Telecom
Tizeti Roars with NeXTGEN Technologies for Affordable Unlimited Internet in Africa
How Tizeti is solving problem of affordable unlimited internet in Africa
Kendall Ananyi, CEO of Tizeti
In today’s digital ecosystem, telecommunication has become the foundation for businesses, governments, communities, and families to seamlessly connect and share information.
Unfortunately, access to the internet is still patchy across the African continent. Only 43% of Africa is on the internet, which is approximately 590 million of the population of 1.37 Billion.
Nevertheless, the last decade has seen great strides in improving telecommunications in the region.
Nigeria in particular is one of Africa’s largest telecom markets, benefiting from being the second largest economy on the continent.
Today, the country with population of 211.4 million has the highest number of users at 154 million and 73% internet penetration, according to Internet World Stats, December 2020
One company really positioned to disrupt this market is Tizeti launched7 years ago. Yes. Tizeti came on stream at the time many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are dead or dying.
The ISP and has discreetly leveraged the large wireless capacity available with Wi-fi and plummeting cost of solar panels to create a low CAPEX/OPEX network of owned & operated towers to offer disruptive, customer-friendly pricing for unlimited internet service right across Africa.
Tizeti NeXTGEN
The maiden Tizeti NeXTGEN conference held in Lagos last week; from start to end every minute spent was gained. We learned a lot of things the company has engaged in to address the perennial issue of Internet as fundamental human right; Openess, Accessibility, Multi-stakeholder engagements/participation and Cross-cutting indicators that underpin the evolution, growth and development of Internet in West Africa in line with the 38th UNESCO General Conference of November 2015 endorsed Universality of the internet dubbed ROAM-X.
The conference was like salt to a chef as Tizeti, a fast-growing wireless Internet service provider in West Africa, demonstrated intent to widen the broadband envelope with more robust internet plans, expanding coverage, especially in Nigeria and Ghana
Truly, anybody can provide data capped Internet, but providing unlimited internet is difficult, and then doing it in an affordable way that’s 30 to 50% cheaper than data capped plans is difficult. This is where Tizeti’s wizardry comes to play.
The company also cares about the environment; “climate change is real and that informed part of our operations with the solar power towers”, said Kendall Ananyi, the CEO of Tizeti. “And the good thing is when we are operating our towers we’re shifting away from the main industry, which has basically focused on colocation in the last couple of years, even though there is a telecom infrastructure deficit in Africa”.
Now, the team have figured out how to achieve this with their proprietary technology that allows them to do it with low CAPEX.
Interestingly, Kendall and his team are doing this with the four consumer-focused brands, namely; Wifi.com.ng, that focuses on the mid-market, small businesses, and residential customers, at the bottom end of the market. They have partnership with Facebook Express Wifi that provides very low cost internet data plans and also provides additional income for the retailers.
Tizeti also has Voice product, which is actually three things in one; it’s an app that gives you unlimited calls, it’s a platform for managing the calls, and it also has a set of APIs for developers to extend the features.
In 2019, Tizeti expanded into Ghana, with Ghanawifi.com, and in six months, “if you Google unlimited internet in Ghana, Ghanawifi is at the top of the Google rank”. Did you just wink a smile? Yeah, the guys deserve some accolades.
“The market for unlimited internet is huge. Just in Nigeria alone, which is the most populated country in Africa, you have two states that are both 10 million in population and about six states where you have 6 to 10 million, and we’re just only in four states, and the population has grown”, Kendall said.
In the last one year, population has grown 2.6%, mobile phone usage has grown 10%, but the internet usage due to the pandemic and the new normal, has grown 22%.
Tizeti’s journey
The company was launched formally to the public in 2014, as Wifi.com.ng. The team bootstrapped with no capital investment or any investors and got to $1 million revenue rate and had about 5000 customers, and then went through Y Combinator; the prestigious accelerator that funded companies like Paystack and Flutterwave. “We then, on the back of the Y Combinator demo day raised a seed round of $2.1 million, which was the largest announced seed round at that time”, Kendall recalled as this marked a big turn-around for Tizeti.
