👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Ethiopia is Awash with shares

TGIF.

Put a finger down if you experienced poor service with Nigerian telecom operators between November 2025 and January 2026.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country’s telecoms regulator, has said that subscribers will receive airtime refunds as compensation for poor service experienced within the said time.

In other news, Nigeria’s elections have a retention problem. A new Zikoko Citizen report predicts what participation in the 2027 election might look like, drawing on trends from previous cycles, and explores what could bring about a massive turnaround.

Read the full report here.

— Yemi

Kolawole Bekes is a Database Administrator, Database Reliability Engineer, and DevOps Engineer with over a decade of experience spanning multiple industries. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Abuja. Following his relocation to the United States in 2015 and subsequently to Canada in 2017, he has built a career working with organisations such as Microsoft, AppDirect, WorkJam, Sunwing Airlines, Agio, and Big Fish Games. 

He is also the founder and chief executive officer of WakaMi, an on-demand errand service platform focused on delivering reliable and efficient errand solutions to Nigerians both locally and in the diaspora.

• Explain what you do to a 5-year-old.

Once upon a time, there was a big fruit garden where fruits kept falling everywhere—apples here, bananas there, and oranges rolling all over the ground. Nobody could find what they wanted.

So I became the helper of the garden. I picked up all the fruits and put them into the right baskets; apples in one basket, bananas in another, and oranges in their own place. My job is to keep everything neat, safe, and easy to find, just like the fruit baskets in the garden.

• How did you become a Database Administrator?

I became a Database Administrator as part of a deliberate effort to improve my earning potential and build a more reliable career path. I joined a community of IT professionals in North America, where I was exposed to new ideas and opportunities. 

Through that network, I discovered and enrolled in a bootcamp, completed several training sessions, and gained hands-on experience. I then applied to multiple roles, and eventually secured an opportunity that marked the beginning of my career as a Database Administrator.

• If your job had a warning label, what would it say?

Warning: Unexpected issues may occur at any time. Requires patience, quick thinking, and a strong relationship with coffee.

• What’s the vision behind WakaMi and why do you think a marketplace for managed services can scale in Nigeria?

The vision behind WakaMi came from a personal experience. While living in Canada, I needed someone to handle an errand for me in Nigeria. I tried finding help online, but unfortunately, I had a bad experience where I lost money.

That led me to dig deeper, and I realised this was not just my problem. Many people, especially those in the diaspora, face the same challenge. There is no reliable, structured way to get trusted services done remotely in Nigeria.

I believe it can scale in Nigeria because it addresses a real and growing problem. As more Nigerians live and work abroad, and as urban life becomes busier locally, the demand for trusted on-demand services will continue to increase.

Awash Bank, Ethiopia’s second-largest commercial bank by assets—and largest privately-owned lender—has listed on the Ethiopian Stock Exchange (ESX), the country’s stock exchange. Launched in 2025, the ESX brought the total number of stock exchanges in Africa to 30 at the time. Awash’s listing is only the third since that launch.

State of play: Awash Bank listed 37.9 million shares by introduction, out of the 54 million which it previously registered with the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECMA), the country’s capital markets regulator, in March.

The listing allows Awash to provide liquidity for its existing shareholders, while diversifying its shareholder base. The listing by introduction method is typically used by companies that have listed on other stock exchanges or have recently raised capital.

In Awash’s case, the bank previously raised its paid-up capital in 2022 to ETB 55 billion (about $1 billion), a few months after Ethiopia opened up its banking sector to foreign investors.

Why this matters: Awash Bank serves over 15 million customers, runs nearly 1,000 branches, and reported a record profit of ETB 25.67 billion ($163.9 million) last year. When a company of that size goes public, investors now have a heavyweight stock to trade. It also signals confidence. If a market leader is willing to show up, others are more likely to follow.

What happens next: Awash is only the third listing on the ESX, but it likely won’t be alone for long. Other major banks are already lining up to join, with more listings expected before mid-2026. 

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South Africa plans a 3-year reset for its troubled State IT Agency

Image source: TechCentral

South Africa’s Department of Communications & Digital Technologies, the government agency that regulates broadcasting and communications services, has put down a three-year plan to fix the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), the state-owned IT company responsible for managing IT resources for the government. 

Why does it need a reset? If SITA were graded for its performance, it was doing very badly. In the 2024/2025 fiscal year, in its audit, the communications regulator found that the IT agency failed to deliver R12. 1 billion ($729 million) worth of projects. The operator was struggling to function properly; a lack of staff and leadership gaps stalled multiple projects.

Now, the regulator wants to make sure SITA has no excuses in the coming fiscal year.

Rebuilding it brick by brick: The restructuring will happen in three phases. First, SITA mustdefine the problem, then diagnose what happened before designing a new framework for its operation. The third phase is a consultation with stakeholders, and then a final draft of the new business model will be presented.

Planning is the easy part: This is not the first attempt to rejig the agency. Those plans were among the institutional reform priorities for the year ended 2025. So this plan is less about what needs to be done (they already know that) and more about whether it can actually be done this time.