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Backbase Acquires Kasisto as African Banker Survey Names Legacy Information Technology (IT) the Top Barrier to Artificial Intelligence (AI) Adoption

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2 months ago

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Backbase

The acquisition embeds banking-grade agentic AI into Backbase’s operating model, closing the gap between African banks and cloud-native fintech competitors

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, July 7, 2026/APO Group/ –Backbase (www.Backbase.com) announced the acquisition of Kasisto, a pioneer in agentic AI for banking and financial services. Kasisto’s agentic platform, financial services intelligence, and New York-based team are now part of Backbase and the AI-native Banking OS.

 

The transaction integrates Kasisto’s financial intelligence models into the Backbase platform, building an architecture that helps financial institutions overcome legacy IT constraints that have stymied digital transformation across Africa.

This announcement follows a recent survey of 277 bank executives across Africa, conducted by Backbase with African Banker magazine (https://apo-opa.co/4f7b9KZ), which revealed legacy system integration as the primary obstacle to AI adoption. This bottleneck prevents established institutions from scaling digital offerings fast enough to compete with agile, cloud-native fintechs and mobile money operators.

Legacy maintenance costs billions globally, but the impact is especially acute in Africa, where banks face high operational costs and a growing mobile-first unbanked population.

This acquisition addresses a structural constraint specific to how African banking has grown

“This acquisition addresses a structural constraint specific to how African banking has grown,” said Ayman Daoud, Vice-President of Africa regions at Backbase. “We see too many banks build AI in isolated pockets, like a chatbot in digital self-service or automation in the contact centre, without resolving the disconnect between those teams and back-office operations. By embedding Kasisto’s reasoning AI into the core operating model, we’re giving African banks one system that can answer a question and complete the work behind it within the governance and compliance regulators require.”

Banking-grade agentic AI, embedded in the Banking OS.

Kasisto’s platform, KAI, is purpose-built for regulated financial environments, unlike general-purpose AI models. It uses specialised financial LLMs that understand context, apply institutional judgment, and operate strictly within banking governance and compliance frameworks. In the continent, the platform has already been successfully deployed by Absa and Nedbank, where, in the latter, it cut the number of live agent conversations by half within just a year of launch.

Combined with Backbase’s flagship Banking OS, Kasisto’s conversational and agentic AI turns customer intent into governed execution: verifying eligibility, applying policy, and triggering workflows to resolve requests without manual handoffs. The result is AI that not only fields queries but finishes them, with proactive, compliant outbound engagement before a customer need becomes an inbound service request.

“Agentic AI will define how banks compete over the next decade. Africa is a particularly well placed to leapfrog western banks with decades-old core systems. Backbase and Kasisto give those institutions purpose-built agentic intelligence from day one, rather than retrofitting it onto legacy infrastructure later.” said Lance Berks, CEO of Kasisto.

Backbase’s engagement layer and Kasisto’s transactional AI give African financial institutions a way to bypass traditional IT modernisation cycles that often take years and have high failure rates.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Backbase.

 

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Canon Central & North Africa Secures Gold at the Brandon Hall Group Human Capital Management (HCM) Excellence Awards for Second Consecutive Year

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12 hours ago

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September 9, 2026

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2026 recognition honours CCNA’s Management Team Development Programme for innovation in leadership development

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, September 9, 2026/APO Group/ –Canon Central & North Africa (CCNA) (www.Canon-CNA.com) has received a Gold Award at the 2026 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards for its Management Team Development Programme (MTDP), recognised under the category “Best Unique or Innovative Leadership Development Program”. This achievement marks CCNA’s second consecutive year of winning top honours at these global awards.

 




  

The Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards recognise achievements in human capital management, with entries evaluated by an independent panel of analysts, industry experts and experienced practitioners against criteria including business need, programme design, innovation, adoption and organisational impact.

Gaining competitive advantage and sustainable success in Africa’s dynamic, diverse and ever evolving business landscape, requires leaders who transcend functional boundaries, embrace agility, and lead through a shared organizational perspective, united by a common goal.

Winning this Gold Award for our Management Team Development Programme is a proud moment for CCNA

The award-winning Management Team Development Program (MTDP) was designed to help lay the foundation for this ambition. Anchored in Canon EMEA’s Leadership Principles, the program elevated enterprise leadership capability within the Management Team.

Somesh Adukia, Managing Director, Canon Central & North Africa, said: “Winning this Gold Award for our Management Team Development Programme is a proud moment for CCNA. It reflects the strength of our leaders and the work our HR team has put into creating a programme tailored to our business.

This program played a pivotal role in bringing the Management Team together in a development experience and laid the right foundation for the next decade of CCNA’s growth journey . This recognition reinforces our commitment to the continuous pursuit of leadership excellence.”

Deepali Arora, HR Director, Canon Central & North Africa, added: ” Capability is most powerful when developed within the right business context, aligned to organizational priorities. The MTDP program was intentionally designed and delivered fully in-house with an innovative co-facilitation approach.

The program enabled the Management Team to move beyond Functional excellence and strengthen collective organizational leadership. This what makes the recognition truly special.”

This latest recognition builds on CCNA’s success at the 2025 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards, where the organisation received two Gold Awards for its Future Leader Program and CCNA Clubs. Together, these achievements reflect CCNA’s continued focus on creating meaningful, locally relevant development opportunities that strengthen its people and leadership capabilities across the organisation.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Canon Central and North Africa (CCNA).

