Tanzania’s Freshpack Technologies, which deploys AI-powered cold storage to cut post-harvest food losses, took the $250,000 runner-up prize. UK-based Digitech Oasis Limited received a separate $100,000 award for the Most Advanced Use of 4IR category. Five finalists and 10 semi-finalists shared a further $750,000 in interim awards across the prize cycle.

BleagLee’s technology

BleagLee uses proprietary AI software to detect and route waste in Cameroonian communities, converting plastic, agricultural and e-waste into engineered recycled polymers, 3D-printing filaments and bio-based carbon materials. The company says it is targeting a 300 million-tonne reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions by 2030, combining AI-driven waste sorting with downstream manufacturing for the recycled-materials market.

“Africa is producing world-class AI and technology innovation that is solving problems and creating opportunities on a global scale,” said Dr Precious Moloi-Motsepe, co-founder and chief executive of the Motsepe Foundation. “When we invest in innovation that is both locally grounded and globally minded, the returns are limitless.”

The prize and what comes next

The Milken-Motsepe Innovation Prize Program has been running since 2021 and has awarded over $8 million to more than 50 innovators worldwide, with participating teams collectively raising close to 31 times the Grand Prize value in additional outside investment. The 2026 AI and Manufacturing edition drew more than 2,000 applications from 100 countries. Tech.africa covered the strategic rationale behind the prize series in an April report showing that the organisers see AI as a foundational input for African manufacturing competitiveness.

The next edition, announced alongside the AI and Manufacturing winners, will focus on the circular economy and put up another $2 million in total prizes, including a $1 million Grand Prize. Registration is open until 14:00 Eastern on 13 August 2026, and the programme seeks technology-enabled solutions that move African industries away from linear take-make-waste systems toward regenerative, resource-efficient value chains.

The new entity, DCB Software South Africa, was announced on 11 May 2026 and will be led by Javier de Corral as managing director. His mandate covers building a local team, signing partnerships with South African mobile operators, and developing digital products and marketplaces for the market.

Second African subsidiary

Telecoming is a Madrid-based technology company that specialises in monetising digital services through mobile operators. Its platform combines direct carrier billing (DCB), user-acquisition and advertising tools, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence for optimising conversion and payment flows. The South African unit is its second on the continent, joining DCB Software Dzayer in Algeria.

The Johannesburg office will focus on mobile and web services, digital entertainment, marketplaces and content distribution. All are designed to plug into local payment rails, with direct carrier billing as the primary settlement mechanism. Direct carrier billing lets consumers pay for digital goods by charging the cost to their mobile phone bill or prepaid airtime, an approach that has gained traction in markets where credit-card penetration remains low.

A growing monetisation market

“The launch of DCB Software South Africa marks a key milestone in our global expansion strategy,” said Cyrille Thivat, chief executive of Telecoming, in the announcement. “We are committed to investing in South Africa’s digital future, and confident this new subsidiary will contribute to the broader digital and AI ecosystem.”

The arrival adds to a growing pool of fintech and monetisation firms targeting Sub-Saharan Africa’s mobile economy, where smartphone penetration, app-store growth and short-form video have pushed demand for carrier-grade payment alternatives to cards. The South African mobile market in particular has a long track record of supporting DCB models through Vodacom, MTN and Cell C, the country’s largest operators.

JINX is the oldest internet exchange point on the continent, operating since 1996, and is run by INX-ZA, the exchange-point arm of South Africa’s Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA). The exchange spans ten data centres across Johannesburg and reports a 100% uptime record. NTT DATA, the global digital and IT services subsidiary of Japan’s NTT Group, is the first operator to bring a 400-gigabit Ethernet (400GE) port live at any public internet exchange in Africa.

The Nokia backbone behind the milestone

The 400 Gbps capability is the result of an INX-ZA infrastructure refresh in mid-2025, during which the exchange selected Nokia’s 7250 Interconnect Router platform as the basis for its next-generation switching fabric. Tech.africa first covered the partnership in Nokia to modernise South Africa’s internet exchanges, and tech.africa’s Inside INX-ZA feature in March 2026 documented the upgrade as having made JINX one of the first African exchanges to support 400GE. The same Nokia silicon anchors backbones at hyperscalers and Tier-1 IXPs in Europe and North America.