Later that year Express Wifi was launched to target the bottom of the market, which makes sense because as a ‘sachet economy’, you can’t build a large business in Africa by serving only the mid-market. The next year with the seed round, Tizeti’s revenue tripled, before the team consulted and then raised a Series A of $3 million bringing total raised to $5.1 million.
They also grew from 5000 users to 200,000 registered users in a year.
And in the next year, because they’re expanding so much the team secured LTE spectrum and launched the ever super LTE network in multiple States (in Nigeria) and then moved on to set up Ghanawifi. That year, the user base grew to 1.8 million users, and by this year (2021) they have reached 2 million users.
The amazing thing here at they’ve done this with a 100% Nigerian staff; “there is no expatriate in Tizeti”, the CEO said confidently.
Tizeti’s Metrics
Tizeti’s metrics speak for itself; they have 10,000 voice lines, 2 million users. And just last week, they delivered 180,000GB a day, which is 180 terabytes.
Last year, the team were clinking glasses in celebration of 100 terabytes which took them six years to get to achieve. But with the pandemic and new normal, they have almost doubled that.
To put it in perspective, 180 terabytes is a lot with four States.
Tizeti and partners
Like they say, “If you want to go far, go alone, but if you want to go farther, go together”, Tizeti’s coasts have obviously enlarged thanks to the great partnerships.
For a start, they are backed by Y Combinator and also received backing by WTI. They also backed by social capital which led the SPAC revolution in the last one year. In Ghana, Tizeti partners with CSquared to provide fiberto its towers.
“We also have integrated with payment providers; we are integrated with Paystack, we are integrated with Quickteller, Remita, and across Africa with Flutterwave. We are banked in Nigeria and Ghana with Zenith and also in Nigeria with that same brand. And we are audited in Nigeria and Ghana by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)”, the CEO explained.
How Tizeti plans to expand
Tizeti plans to expand across Africa using Venture Capital model. How? So, in a bid to enable more Africans to take advantage of digital offerings in a new world defined by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company announced its partnership with a $5 million venture fund focused on African startups – ISPs – with an aim of expanding internet access across Africa.
According to Ifeanyi Okonkwo, the company’s chief operating officer, the company will leverage its proprietary OS technology, global partnerships with equipment vendors, submarine cable companies, payment providers, and Venture firms to provide the resources for these startup ISPs to accelerate the availability of unlimited internet across the continent.
Successful startups will participate in a 3-months programme with at Tizeti’s location in Nigeria or Ghana where they are expected to gain the knowledge and expertise to rapidly launch affordable internet services in their respective countries.
Recall the playbook developed for Ghana made Tizeti number one (in Google ranks), and will now expand across Africa, aggressively. Then, obviously, the company is one of the first few startups to have hit a million users a long time ago, and with that, obviously, the customer-care service has to pick up.
Kendall and his team demonstrated great understanding of the need to care and carry customers along through the deployment of next generation type of customer service – a smart, interactive voice response system.
They also introduced a different type of one time passwords to SMS Pin using voice.
One of the most intriguing sessions was Tizeti’s demo of the next generation WiFi. This is an ISP that has successfully deployed both the Wi Fi and LTE networks.
During the session participants had a glimpse of what the next generation of WiFi looks like. It was mind blowing see Tizeti demonstrate this technology.
Moving on, they also introduced two partnerships with two top FinTech startups – Aella Pay and Kudi.
So, Tizeti is expanding within Africa; and within Nigeria, they’ve been in four States and in the next quarter, they’re going to 10 States and 14 cities, taking its affordable, unlimited internet to those cities.
