By Adedapo Adesanya

The Russian government on Thursday confirmed it has blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as it moves to further control information flow in the country.

It urged Russians to use a new state-backed platform called Max instead of the Meta-owned service.

WhatsApp issued a statement earlier saying Russia had attempted to “fully block” its messaging service in the country to force people toward Max, which it described as a “surveillance app.”

“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp posted on social media platform X.

“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” it said, adding: “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”

Russia’s latest move against social media platforms and messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram comes amid a wider attempt to drive users toward domestic and more easily controlled and monitored services, such as Max.

Russia’s telecoms watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has accused messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian legislation requiring companies to store Russian users’ data inside the country, and of failing to introduce measures to stop their platforms from being used for allegedly criminal or terrorist purposes.

It has used this as a basis for slowing down or blocking their operations, with restrictions coming into force since last year.

For Telegram, it may be next, but so far the Russian government has been admittedly slowing down its operations “due to the fact that the company isn’t complying with the requirements of Russian legislation.”

The chat service, founded by Russian developers but headquartered in Dubai, has been a principal target for Roskomnadzor’s scrutiny and increasing restrictions, with users reporting sluggish performance on the app since January.

By Adedapo Adesanya

Nigerian startup, Decide, has emerged as the fourth most accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real-world spreadsheet problems.

According to the founder, Mr Abiodun Adetona, the ranking places Decide alongside well-funded global AI startups, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Mr Adetona, an ex-Flutterwave developer, also revealed that Decide now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paying customers, a signal to the ability of the startup to scale in the near future.

SpreadsheetBench is a comprehensive evaluation framework designed to push Large Language Models (LLMs) to their limits in understanding and manipulating spreadsheet data. While many benchmarks focus on simple table QA, SpreadsheetBench treats a spreadsheet as a complex ecosystem involving spatial layouts, formulas, and multi-step reasoning. So far, only three agents rank higher than Decide, namely Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent.

Mr Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5% accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.

“The result reflects sustained investment in applied research, product iteration, and learning from real-world spreadsheet workloads across a wide range of use cases,” Mr Adetona told Business Post.

For Mr Adetona, who built Decide out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets, “This milestone highlights how focused engineering and domain-specific AI development can deliver frontier-level performance outside of large research organisations. By concentrating on practical business data problems and building systems grounded in real user environments, we believe smaller teams can contribute meaningfully to advancing applied AI.”

“For Decide, this is a foundation for continued progress in intelligent spreadsheet and analytics automation,” he added.

By Adedapo Adesanya

A global biometric authentication technology company specialising in secure, mobile-first identity verification, Identy.io, has announced its expansion plans into Africa with a pilot focus on Nigeria and Kenya.

The firm disclosed in a statement that it has appointed a regional leadership team to engage with key stakeholders across the government, financial services, telecommunications, and other regulated sectors in both countries.

These include Mr Olajide Olasiyan-Ola as Regional Head for West Africa, Mr Edwin Mutisya as the Senior Sales Manager, and Mr Matus Kapusta as the Product Director for Identy.io’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) product portfolios.

Amid the need for effective identity solutions becoming increasingly urgent, countries like Kenya and Nigeria are making significant investments in public digital infrastructure by integrating identity systems with public services, financial access, and mobile connectivity as part of their broader economic development agendas. This is helping to implement national digital identity systems to improve service delivery, promote financial inclusion, and develop digital public infrastructure.

The World Bank’s ID4D data indicates that approximately 80 per cent of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa possess basic identification. However, there are significant disparities between countries, with many having coverage below 70 per cent. These gaps hinder access to essential services and economic opportunities.

With Identy.io coming into the fold, its regional leadership team will collaborate with clients across the public and private sectors to support responsible, scalable identity implementations aligned with national digital transformation priorities.

After Nigeria and Kenya, the firm plans to expand into additional African markets as part of a phased regional growth strategy.

According to Mr Antony Vendhan, Co-founder of Identy.io, “We are transforming the traditional industry model, which often relies on expensive and inflexible digital infrastructure. Instead, Identy.io adopts a software-first approach, minimising reliance on specialised biometric hardware. Our technology supports biometric capture using standard smartphones, processes identity documents, issues digital identities to individuals lacking formal identification, and facilitates large-scale biometric verification and deduplication.”0

“This innovative yet simplified approach allows our clients to reach underserved communities by providing individuals with multimodal access to secure their digital identities and explore new economic opportunities,” he stated.

As part of Identy.io’s industry validation strategy, the company’s ABIS system has completed MOSIP’s partner compliance process and is listed on the MOSIP Marketplace. This platform offers compliant technologies that governments and ecosystem partners can evaluate for MOSIP-aligned deployments. MOSIP helps governments conceive, develop, implement, and own foundational digital ID systems tailored to their unique needs.