“Africa’s internet traffic has been growing exponentially, and the appetite for capacity, resilience, and low-latency connectivity has never been greater. Moving to 400 Gbps peering at JINX is a direct response to that demand. This is not just a technical upgrade; it is a statement of intent,” JC Burger, Director of Infrastructure Engineering and Operations at NTT DATA, said in the announcement.

Where this sits in the African peering arms race

The activation lands at a moment of unusually rapid expansion at South African internet exchanges. INX-ZA itself opened a new JINX point of presence at Equinix JN1 in March 2026 and added Cape Town capacity at Teraco Brackenfell shortly before that. Across town at Africa Data Centres, the rival NAPAfrica exchange passed 5 Tbps of aggregate traffic in early 2025 on a similar growth path, even if NAPAfrica has not yet announced an individual 400GE peer.

NTT DATA’s announcement makes the demand-side picture clear: the company is not buying 400 Gbps capacity for tomorrow’s Africa; it is buying it because today’s customer base is already pushing older 100 Gbps ports.

What 400 Gbps actually buys

A 400 Gbps peering port can sustain roughly four times the traffic of the 100GE ports that have been the workhorse of African IXPs since the late 2010s. For a major service provider, that translates into headroom to absorb continued traffic growth without re-engineering the peering edge every 12 months, lower latency for content delivery to South African end users, and more local termination of traffic that previously had to leave the continent.

The milestone matters beyond a single operator because hyperscalers and content delivery networks tend to follow a major peer’s port upgrade with their own. The exchange’s gravitational pull is increasingly a function of which networks are present at which speeds, not just total traffic volume.

JINX now joins a small global list of exchanges with active 400 Gbps peering. The questions for the next 12 months are how quickly other South African networks follow NTT DATA’s port upgrade, and whether the wider African market, in Lagos, Nairobi and beyond, faces pressure to upgrade its peering infrastructure in response.

WAPF is organised annually by the Internet Society and brings together the technical leads behind West Africa’s interconnection ecosystem: ISP and content-delivery network engineers, IXP operators, regulators and policy analysts. Programme tracks for the 2026 edition cover internet exchange point development, cross-border interconnection, data centre growth, cloud and content localisation, internet resilience and affordability strategies.

The Call for Papers is open via the AFPIF Indico portal, with the programme committee co-chaired by BEHOU BRICE ABBA, Esther King and Obinna Adumike. Confirmed sponsors include Flexoptix as the lanyard sponsor and LINX as the bronze sponsor, with Renumesh as the event supporter. Registration is free and handled through the Internet Society’s WAPF 2026 event page.

IXP Nigeria, which is using the LinkedIn announcement to promote regional participation, said it is arranging logistics support for Nigerian operators travelling to Cotonou and noted that registration capacity is limited. The IXPN announcement adds to a broader push by West African internet exchange operators to bring more peering, content caching, and routing security capacity into the region.

WAPF has been a regular fixture on the West African internet calendar for over a decade, with prior editions covered on tech.africa including WAPF 2022 and WAPF 2021, the latter focused on building a resilient peering ecosystem in the region. The 2026 forum arrives at a moment when new submarine cable landings and data-centre buildout across West Africa are reshaping the economics of local interconnection.

West Africa Peering Forum (WAPF) 2026

The West Africa Peering Forum (WAPF) 2026 runs 17-18 June 2026 in Cotonou, Benin. Organised annually by the Internet Society, the forum gathers ISPs, content providers, IXP operators, regulators and policy analysts to discuss peering, interconnection, internet resilience and affordability across the region.

Event Type: Event

Event Attendance Mode: OfflineEventAttendanceMode

Event Status: EventScheduled

Performer: Organization

Performer Name: Internet Society

Performer URL: https://www.internetsociety.org/

Start Date: 2026-06-17 08:00

End Date: 2026-06-18 16:00

Ticket URL: https://www.internetsociety.org/events/wapf/2026/registration/

Currency: USD

Availability: InStock

Availability Starts: 2026-06-17T09:00:00+01:00

European subsea-cable operator EllaLink and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania’s Ministry of Digital Transformation and Modernisation of Administration (MTNIMA) confirmed on 4 May 2026 that a new branch of more than 670 km had been landed in the port city of Nouadhibou. The branch connects to EllaLink’s main trunk system, the operator’s flagship Europe-to-South-America route which lands in Sines, Portugal.

Co-funded by the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility

The branch was co-funded by the Mauritanian state and the European Union through its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme. EllaLink said the system carries two fibre pairs with state-of-the-art optical technology, delivering multi-gigabit capacity from launch and scalable to multi-terabit.

