorded a net loss of $4.9 billion. In the first quarter of this year, SpaceX generated $4.7 billion in sales while posting a $4.3 billion net loss.

Financial disclosures showed the company holds $102 billion in assets, including rockets, launch infrastructure and satellite systems, while carrying debts totalling $60.5 billion.

Despite the losses, analysts suggested investors were unlikely to be deterred given SpaceX’s dominance in commercial space launches and satellite internet services.

Ruth Foxe-Blader, managing partner at Citrine Venture Partners, described the planned flotation as “extremely exciting.”

“SpaceX is just an absolutely sprawling, enormous project with so many different selling points, and so many points that really point to the future,” she said.

SpaceX operates the Starlink satellite internet network and also owns Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.

The IPO filing revealed that xAI recently reached a major commercial agreement with rival AI company Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot.

Under the arrangement, Anthropic will reportedly pay $15 billion annually to access data centre infrastructure linked to xAI operations in the American South.

The filing also disclosed that SpaceX expects to incur more than half a billion dollars in legal costs from multiple ongoing lawsuits and regulatory disputes.

Among the cases listed were claims alleging that xAI’s chatbot Grok had been used to create sexualised deepfakes of women and girls, alongside patent infringement disputes, music copyright claims, data breach allegations and investigations into compliance with European Union content moderation rules.

Musk has previously said he plans to dissolve xAI as a standalone company and pursue his AI ambitions directly under SpaceX.

The filing came shortly after Musk lost a high-profile legal battle against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman.

Musk had accused OpenAI of abandoning its non-profit mission after shifting towards a commercial model, but a jury dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that he had waited too long to bring the claims.


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Moniepoint Boosts UK Payments Security

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African financial services platform Moniepoint has partnered with open banking software-as-a-service provider tell.money to deploy a transaction security system in the UK market.

The companies said the partnership will allow Moniepoint to implement Confirmation of Payee, an account name-checking service designed to verify recipient details before payments are processed.

The integration will be rolled out through Monieworld, Moniepoint’s UK remittance subsidiary, as part of the company’s broader European expansion strategy.

Tell.money will provide the underlying verification technology, which the companies said is intended to reduce misdirected payments and help protect users against cross-border fraud.

Ravi Jakhodia, CEO of Monieworld, said: “Our goal with Monieworld is to build financial services for Africans in the diaspora.”

He added that tell.money was selected because it manages compliance and accreditation requirements, allowing the fintech company to focus on customer service.

Moniepoint is entering a competitive UK-to-Africa remittance market that includes established providers such as Wise, WorldRemit and Remitly, as well as African fintech firms including Flutterwave’s Send App.

According to data from the World Bank’s KNOMAD programme, remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are estimated at about $620 billion annually, with digital -first platforms capturing increasing market share through open banking integrations and automated compliance systems.

The rollout reflects a broader trend of African fintech firms expanding into developed markets by adopting local regulatory and open banking standards.

Industry analysts expect diaspora-focused platforms to evolve beyond money transfers into services such as multi-currency banking, credit and investment products.


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