“We are expanding our unlimited internet plans, currently available in cities in Lagos, Ogun, Rivers and Edo States, to Abuja, Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano, Warri/Asaba, Eket/Uyo, Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, and Calabar. We are building brand-new, solar-powered, 4G-capable towers in these cities and leveraging expansive fiber-networks built by some of our partners, to enable us to roll out our low-cost broadband service, and bring millions of people online, who can now take advantage of the life-changing socio-economic opportunities that access to the Internet provides,” Kendall said. And you can sign up now at https://wifi.com.ng/presignup.
From the foregoing, for many countries in Africa, there is still a huge digital divide. Tizeti is playing a significant role in addressing this digital infrastructure deficit with innovative technology and capabilities, to improve development outcomes for millions of people, with better outcomes for employment, education, family and social life, and access to information.
After nearly 30 years on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE), Econet Wireless, the country’s biggest technology company, is preparing to leave the bourse and move its property and infrastructure assets to the US dollar-based Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX).
Econet plans to spin off its towers, property and power installations into a new company, Econet InfraCo, which will be listed on the VFEX. Its mobile network operator business will be delisted from the ZSE.
Econet believes the market has failed to properly value its business and its assets. At the time Econet first released a cautionary on December 3, its market capitalisation was the equivalent of US$628 million.
A rally over the past days has lifted it to a market capitalisation – the number of shares times the share price – to around US$1 billion.
“For the last several years, the company has traded at a significant discount to its peers across Africa which trade at 6 – 8x EV/EBITDA.
“These peers have all already separated and realised value from their tower infrastructure whereas the company still owns its tower and other passive infrastructure which the company has now housed under a separate infrastructure company to be listed on the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange,” Econet said.
Econet will keep 70% of Econet InfraCo, with up to 30% used to settle an offer to shareholders who do not wish to remain invested.
The company argues that infrastructure assets are better suited to the VFEX, which trades in US dollars and attracts investors familiar with property and long-term infrastructure.
“Unlike the mobile network operator business in Zimbabwe, infrastructure assets represent a different class of investment, one that is better understood and valued within USD-based property and infrastructure markets.
“This is demonstrated by the higher Price-to-Earnings multiples at which listed real estate and infrastructure companies trade on the VFEX,” the company said.
Econet dominates Zimbabwe’s mobile market, with 88% of voice traffic, 82% of data usage and 73% of all subscribers. It has built the largest portfolio of telecoms assets.
By the end of the second quarter, it had 234 5G sites, 1,700 LTE sites, 1,900 3G towers and 2,860 2G locations.
In the half-year to August alone, it added 27 new 2G–4G sites and 100 new 5G sites.
In addition to these locations, Econet also holds other properties and power assets, including solar installations, Tesla batteries and generators.
The move follows a well-established trend in Africa.
MTN and Airtel Africa sold towers in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya to independent operators like IHS Towers and Helios Towers. Vodacom, Orange and Telkom South Africa have also carved out tower units through sale-and-leaseback deals.
Credit: Newsday
Qualcomm Technologies Inc. has announced the successful completion of its third annual Make in Africa (QMIA) Startup Mentorship Program, marked by the virtual Make in Africa Finale 2025. The initiative underscores Qualcomm’s long-term commitment to fostering Africa’s vibrant innovation ecosystem through the broader Qualcomm Africa Innovation Platform.
Highlights:
- The 2025 Qualcomm Make in Africa program supported ten innovative startups from Kenya, Tunisia, Nigeria, Benin and Senegal, each addressing local challenges by developing tech-enabled solutions across critical sectors such as healthcare, sustainable agriculture, climate resilience and mobility.
- This year, the program attracted more than 400 applications from 19 countries, showcasing remarkable talent across the continent.
- Farmer Lifeline, of Kenya, was announced as the 2025 Wireless Reach Social Impact Fund winner, recognizing its impactful use of wireless technology.
- Applications for Qualcomm Make in Africa 2026 are now open. Applicants can visit the Qualcomm website to apply.
As a flagship initiative of Qualcomm, the equity-free program shines a spotlight on the creativity and drive of African founders leveraging advanced technologies such as AI, 4G/5G, robotics, connectivity and IoT to address pressing real-world challenges.
Now in its third year, the program remains steadfast in its mission to accelerate early-stage technology startups by providing tailored mentorship, targeted business coaching, expert engineering consultation and comprehensive intellectual property protection guidance – exemplified by resources such as Qualcomm’s L2Pro Africa training. This holistic support empowers founders to transform their visionary ideas into sustainable, market-ready solutions.
“This year’s cohort has demonstrated incredible ingenuity, transforming complex challenges into scalable, tech-driven solutions that will drive social and economic impact across the continent,” said Elizabeth Migwalla, Vice President International Government Affairs, Qualcomm Incorporated.
“Innovation is the driving force behind Africa’s future, and this year’s startups are a brilliant demonstration of that. The African Telecommunications Union (ATU) is proud to partner with Qualcomm for the Make in Africa 2025 program,” said John Omo, Secretary General of the ATU. “We are working to harmonize spectrum management policies, regional standards, and open data practices, but we know that true progress relies on large-scale support. That’s why we call on governments, universities, investors, and industry to support these initiatives – and any endeavor that places African ingenuity at the forefront.”
The 2025 cohort includes the following groundbreaking startups:
- Aframend (Nigeria): Uses AI to explore African medicinal plants for new drug discovery and aims to turn local remedies into safe, affordable treatments for diseases.
- AmalXR (Tunisia): Offers AI-powered virtual rehabilitation sessions on everyday devices, enabling easy patient and clinician progress tracking.
- Archeos (Benin): Automates fish farming with solar-powered sensors and feeders, providing real-time data on water quality and feeding levels for improved fish health.
- ClimatrixAI (Nigeria): Installs connected weather and flood stations with an AI platform to forecast street-by-street risk, enhancing early warnings and disaster response for local communities.
- Ecobees (Tunisia): Builds smart hive monitors and a digital platform for real-time insights into beehive-health, to protect bees and crops that depend on them.
- Edulytics (Senegal): Applies AI on handheld ultrasound devices for early detection of liver disease, aiming to make this special screening widely accessible.
- Farmer Lifeline (Kenya): Deploys small, solar-powered devices that scan fields for pests and diseases and send alerts straight to farmers’ phones to protect crops.
- Pollen Patrollers (Kenya): A women-led agritech startup using connected hive technology and AI to keep bee colonies healthy.
- Solar Freeze (Kenya): Provides solar-powered cold rooms with remote monitoring enabling farmers to keep fruits and vegetables fresh and increase earnings.
- Pixii Motors (Tunisia): Designs electric scooters with smart batteries that can be swapped in and out at local stations, aiming to revolutionize urban mobility.
Wireless Reach Social Impact Fund Winner
Kenyan innovator, Farmer Lifeline, was announced as the winner of the 2025 Wireless Reach Social Impact Fund. The fund, sponsored by Qualcomm® Wireless Reach™ Initiative, champions the innovative use of wireless connectivity to address pressing community. As the winner, Farmer Lifeline will receive dedicated funding and tailored technical support to scale its groundbreaking solution.
“Farmer Lifeline stood out with its innovative small solar-powered devices that scan fields to detect pests and diseases. This technology enables local farmers to effectively protect their crops, significantly increase yields, and improve food security”, stated Erica Ciaraldi, Vice President, Wireless Reach, Qualcomm Incorporated.
“Their visionary approach and dedication to agricultural resilience have positioned them as leaders in their field. They are driving meaningful change for smallholder farmers and inspiring others across the continent. This fund will empower them to scale their impact further, enabling broader reach and deeper influence across Africa and the world.”
In recognition of the groundbreaking innovations demonstrated by all finalists, each will receive stipends designed to accelerate their growth, support strategic development and safeguard their intellectual property. This comprehensive support underscores Qualcomm’s commitment to fostering innovation and ensuring these visionary projects can thrive sustainably.