Until the new landing, Mauritania connected to international networks primarily via the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable, which serves the capital Nouakchott. The Nouadhibou branch gives the country route diversity and the kind of network resilience increasingly cited by African governments as a digital-sovereignty priority. Earlier this decade, undersea-cable incidents repeatedly highlighted the cost of single-route dependence for the continent.

“A full participant in the global telecommunications architecture”

“We are moving from the status of a mere recipient to that of a full participant in the global telecommunications architecture,” Ahmed Salem Bede, Mauritania’s Minister of Digital Transformation and Modernisation of Administration, said in EllaLink’s announcement.

Bede added that the connection would underpin strategic public-sector programmes including e-government, education, health, agriculture, transport and energy.

Sahel and Atlantic-corridor extensions on the table

Both partners flagged that the Nouadhibou landing could anchor regional extensions toward the Sahel and the Atlantic corridor, potentially serving inland West African markets that currently rely on transit through Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire or Nigeria.

“Together with our Mauritanian partners, we are ready to develop new services and regional extensions,” EllaLink CEO Philippe Dumont said.

The landing is the latest in a string of moves bringing African coastal markets closer to European data hubs, alongside the 2Africa, Equiano and Medusa cable systems that have come online or expanded over the past two years.

DStv is the largest pay-television operator in Africa. From a R150 entry-tier in South Africa to a ₦44,500 Premium subscription in Nigeria, the service spans more than 50 African markets, six pricing tiers per country, hundreds of live channels, and a fast-growing streaming layer. This guide collects what subscribers actually need to know in 2026: what each package includes, what it costs in your country, what hardware you need, and how DStv compares with the alternatives.

DStv is operated by MultiChoice, the Johannesburg-listed broadcasting group that originated the platform in 1995 as Africa’s first digital satellite TV service. MultiChoice today serves more than 21 million subscribers across the continent, with DStv as its premium tier alongside the lower-cost GOtv brand.

How DStv works

DStv is delivered three ways in 2026: traditional satellite (via a dish and decoder), streaming (via the DStv Stream app or a Streama decoder over broadband), and a hybrid combining both. Pricing is tier-based. Most countries offer six tiers, with prices set by the local MultiChoice subsidiary and typically adjusted once a year.

Standard tier names across most markets, in descending order: Premium, Compact Plus, Compact, Family, Access, and EasyView (or the local equivalent). Nigeria uses local tier names — Premium, Compact Plus, Compact, Confam, Yanga, Padi — reflecting DStv Nigeria’s separate consumer branding. Ghana and Kenya replace EasyView with Lite at the entry tier.

DStv South Africa: packages and prices

South Africa is DStv’s home market and the largest by subscriber base. Six tiers are available, all delivered through MultiChoice South Africa.

The Premium tier is the only one carrying every SuperSport channel, the M-Net premium drama and movie channels (M-Net, M-Net Movies Premiere, Action+, Smile), most international news brands (CNN, BBC News, Sky News, Al Jazeera English). Compact Plus drops Premium-exclusive sports rights but keeps most general entertainment. Compact and Family are the volume tiers most South African households subscribe to. Access and EasyView retain the major free-to-air carriages (SABC, e.tv) plus a thin selection of paid channels — appropriate when the household primarily watches free content but wants a basic decoder for picture quality and extra channel breadth. Customers can also see DStv Streaming pricing options, which include streaming-only contracts.

DStv Nigeria: packages and prices

Nigeria has DStv’s largest African subscriber base outside South Africa. Local tier names differ — Confam, Yanga and Padi replace Family, Access and EasyView at the lower end — reflecting MultiChoice Nigeria’s deliberate localisation.

Nigerian DStv pricing has been a recurring subject of regulatory and consumer attention. The Nigerian Communications Commission and consumer protection bodies have intervened on occasion when MultiChoice Nigeria announced subscription increases without notice. Subscribers should expect the price list to track inflation and exchange-rate movements, and to be reviewed periodically.

DStv Ghana: packages and prices

Ghana retains the standard SADC tier names (Family, Access) at the mid and lower end and uses Lite as the entry point. Ghanaian subscribers also have access to Multi TV, a free-to-air competitor on satellite, which captures a meaningful share of the lower-tier market that Lite is priced against.

DStv Kenya: packages and prices

Kenya is DStv’s flagship East African market. Pricing is reviewed annually by MultiChoice Kenya and is published in Kenyan Shilling.

