Technology
Sparkle Plans Digital Distribution of Insurance by 2021
By Adedapo Adesanya
Sparkle, the Nigerian start-up that was founded by Mr Uzoma Dozie, is planning to move into digital distribution of general insurance products next years.
This was confirmed to the Africa Report by the former Diamond Bank CEO. Sparkle was granted a banking license by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) this year.
Initially, Sparkle was launched for users to be able to split payment, make utilities and bill payments and also save their money, but with its banking license, it also plans to start offering consumer and small business loans at the end of the first quarter of 2021.
According to Mr Dozie, Sparkle has an in-country insurance partner but added that regulatory approval will be needed and the partner may need to upgrade their systems.
The company’s CEO believes that the platform will be able to take on the challenge of insurance penetration, which contributes only 0.3 per cent to the economy, making the country lag behind its continental peers.
According to him, the solution is due to fears that insurance claims will not be paid, adding that “cumbersome and complex” sign-up processes involved is also responsible for the low number.
“We haven’t democratised insurance,” Mr Dozie noted, explaining that, “People don’t understand it on a basic level. What am I paying for?”
He argued that the existing infrastructure cannot solve the problem. This indicates that he will be offering the Sparkle platform to roll out services while trying to solve the pre-existing inclusiveness problem.
The company has just signed a deal with Visa under which its customers will have greater freedom and flexibility in how they make payments. For instance, they can make in-app payments with the embedded Visa virtual card, and make e-commerce payments with the virtual card or with Visa-branded companion plastic cards attached to their Sparkle profile.
Sparkle customers will also benefit from a range of other digital payments initiatives from Visa, for example, by scanning the interoperable EMVCo Quick Response (QR) code or just entering an Alias such as phone number or merchant till number to pay for goods at merchant outlets.
The deal will also allow customers to receive cross-border remittances from family and friends who are Visa cardholders into their Sparkle account.
“Our partnership with Visa will bring a wide range of benefits to Sparkle’s customers, individuals, entrepreneurs and SMEs. We are excited to work with Visa as we strive to re-define e-commerce by removing barriers to business using technology and data.
“Working with a global partner like Visa allows us to deliver a bespoke and personalised service for our customers by tapping into large networks so they can fulfil their full potential,” Mr Dozie said.
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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