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Alternative Payments Giant Cellulant Achieves Data Sovereignty Using Pure Infrastructure’s VMware Cloud

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Cellulant

To deliver a Pan-African service, companies must meet each country’s regulations relating to data residency, compliance, and data sovereignty

NAIROBI, Kenya, November 2, 2022/APO Group/ — 

Cellulant (https://www.Cellulant.io), a Pan African financial technology company that provides locally relevant and alternative payment methods for global, regional and local merchants, has created a contiguous cloud experience that enables it to meet data and cloud sovereignty requirements across its regions. Working with Pure Infrastructure, a VMware Cloud Provider, Cellulant can now offer its services across borders and deliver a ubiquitous user experience, in addition to hosting specific applications in a public cloud while ensuring its transactional data is hosted on its VMware Cloud in the country of origin.

No regulator across Africa is the same. To deliver a Pan-African service, companies must meet each country’s regulations relating to data residency, compliance, and data sovereignty. This is especially relevant to financial services organisations that deal with the most sensitive data, and for whom the public cloud is not an option, especially since few of these companies offer in-country data centres and are unable to fulfil data sovereignty requirements.

“Our vision is to make payments frictionless and seamless, no matter where they are being made. If we can’t meet this core fundamental requirement, we don’t have a business, nor do the merchants and banks we work with. We are on a journey to solve the fragmented payment ecosystem in Africa, providing solutions that address the challenges that merchants and banks face when it comes to collecting payments. By doing so, we believe that create opportunities that accelerate economic empowerment for all Africans,” says John Mburu, Head of Platform Engineering at Cellulant.

We can scale and roll out services much faster, making it easier for us to get services up and running without waiting for annual budget cycles

The financial technology company, with offices in 18 countries serving 33 other African regions, initially planned to migrate its platform onto a public cloud for all its countries of operation, but due to varying data regulations across some markets, this was not feasible – as some regulatory bodies require that payment data be hosted in-country and meet local data sovereignty requirements.

To navigate this challenge, Cellulant partnered with VMware Cloud Provider Pure Infrastructure, leveraging its VMware Cloud infrastructure to create a private cloud to host payment data and applications in. This repeatable, autonomous, vendor-agnostic cloud model allows it to scale across borders without building a physical data centre in each country and provides a consistent developer experience.

“We can scale and roll out services much faster, making it easier for us to get services up and running without waiting for annual budget cycles. The first benefit we saw was how quickly the products became available. Within a couple of weeks of closing discussions with Pure Infrastructure, we got our licenses and could select the services we wanted to start with and which ones to add later,” says Mburu.

“To make our technology align with the way the business works, we needed to embrace a utility model so we could grow and shrink infrastructure as needed. It’s been invaluable for us to move to an OPEX model, allowing us to model our business and revenue models down to a transaction and per use,” says Mburu.

“Building a repeatable cloud model that it can lift and replicate in any country is ingenious. This innovation highlights exactly how Cellulant is reshaping the African payment space. They have not only proved the flexibility of the cloud, but with their partner, Pure Infrastructure, they have proven the cost efficiencies a company can gain from their cloud when they get the recipe right,” says Sumeeth Singh, Cloud Provider business head, Sub-Saharan Africa, VMware.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Cellulant.

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Ministers among hundreds of energy-sector leaders to attend AOW event

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The event kicks off with an invitation-only ministerial symposium focused on the theme of “Fostering innovation, attracting investment, and promoting sustainable growth in the oil, gas, and energy sectors”

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, October 4, 2024/APO Group/ — 

AOW: Investing in African Energy (https://AOWEnergy.com) – Africa’s leading oil, gas and energy event – has confirmed attendance for more than 80 ministers and senior officials, representing African governments, energy departments and regulators at next month’s event.

These influential stakeholders will be among the more than 1 600 senior delegates and industry leaders who will be attending the event to develop policy, share discoveries, secure investment, and shape Africa’s energy future.

The event kicks off with an invitation-only ministerial symposium focused on the theme of “Fostering innovation, attracting investment, and promoting sustainable growth in the oil, gas, and energy sectors.”

Given the recent major oil-and-gas discoveries across Africa, the energy transition and major geopolitical events, it is clear that the energy sector needs positive intervention

Among the officials and government ministers attending will be energy leaders from South Africa, Nigeria, Namibia, Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique, DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Eswatini, Uganda, CAR, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Gabon, Malawi, Morocco, Zanzibar, Liberia, Senegal, Congo Brazzaville and Sierra Leone.

In addition, the event will feature high-level delegations from numerous national oil companies, as well as multilateral bodies including the African Union, (AU), African Energy Commission (AFREC), African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) and the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP).