Other key African markets

Six other markets where tech.africa readers regularly research DStv pricing — Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana — are detailed in the table below. All use the standard six-tier structure with local currency pricing.

Zimbabwe is the unusual case: MultiChoice prices DStv there in US dollars rather than Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG), reflecting the country’s de-facto dollarisation. Subscribers pay in USD through authorised channels including EcoCash and bank transfer. Ethiopia, Botswana, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia each price in their local currency, with adjustments tracking inflation rather than a fixed schedule.

Local channel mixes vary across these markets. Ugandan Premium subscribers get NTV Uganda and NBS as part of the package; Tanzanian and Zambian tiers carry local public broadcasters; Ethiopian tiers include EBC, ESAT and Walta TV; Zimbabwean tiers include ZBC channels.

Beyond these ten markets, DStv also operates in Angola, Cameroon, Eswatini, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda and Senegal, all on the same six-tier structure with country-specific pricing and channel mixes. Subscribers there should consult the relevant dstv.com country page for current local pricing.

DStv channels

DStv channels fall into broad genre categories that determine which tier carries them.

• Sports — SuperSport carries Premier League, UEFA Champions League, La Liga, Serie A, English football lower divisions, F1, MotoGP, golf majors, tennis grand slams, plus African football including AFCON and the CAF Champions League. The Premium tier holds the full SuperSport bouquet.
• Movies — M-Net Movies Premiere, M-Net Movies Action+, M-Net Movies Smile, plus international brands including AMC, Sony Movies, MGM and Hallmark.
• Series and drama — M-Net, FOX, AMC, Universal TV, Studio Universal.
• News — CNN International, BBC News, Sky News, Al Jazeera English, eNCA, Newzroom Afrika, NTA International, plus regional news brands per market.
• Kids — Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., DreamWorks, Da Vinci.
• Local — SABC 1, 2, 3 (South Africa), STV (Nigeria, multiple Africa Magic channels), Channel One Ghana, Citizen TV (Kenya), and equivalents per market.
• Religion, lifestyle, music, documentary, factual, Indian/Asia bouquets at relevant tiers.

Subscribers wanting to confirm whether a specific channel is on their tier should consult the dstv.com country page; channel carriage occasionally moves up or down a tier as MultiChoice negotiates new content rights.

DStv decoders

DStv supports four decoder generations in 2026, each with a different feature set and price point.

• DStv Explora Ultra — the flagship 4K UHD decoder. Records up to four channels simultaneously, integrates the DStv Stream app, supports Netflix, YouTube and DStv Now. Available in all major African markets.
• DStv Explora 3 — the previous-generation HD PVR with 1TB storage and similar app integrations except 4K playback.
• DStv HD decoder — entry-level satellite-only decoder for households that don’t need recording functionality. Cheapest hardware option.
• DStv Streama — the streaming-only set-top box, launched in 2020. Connects to broadband (Wi-Fi or Ethernet) and delivers DStv content over the internet, plus YouTube, JOOX and (in some markets) Netflix without satellite installation. Designed for fibre-served households.

The Streama option in particular reshaped DStv’s go-to-market in densely populated African cities, where fibre rollouts have made satellite installation unnecessary for many subscribers.

DStv Streaming and the DStv app

DStv Streaming is the standalone streaming product, launched in South Africa in 2020 and now expanded to most African markets. Subscribers can choose streaming-only packages at slightly lower prices than the equivalent satellite tier, watch on smartphone, tablet, PC, smart TV, Apple TV, Chromecast or the Streama decoder, and switch packages monthly without a contract. Streaming-only contracts are month-to-month rather than the 12 or 24-month commitments that come with satellite-and-decoder bundles.

The MyDStv app and the DStv Now web service give existing satellite subscribers access to live TV and catch-up content as part of their subscription, including across free DStv Now channels available even on entry-tier packages.

DStv vs the alternatives

African pay-TV is increasingly contested. The main alternatives sit at different price and feature points, and most subscribers consider at least one of them.

DStv competes directly with GOtv (its lower-cost MultiChoice sibling) and StarSat (operated by China’s StarTimes) on satellite or terrestrial reach. OpenView occupies the free-to-air market and is increasingly significant as a complementary choice for cost-sensitive households.

How to subscribe to DStv

DStv subscription is straightforward.

