Technology
Trove, Four Others to Jostle for 2021 Ecobank Fintech Challenge Prizes
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s Trove Finance has emerged as one of the five finalists of the 2021 Ecobank Fintech Challenge.
The company is one of the two Nigerian companies that will be jostling win the challenge, in its fourth edition, designed to help financial technology companies with Africa focused products join forces with the leading pan-African lender to provide Africans with groundbreaking financial services.
The finalists, who emerged from a competitive pool of nearly 900 fintechs that entered the 2021 Fintech Challenge will participate in a virtual finale to be held next month.
The 2021 finalists are led by Anadata Limited from Nigeria which developed Chota, an automated Address Verification System that uses Big Data Analysis to accelerate the process while improving accuracy.
Motito from Ghana promotes financial inclusion in Africa through its ‘buy now pay later’ platform which allows small businesses to offer interest-free credit at the point of sale.
OKO FINANCE from Mali offers new-generation index insurance to smallholder farmers, that are mobile-based and include access to affordable loans, weather alerts and farming tips.
Fourthline Limited from Kenya developed Pollen which is designed to be a USSD ecosystem for conducting cross-telecom payments and savings for the unbanked.
Trove Finance from Nigeria built software (APIs & Tools) that allows African individuals and financial institutions (banks, brokers and fund managers) access and trade the United States and global stocks
The finalists will pitch their products to a jury which will select the top three most promising products. The top three finalists will receive cash prizes of $15,000, $12,000 and $10,000 respectively.
All the finalists will be enrolled into Ecobank’s Fintech Fellowship where they will spend six months exploring partnership opportunities, including Multinational Product Roll Out: An opportunity for eligible Fintechs to pursue collaboration with Ecobank and possibly launch products in Ecobank’s 33 African markets; Service Provider Partnerships: A chance to partner with Ecobank on pan-African products and services roll out and undertake other joint venture; Mentoring and Networking Support: Access to networking and mentoring opportunities within the Ecobank Group and its vast network of global and African partners; and Digital Offering integration: An opportunity for Fintechs to potentially integrate with Ecobank’s existing digital offerings.
Speaking on this, Mr Tomisin Fashina, Group Executive, Operations & Technology, Ecobank Group, said: “The five finalists in this year’s edition have shown impressive products from a competitive group of nearly 900 applicants. I would like to personally congratulate them and express my excitement at the opportunity to work with them to bring their innovative ideas to fruition.”
Finalists competing for the top prize could be inducted into the coveted Ecobank Fintech Fellowship to pursue commercial partnerships with the Ecobank Group with access to 33 presence markets across Africa; opportunity to pursue integration with Ecobank and potentially launch products with the Group; mentoring and networking forums leveraging the Group’s partners; Priority Access to Ecobank’s Venture Capital partners for funding opportunities.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the players in the Nigerian gaming industry, Secure Electronic Technology (SET) Plc, has appointed Ms Leticia Otomewo as its acting secretary.
This followed the expiration of the company’s service contract with the former occupier of the seat, Ms Irene Attoe, on January 31, 2026.
A statement to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday said Ms Otomewo would remain the organisation’s scribe in an acting capacity, pending the ratification and appointment of a substantive company secretary at the next board meeting.
She was described in the notice signed by the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Oyeyemi Olusoji, as “a results-driven executive with 22 years of experience in driving business growth, leading high-performing teams, and delivering innovative solutions.”
The acting secretary is also said to be “a collaborative leader with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.”
“The company assures the investing public that all Company Secretariat responsibilities and regulatory obligations will continue to be discharged in full compliance with the Companies and Allied Matters Act, applicable regulations, and the Nigerian Exchange Limited Listing Rules,” the disclosure assured.
Meanwhile, the board thanked Ms Attoe “for professionalism and contributions to the Company during the period of her engagement and wishes her well in her future endeavours.”
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.
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