AOW will see these energy leaders networking with C-suite executives and decision-makers from more than 760 top energy companies at daily networking events, to discuss insights, forge new relationships, and negotiate major energy deals.

“We are so excited to see the calibre of delegates at this year’s AOW event,” says Chief Executive Officer of Sankofa Events, Paul Sinclair. “Given the recent major oil-and-gas discoveries across Africa, the energy transition and major geopolitical events, it is clear that the energy sector needs positive intervention. The high-powered attendance proves AOW is a key platform to enable this intervention.”

Key themes to be discussed at this year’s AOW will be sustainable upstream development; expanding gas value chains; renewables and new energies; adoption of best-in-class technologies; and access to finance.

AOW: Investing in African Energy will culminate in a special anniversary party at Groot Constantia Vineyard to celebrate 30 years of the AOW event.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of AOW: Investing in African Energy.

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Afreximbank approves US$20.8 million for Starlink Global’s cashew factory project in Lagos

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The facility is expected to promote value addition which will guarantee increased earnings to the company while also fostering the creation of about 400 new jobs

CAIRO, Egypt, October 4, 2024/APO Group/ — 

African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) (www.Afreximbank.com) has approved a US$20.8 million financing facility for Nigeria-based Starlink Global & Ideal Limited to enable the company construct and operate a 30,000-metric tonne per annum cashew processing factory in Lagos.

We are delighted at this partnership which promises to deliver significant impact on employment in Nigeria

According to the facility agreement signed in on July 22, 2024, Afreximbank will provide the funds in two tranches with the first tranche of US$7.48M going toward capital expenditure for the construction of the factory and the second, totalling US$13.25M to be deployed as working capital for the operations of the factory.

The facility is expected to promote value addition which will guarantee increased earnings to the company while also fostering the creation of about 400 new jobs once the factory becomes operational. It is also expected to support about 40 small and medium-sized enterprises.

Commenting on the transaction, Mrs. Kanayo Awani, Executive Vice President, Intra Africa Trade and Export Development, Afreximbank, said that by supporting Starlink Global to establish a modern processing facility, Afreximbank is making it possible for Africa to add value to its agro-commodities, thereby facilitating exports and subsequent inflow of much-needed foreign exchange into the continent.

“We are delighted at this partnership which promises to deliver significant impact on employment in Nigeria. It will contribute to value creation and to the development of the local community while also improving the lots of smallholder farmers and small business suppliers that will work with Starlink across the value chain,” Mrs. Awani added.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Afreximbank.

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Sonangol to Lead Decarbonized Oil & Gas (O&G) Development, Says Angolan National Oil Company (NOC) Head

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Participating in an on-stage interview at Angola Oil & Gas 2024, Sonangol CEO Sebastião Gaspar Martins emphasized that oil and gas remains a core focus for the national oil company

LUANDA, Angola, October 3, 2024/APO Group/ — 

Angola’s national oil company Sonangol reiterated its commitment to driving sustainable hydrocarbon development during the Angola Oil & Gas (AOG) conference this week. Speaking during an “In-Conversation with” session, Sonangol CEO Sebastião Gaspar Martins stated that the company will not abandon oil and gas, but rather advance decarbonized oil and gas development.

We are looking at opportunities in the gas sector and have identified the right partner to develop non-associated gas

By investing in upstream oil and gas production while prioritizing low-carbon projects, Sonangol aims to boost national crude output, while diversifying and decarbonizing the industry. The NOC is focusing efforts on non-associated gas development, as well as alternative energy sources such as solar.

“We are looking at opportunities in the gas sector and have identified the right partner to develop non-associated gas. Gas produced from Angola LNG will be used for the production of fertilizer and we are evaluating the utilization of gas in the south of the country, linking gas with steel industries. We also have a blue carbon project, linked to the reduction of carbon through the plantation of mangroves. We have one area in Luanda and have identified four additional areas for this,” stated Gaspar Martins.

Sonangol has undergone transformation in recent years: following the creation of the National Oil, Gas & Biofuels Agency (ANPG) in 2019, Sonangol transferred its role as national concessionaire and regulator. This transformation has aimed to make Sonangol more competitive and strengthen its capacity as an upstream operator. Concurrently, the government is partially privatizing the NOC, with privatization set to be complete in 2026. This process will enhance financial capacity, allowing Sonangol to drive new upstream projects forward.

“The transformation of Sonangol started several years ago, when we passed the regulatory, concessionaire role to the ANPG. At the time, we transferred almost 600 employees to the ANPG. After that, Sonangol underwent a restructuring program where we created five core business units from 36 different entities – starting with exploration and production. We want to go public, but we want to do it properly. So, we are currently going through all the processes to do this,” stated Gaspar Martins.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Energy Capital & Power.

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