1. Choose a country site (e.g. dstv.com/en-za/ for South Africa) and the package that fits your budget and viewing needs.
2. For satellite: select decoder + installation. Installation requires line-of-sight to the relevant Intelsat satellite. MultiChoice operates an installer network in each market.
3. For streaming-only: download the DStv Stream app or use dstv.com on a desktop browser, complete sign-up with an ID number and email, and pay with a credit or debit card.
4. Provide payment method — debit order, credit card, mobile money or in-person at MultiChoice agents and partner retailers depending on the market.
5. Receive activation. Streaming activates within minutes; satellite within 24-48 hours after installation.

Bills can typically be paid through the MyDStv app, the country website, mobile money (M-Pesa, MoMo, etc. depending on market), bank transfer, or at retailers like Pep, Shoprite, supermarket chains and dedicated MultiChoice walk-in centres.

Free channels available with DStv

Even on the lowest-tier subscription — or with a DStv decoder that’s not actively subscribed — some channels are free to view across most markets. These typically include the local broadcaster (SABC channels in South Africa, NTA in Nigeria, GBC in Ghana, KBC in Kenya), the parliamentary channel where applicable, and a handful of free-to-air religious and community channels. DStv documents the free-channel set per market on its country sites; we cover the South African case in detail in the DStv Now free channels guide.

Frequently asked questions

Pricing verified against DStv’s official country sites on 8 May 2026. Prices and channel mixes are subject to occasional revision by the local MultiChoice subsidiary; this page is reviewed every 6 months for accuracy.

Google has launched a content series titled Inside the AICC from its Accra AI Community Centre in Accra, Ghana, sharing how the hub is training young Africans to build apps and AI agents. The first instalment, written by Google Ghana site lead Perry Nelson, profiles a recent FlutterFlow workshop where participants without coding backgrounds built functional prototypes in a single afternoon.

Inside the FlutterFlow session

The workshop’s stated goal was to democratise development. Participants used AI agents and interactive tools to build apps without deep coding knowledge, watching ideas evolve into working prototypes within hours rather than weeks. The format reflects a broader Google bet to lower the barrier to AI tooling for African developers.

Beyond a single session

AICC programming runs weekly. Recent sessions include an educational visit with students from Tetr College of Business, who pitched projects ranging from digital banking to career platforms, and a Girls in Sports Circle exploring AI and wearables for athlete performance. The centre is positioned as a free, accessible space for creators, developers, and thinkers in Ghana’s capital.

Africa’s AI moment

The AICC programming sits inside a broader Google Africa push. The company recently opened 100,000 Career Certificate scholarships in Ghana on 6 May 2026, and earlier selected 15 startups for its Africa Accelerator Class 10. Inside the AICC content series adds a community-storytelling layer to that institutional commitment.

“When we remove traditional barriers to entry and provide a collaborative environment, our youth do not just consume technology, they create it,” Nelson wrote, framing the AICC as a space where young African talent transforms small ideas into scalable solutions. Inside the AICC will run as an ongoing series highlighting workshop outcomes and project pitches.

The mobile industry trade body, which represents operators serving most African subscribers, said in a statement issued from London, United Kingdom, that connectivity should be treated as essential infrastructure on par with water and energy. Networks underpin emergency communications, financial services, healthcare and education across the continent — yet operating conditions are increasingly precarious.

What is at risk

Where digital gaps remain greatest, fuel shortages do not just disrupt telecom operations; they threaten essential services, economic activity and broader digital progress, the GSMA said. The group framed connectivity continuity as a national development priority rather than a sector-specific concern, citing the role of resilient networks in sustaining commerce, digital payments and emergency coordination during economic strain.

What the GSMA is calling for

The trade body called for urgent, coordinated action between governments, regulators and operators to keep networks operational. Its agenda emphasises improving energy efficiency, protecting critical sites and continued network investment, alongside policy responses that recognise mobile networks as essential infrastructure under crisis conditions.

African context

African mobile networks are particularly fuel-dependent because of grid unreliability across many markets, with operators running diesel backup at base station sites. Internet exchange operators have invested heavily in resilience, and mobile operators, including MTN, Vodacom, and Safaricom, have rolled out solar-powered base stations and battery banks in recent years. Diesel costs continue to pressure operating margins regardless.

The mobile industry remains committed to working with governments and regulators to keep Africa connected, protect gains in digital inclusion and build more resilient digital economies for the future, the trade body said. The intervention aligns with the African Union Agenda 2063, which positions digital infrastructure as a continental development pillar.