Looking ahead: Launch of Qualcomm Make in Africa Startup Mentorship Program 2026
Building on the significant success of previous years, Qualcomm is excited to launch the fourth year of the program in 2026.
Applications for the 2026 Qualcomm Make in Africa cohort can be found at the Qualcomm website.
Fynd, an AI-native retail technology platform backed by Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, today announced its official expansion into South Africa, onboarding Surtee Group – one of the region’s most established luxury and fashion retailers – as its first strategic customer in the market. This milestone marks a pivotal moment for African retail, as legacy brands begin embracing digital transformation to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving consumer landscape.
Fynd
Fynd’s entry into Africa reflects its commitment to enabling digital transformation in high-growth retail markets worldwide. The move also comes at a turning point when South Africa’s e-commerce sector is projected to exceed R130 billion ($7.48 billion) in 2025, capturing nearly 10% of total retail sales – a fourfold increase since 2020.
According to Statista, South Africa is expected to have 11.7 million e-commerce users in 2025, with projections reaching 21.5 million by 2029. This growth is being driven by rising internet penetration, mobile-first shopping behaviour, and increasing trust in digital platforms. To meet rising consumer expectations, businesses are investing in AI and unified commerce platforms. Fynd’s scalable, AI-native stack is built to support this shift, enabling agility, personalisation, and operational efficiency.
“South Africa’s retail landscape is evolving fast,” said Ronak Modi, Chief Business Officer – Global at Fynd. “Consumers expect seamless, personalised experiences across every channel, and retailers need agile, intelligent infrastructure to keep up. Our platform is built to unify disconnected systems, speed up fulfilment, and elevate customer engagement; all without adding operational complexity.”
“South Africa is an exciting addition to our global footprint. The market is digitally ambitious, brand-forward, and ready for intelligent commerce infrastructure. Our goal is to help local retailers unify siloed systems, personalise engagement, and accelerate fulfilment without adding complexity.”
Surtee Group operates 94 boutiques and 2 e-commerce sites, comprising the multi-branded stores Levisons and the mono-brand boutiques, namely, Giorgio Armani, Michael Kors, Lacoste, Hugo Boss, VERSACE, TOD’S, Salvatore Ferragamo, Versace Jeans Couture, Emporio Armani, Burberry, Jimmy Choo, Luminance, Paul Smith, Coach, and Armani Exchange. They will implement Fynd’s unified commerce stack, including Storefronts, Order Management System (OMS), Warehouse Management System (WMS), and Clienteling tools to connect in-store and online operations, streamline inventory visibility, and launch brand-specific ecommerce storefronts across its brand portfolio.
While online retail continues to surge, offline sales still represent the vast majority of revenue for retailers in the country. Fynd will enable Surtee Group to unify its offline inventory online, power ship-from-store capabilities, and improve both margins and sell-throughs. Additionally, products like Clienteling will empower in-store teams to engage customers better and drive incremental sales through personalised recommendations and seamless omnichannel experiences.
Fynd’s entry into the market is designed to meet this demand. Its AI-native platform enables real-time stock visibility, ship-from-store capabilities, dark store orchestration, and intelligent customer engagement all within a single scalable solution.
As part of its digital transformation roadmap, Surtee Group aims to consolidate its leadership in luxury and fashion retail while expanding into e-commerce and improving omnichannel agility.
“We were looking for a partner who understood both the technical and strategic dimensions of unified commerce,” said a Surtee Group spokesperson. “Fynd stood out for their proven scalability, consultative approach, and deep experience with global fashion brands, many of which align with our portfolio. Their unified stack enables us to modernise operations while building a connected, brand-first customer experience.”
Fynd has already scaled across India, the GCC, and Southeast Asia, and now adds Africa to its regional presence. With Surtee Group leading the transformation, Fynd is positioned to play a key role in powering unified commerce adoption across South Africa’s growing digital economy.
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