 




 

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Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou Innovation Cluster in China maintains global lead

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12 hours ago

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September 9, 2026

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WIPO

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 9 September 2026 – The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released its Global Innovation Index (GII) 2026 on September 8, revealing that the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou metropolitan cluster, located in Southern China, has once again secured the top position among the world’s 100 leading innovation clusters. This marks another triumph for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), solidifying its status as a global powerhouse for scientific advancement and technological entrepreneurship.

The annual GII ranking evaluates innovation activity through three core metrics: international patent filings via WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), scientific publications and the number of venture capital deals. For this year’s ranking, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster filed 2,259 PCT applications, published 4,060 scientific articles and had 138 venture capital deals, all per 1 million inhabitants over the past five years.

 




  

Welcoming the announcement, a spokesman for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government said the ranking reaffirms the outstanding innovative capacity and the innovation and technology (I&T)-supporting financing ecosystem of the GBA.

“Expediting I&T development has been a policy priority of this Government,” the spokesman added, highlighting the HKSAR Government’s continuous development of the original grant patent system and introduction of the patent box regime, which offers tax concessions for intellectual property income to promote innovation.

The HKSAR Government’s strategic investments are already yielding tangible results. The number of start-ups in Hong Kong has surged from over 1,500 in 2015 to more than 5,200 in 2025. The city’s two I&T flagships—Hong Kong Science Park and Cyberport—have collectively nurtured around 20 unicorns to date.

A landmark development in this trajectory is the official opening of the Hong Kong Park of the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Co-operation Zone (the Loop Hong Kong Park) in December 2025. Over 100 technology enterprises and institutions have already signed leases and begun moving in. The Loop Hong Kong Park is poised to serve as an important platform for basic scientific research, commercialisation, pilot production, and international I&T collaboration within the GBA.

Furthermore, the establishment of the San Tin Technopole Company Limited in June 2026 is set to develop 210 hectares of I&T land in the San Tin Technopole, which is located in Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis development. It will create a vital node for integrated upstream, midstream and downstream industrial development, alongside the Loop Hong Kong Park.

Hong Kong’s financial machinery remains a cornerstone of its innovation success. The city boasts a vibrant private equity market with assets under management nearing US$250 billion, ranking second in Asia after the Chinese Mainland.

Looking ahead, Hong Kong will proactively align its strategy with the National 15th Five-Year Plan to fortify its position as an international I&T centre. The city will also further deepen collaboration with GBA sister cities, and contribute to the nation’s efforts in building a modern industrial system and achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and strength.
 




 

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Sancorp Group Joins African Energy Week (AEW) as Platinum Partner, Deepening Its African Energy Footprint

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14 hours ago

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September 9, 2026

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African Energy Chamber

The trading group brings vertical integration, investment and upstream services to AEW 2026, with operations spanning Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Angola

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, August 20, 2026/APO Group/ –Sancorp Group, the Dubai-headquartered energy and commodities trading group with active operations across sub-Saharan Africa, will participate as a Platinum Partner at African Energy Week (AEW) 2026 in Cape Town from October 12-16. The partnership, AEW’s highest tier, reflects the growing commercial engagement between Gulf-based energy groups and African markets.

 




 

Sancorp operates across the full energy value chain, from crude oil and refined product trading through upstream asset participation and oilfield services. Its trading counterparties include Trafigura, Mercuria, Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Dangote Fertilizers, Société Ivoirienne de Raffinage (SIR), PETROCI, the Tema Oil Refinery and Ghana’s Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST). To date, Sancorp has structured over $2 billion in oil and gas investments across the continent.

The group’s vast commercial network makes its presence at AEW a prime opportunity for operators, refineries and traders looking to build or expand supply relationships in West Africa. The Ivory Coast is Sancorp’s largest and most active market, with projected annual flows exceeding $600 million across refined products, crude, LPG and fertilizer deliveries into SIR and PETROCI.

Sancorp is built around relationships and execution in markets where both of those things are hard to get right

In July 2026, the group delivered more than 36,000 tons of gasoil into SIR’s Abidjan terminal. Sancorp also holds a government-certified license to import and distribute fertilizers in the country, supplying 500,000 bags of urea and NPK annually through the Ministry of Agriculture.

In Ghana, Sancorp supplied more than 300,000 tons of gasoil and gasoline in 2024, while in Nigeria its subsidiary SCP Energy maintains NIPEX-certified upstream service capabilities and is a certified export trading counterparty to the Dangote Refinery. The group is also expanding into Angola, where it is registered with Sonangol and in advanced discussions on minority interests in two deepwater production blocks and an equity stake in one of the country’s planned grassroots refineries.

For AEW 2026 attendees, Sancorp’s model represents the kind of Gulf-to-Africa commercial bridge that is becoming more prominent across the continent’s energy trading landscape: structured finance, physical trading capacity and on-the-ground presence across multiple West African markets, all housed within a single group. The Platinum Partnership gives Sancorp visibility across the full AEW program as it looks to scale its trading book and deepen its upstream and refining positions.

“Sancorp is built around relationships and execution in markets where both of those things are hard to get right,” says NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber. “This is a group that is actively trading, investing and building upstream positions across West Africa, and their presence at the event creates real opportunities for the operators and governments in the room.”

As a Platinum Partner at AEW 2026, Sancorp is expected to engage operators, refineries, NOCs and investors on trading partnerships, upstream investment and supply-chain development across West and Southern Africa.

 

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

 




 

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