The Chinese telecoms equipment maker unveiled a refreshed F5G-A (fifth-generation fixed network advanced) product line at the Global Optical Summit (GOS) 2026 Africa, attended by more than 300 industry professionals at the Huawei Intelligent Africa Congress in Cairo. The line targets industry communication networks, all-optical campus systems and optical sensing applications for African enterprise customers.

What is in the F5G-A line

For high-security sectors such as government, electric power and transportation, Huawei announced an OTN (optical transport network) communication solution integrated with quantum key distribution (QKD), built around the OptiXtrans E6600 optical platform. The system pairs the industry’s first integrated QKD board with classical optical communication, providing, according to Huawei, a quantum-resistant transport layer.

For substations, the company launched a smart-substation product line offering multi-dimensional monitoring, full IoT coverage and unified access to sensing terminals. The campus segment received an upgrade from FTTO (fibre to the office) to iFTTO, integrating networking, sensing, computing and management. New all-optical access points (OptiXstar W857I and W817I) natively support IoT and sensing capabilities.

The most novel item is a fibre-sensing solution for predicting conveyor idler health in mining, building materials, logistics and electricity generation. Using the optical fibres themselves as distributed acoustic sensors, the solution detects abnormal conveyor sounds in real time, enabling unmanned inspection rounds.

African deployments shared at the summit

Customers using the all-optical campus and industrial communication architectures shared deployment experience at the summit. Ahmed Sorour, project director at the Engineering Consultants Group (ECG), described the group’s rollout of an all-optical campus network. Dr Bahaa, head of communications, computers and protection at the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC), presented the company’s industrial communications build.

Optical-AI convergence as a strategy

Huawei is positioning the F5G-A range as the optical layer of an Optical-AI Convergence strategy, in which fibre networks evolve from passive transport into AI-enabled infrastructure for industries pursuing digital transformation. “Through the integration of optical technology with AI, Huawei is laying a solid foundation for Africa’s digital and intelligent transformation,” said Rock Qin, vice president of Huawei Northern Africa, in his opening remarks.

The Cairo summit is part of Huawei’s broader Africa industry engagement, which includes a digital transformation alliance launched with North African operators in March 2026.

Heirs Energies, the Lagos-headquartered indigenous Nigerian operator of OML 17, said it has deployed Starlink connectivity across its remote sites, enabling real-time monitoring and Internet of Things (IoT) integration at locations that previously lacked stable industrial bandwidth. The company announced the rollout ahead of its Gold Sponsorship at African Energy Week 2026 in Cape Town, South Africa.

OML 17 in numbers

OML 17 is a 1,300 km² onshore licence Heirs Energies has operated since 2021. The company has more than doubled production at the asset since then, lifting oil output to over 50,000 barrels per day and gas to 120-135 million standard cubic feet per day. Its Brownfield Excellence programme has reactivated more than 100 dormant wells, with uptime sustained above 85%.

A separate joint venture between Heirs Energies and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company is targeting capture of approximately 180 million standard cubic feet per day of flare gas from OML 17, with five private offtakers signed and commissioning expected in Q3 2026. The initiative falls under Nigeria’s Decade of Gas policy.

Capital structure

In December 2025, Heirs Energies secured a $750 million dual-tranche reverse-based lending facility from the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), supporting OML 17 development and a medium-term ambition to scale toward 100,000 barrels per day. The facility partly financed an equity move on 31 December 2025 in which Heirs Energies acquired a 20.7% stake in Seplat Energy for approximately $496 million, becoming the listed operator’s largest shareholder.

An indigenous footprint in digital oil

The Starlink deployment positions Heirs Energies inside a wider trend of African oil-and-gas operators using satellite connectivity to digitalise upstream assets. ExxonMobil has deployed autonomous drones for inspection in Angola’s Block 15, and TotalEnergies is using AI-enabled seismic processing in Blocks 17 and 32. The Heirs Energies rollout brings comparable capabilities to indigenous Nigerian operations, rather than only to international majors.

“Heirs Energies exemplifies the rise of indigenous African operators scaling responsibly and profitably,” said NJ Ayuk, executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber, which is hosting Heirs Energies as a Gold Sponsor of AEW 2026. The conference takes place from 12 to 16 October 2026 in Cape Town, including a new AI and Data Center Track aimed at framing data infrastructure within Africa’s wider energy transition.