👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – A sterling move for Zenith

Happy holidays.

If you’re a Nigerian tech worker who’s decided to bed-rot today (side eye), just know the market is not on pause with you. This week, Zenith Bank said listing on London’s bourse, like GTCO did last year, is now on its wishlist.

Investors are also shifting their gaze beyond fintech towards deeptech, backing programmes like BRAIN that help Africa’s science-heavy startups in health and climate move from clever lab ideas to investor-ready companies with clear use cases and go-to-market plans; if that sounds like your lane, you should read the full article on what makes deeptech fundable in Africa.

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Let’s dive in.

Zenith Bank, Nigeria’s second-largest commercial lender by assets, wants to join the small club of London-listed African banks, with plans to debut on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) by 2027. 

State of play: The goal is to tap deeper pools of foreign currency capital so it can finance bigger cross-border deals and support clients trading between Africa and the rest of the world.

That ambition is already visible on the ground. Zenith has secured approval from the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) to acquire 100% of mid-tier Paramount Bank, giving it a foothold in East Africa’s biggest banking market.

The lender is also reportedly preparing a push into Francophone Africa, starting with Côte d’Ivoire and then markets like Cameroon and Senegal. For a bank long seen as more conservative than Access Bank’s acquisition-hungry playbook, this is an unusually aggressive expansion phase.

This comes after Zenith cleared the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) new minimum capital bar for international banks, freeing it to think less about regulatory survival and more about growth. 

If the London listing goes ahead, Zenith would sit alongside GTCO, another tier-1 bank, as one of the few Nigerian lenders with London-traded shares, raising its visibility with global investors and diversifying its funding options beyond naira markets.

It is part of a broader pattern too: more Nigerian banks are looking outward as the local environment stays volatile, and international listings are emerging as one of the ways they are trying to secure steadier capital.

For the last six years, iOCO, a South African publicly-listed technology infrastructure and managed services company, has been busy cleaning up a mess it didn’t want to be remembered for. 

After the 2018 corruption scandal that rocked its former identity as EOH Holdings, the company spent years selling off assets, restructuring debt, fixing its balance sheet, and rebuilding trust with investors.

The return to former glory: When iOCO was EOH, it built its empire by acquiring dozens of companies, including Sybrin, Network Solutions, Dimension Data’s local assets, and various IT providers. That strategy pushed the business to a R20 billion ($1.1 billion) valuation.

The company rebranded to iOCO in 2024, and since then, the focus has been on stability. Now that phase appears to be ending with its return to old habits. iOCO wants to run that play again, but with fewer risks. 

According to local publication TechCentral, CEO Rhys Summerton told investors on Wednesday that the company had evaluated more than 10 acquisition targets. It is courting smaller startups with equity value between R50 million ($3 million) and R700 million ($41.5 million).

Why now? The numbers finally allow it. iOCO is generating stronger cash flows again and has a cleaner balance sheet, based on its interim results for the six months ending January 2026. Revenue rose by 3.8%, and its profitability also increased. iOCO believes that the market is fragmented enough to support consolidation, leaving it as one of the few players positioned to do it.

Zimi, a South African electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions startup, has partnered with Charge Holdings to power electric delivery fleets on the national route connecting Johannesburg and Durban. 

The deal runs for three years and kicks off with two off-grid, solar-powered charging stations launching in May 2026, and Zimi’s fleets will get reserved charging capacity on the route.

What Zimi is building: Zimi wants to remove the headache of switching vehicles to electric, so it bundles EVs and charging into a single lease. This way, logistics companies don’t have to figure out how to power or price vehicles separately. In 2025, it secured $320,000 in grant funding to test whether electric vehicles could double as mobile power stations.

What Charge is bringing to the table: Charge Holdings is solving the one thing that can kill electric freight instantly: insufficient power. It is building off-grid, solar-powered charging stations designed for highways. This means the charging stations will not have to rely on South Africa’s load-shedding-ridden power supply.

Why this partnership matters: The N3 is responsible for 60% of South Africa’s road freight and carries a significant share of the country’s trade. Electrifying movement along that route requires serious charging capacity, which Zimi is prepared to provide.

Zimi is betting that once it proves EVs can both move freight and feed power back into the grid, the N3 will not just be South Africa’s busiest trade route, but also a live demo of how electric trucks can double as rolling batteries in a fragile power system.

MultiChoice is finally telling Showmax users what happens next: from April 1, 2026, the streaming service’s originals and library will move over to DStv Stream, and all existing Showmax subscriptions will be cut off on March 31. 

Viewers who want to keep watching will have to sign up afresh on DStv’s app, turning what started as a “we’re reviewing our options” message into a full merger of MultiChoice’s streaming bets. 

State of play: Canal+’s consolidation move is about cleaning up a loss-making asset. Showmax racked up $523.53 million in operating losses between 2023 and 2025, before the Canal+ takeover. Despite a $309 million relaunch with NBCUniversal’s tech and a vision to push local content, Showmax’s 2.0 revival was underwhelming.

Folding everything into DStv Stream lets MultiChoice run one platform instead of two, cut duplicated tech and marketing spend, and try to keep its streaming audience inside a single ecosystem. 

But it is also happening under pressure. South Africa’s Competition Commission has also said it will probe whether Canal+ is sticking to the conditions attached to its MultiChoice buyout, including concerns about Showmax’s closure, shifting production work offshore, and how much power one foreign-backed group now holds in African TV. 

Showmax’s end is both a cost decision and a regulatory test. Canal+ is betting it can tidy up its streaming portfolio without losing too many viewers or running afoul of local rules, while parliament and regulators are trying to make sure a hard reset on strategy does not quietly shrink competition or local production over time.

Written by: Opeyemi Kareem and Emmanuel Nwosu

Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade