It’s Moonshot week!
The OPay IPO is taking shape: OPay, the Nigerian mobile money company, has revealed how it intends to go public, with 16 million American depository shares up for sale at a price range of $19 to $21 each. Should the shares sell at the upper end, proceeds could reach $336 million. A listing would give the market a public valuation for one of Nigeria's best-known payments businesses, which matters both to the country's fintech industry and to those who depend on the app.
Elsewhere, this week, government IT teams are bracing for trouble as a wave of PHP-related flaws spreads. On Friday, the website of South Africa's Presidency was briefly taken down after two serious vulnerabilities in PHP, the programming language behind millions of websites, came to light before patches existed. Dubbed “PHP2Shell”, the flaws might allow attackers to execute malicious code on servers that are exposed.
Since around 10,000 South African servers that are reachable from the internet use PHP, pulling the site offline, at least for now, was a sensible precaution. Still, we wonder whether those sites will return on updated PHP releases, or whether the government's IT staff face some sleepless nights.
Let’s dive in.
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What is in this week's briefing
- Banque du Caire has confirmed it is selling a 45% stake
- OPay is targeting $336 million in its IPO
- Starlink makes roaming more difficult for South Africans
- Kenya makes a determined push to get off the FATF list
- Web 3 and the Wider Internet
- Job Openings
Banking
Banque du Caire's share sale grows considerably
Following the well-received market debut of MNT-Halan, investors in Egypt are already eyeing the next deal. Egypt put more Banque du Caire shares on offer, and buyers still asked for a larger allocation.
So what changed? Banque Misr, which owns Banque du Caire and is backed by the Egyptian state, has confirmed that 45% of the lender will be offloaded rather than the 30% first planned. If the offer price lands at the anticipated EGP 5.30 ($0.1), the transaction would bring in roughly EGP 36.4 billion ($680 million), the biggest flotation (IPO) Egypt has seen in five years. Banque du Caire is Egypt's sixth-biggest commercial bank by size.
Appetite looks healthy. Reports say institutional orders covered the book about six times over, and both the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have committed to taking as much as 15.74% each of the shares reserved for select investors.
Recap: last week we reported that Banque Misr was weighing a larger offering of 45%, after meetings with prospective buyers drew more interest than had been anticipated. Egypt's Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) has since cleared the enlargement.
The offering remains wholly secondary, so Banque du Caire receives none of the proceeds. Banque Misr is disposing of shares it already holds and will keep 55% of the lender.
Why investors see value in Banque du Caire
Reading between the lines: enlarging an offering by half and yet pricing it at the upper end of the bracket is a helpful sign of demand. Valuation matters as well, though. Two brokerages put Banque du Caire's worth at EGP 6.55 ($0.12) and EGP 7.80 ($0.15) for each share, in that order, both higher than the EGP 5.30 ($0.1) expected price at which shares are offered.
So investors are not merely placing a macro wager on Egypt. What they have been handed is a big lender priced at a level that some analysts continue to regard as cheap.
Looking at the bigger picture, Egypt must still raise nearly $1 billion through asset sales if it is to hit the $1.5 billion goal for offloading state-owned holdings, a goal linked to its International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrangement. Money aside, Banque du Caire offers the programme something genuinely valuable: evidence that the government is able to float a major asset, increase the size of the offering and still attract buyers.
Once shares start changing hands, the true examination will come. Banque du Caire attracted more orders than there were shares to sell at the price set for the sale, which suggests investors were eager to hold a stake in the bank. Even so, what the lender is really worth will only emerge when the market sets its own verdict.
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Fintech
OPay IPO: up to $336 million from a US share sale
OPay, the Nigerian mobile money company, plans to put 16 million American depository shares (ADSs) on sale at a price range of $19 to $21 each. The shares are expected to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the OPAY symbol, with all ADS representing 10 of OPay's ordinary shares.
For context, Bloomberg reported in May that OPay had held discussions with major banks about floating its shares in the United States, a move that could put a price tag of roughly $4 billion on the firm.
That figure was then only an estimate from the private market. Now OPay is presenting public investors with a concrete price range.
How the OPay IPO compares with the 2021 valuation
OPay was last valued in 2021, when it secured $400 million in funding that put its worth at $2 billion. Its payments business has since grown, and so has the number of people using it. Revenue for the first half of 2026 came to $806 million, more than twice the figure a year earlier.
In addition, Standard Bank will put in up to $200 million in OPay through a distinct purchase of shares, made via its arm, Stanbic Africa Holdings. That gives the fintech an institutional backer with a strategic stake as it goes through the transition to a public listing, and it adds weight to the OPay IPO.
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Internet
Starlink to shut out South Africans exploiting its roaming loophole
Starlink, the satellite Internet provider owned by Elon Musk, has existed in a regulatory grey area in South Africa. The service has no official launch in the country, yet South Africans have found a way to use it regardless. That workaround is about to end.
The news: Starlink now requires people on its Roam plan in South Africa to submit details of their journeys. Several people who have stayed online with Starlink hardware brought in from abroad have received alerts warning them to provide the information or lose their connection.
To put it plainly, the Internet firm has been locked in a disagreement with regulators over how it can satisfy the nation's requirements for foreign businesses operating in telecommunications, including rules on ownership and targets for BEE (black economic empowerment) set by the government.
Starlink suggested investing money in South Africa as a substitute for giving up equity. In the meantime, a rule that would allow foreign telecom operators to work here has met strong political resistance, and Starlink has stayed locked out of the market.
How the Roam workaround worked, and why it is closing
So how are people getting around this? South Africans purchased Starlink equipment and opened their accounts in nations where it was formally on sale. They then relied on Starlink Roam, an option intended for subscribers who carry their dish along when they travel.
Why does the company bother? For a while, it looked the other way. South African subscribers could remain connected even though the offering had no official local backing. That began to change in 2024, when Starlink started enforcing a cap of 60 days of continuous use in South Africa.
In some cases, the permitted length of stay was subsequently cut to 30 days, then shortened again to a mere seven. With the new travel registration requirement, Starlink gains an additional means of distinguishing real travellers from those who exploit Roam as a loophole.
What does this mean for South Africans? Anyone who has been using roaming as a workaround should brace for it to get harder. To sign up, Starlink asks customers to supply their full name, their nationality, when they were born and a government-issued ID, so passing off a long-term South African resident as a visitor is far more difficult.
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Economy
Kenya moves against concealed company owners as it works to leave the FATF list
Kenya has only two items left on its FATF to-do list, and one of the thorniest is stopping companies and trusts from hiding who owns them.
What is going on? The Treasury has said that, as it works towards exiting by April 2027, it will enforce beneficial ownership rules more strictly. Companies in Kenya are required to name anyone who ultimately owns or controls more than 10% of the business, although adherence has been uneven. Trusts, too, must now keep a record of who benefits from them under the freshly introduced Trust Administration Act.
The aim is to hinder anyone trying to hide funds behind layers of firms, nominee arrangements and trusts.
A quick primer for newcomers: Kenya has been on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) watch list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring since February 2024, owing to shortcomings in how it tackles and prosecutes cases of laundering illicit funds and financing terrorism. Kenya's Financial Reporting Centre (FRC) said on October 14 that it had dealt with 19 of the 21 action items.
What FATF still expects from Kenya
Even so, FATF's June assessment grouped the work Kenya still has to do under seven wide categories. These include who ultimately owns companies, financial intelligence, prosecutions for money laundering, and supervision of businesses considered high-risk.
Reading between the lines: Kenya's task has shifted from enacting rules to showing that they deliver results. FATF will look for proof that regulators can pinpoint who really owns a company, sanction firms that withhold ownership details, convert reports of suspicious transactions into usable intelligence, and pursue money-laundering cases in line with the risks the country faces.
The significance: FATF does not itself instruct countries to automatically apply additional checks to jurisdictions on its grey list. Other regulators are free to do so, though. In August 2025, the European Union (EU) added Kenya to its list of high-risk jurisdictions, which means greater scrutiny of transactions linked to Kenya.
Finishing all 21 tasks, though, will not on its own take Kenya off the watch list. Assessors from FATF must still be dispatched to confirm that the reforms genuinely work in practice, and only after that can the body's membership hold a vote on delisting. For now Kenya remains listed, which means banks and firms sending money abroad could continue to face extra scrutiny.
