Hi, welcome to Tech This Evening, an After-Work Tech Newsletter from Techparley Africa. Sure, there is a lot to unpack right now. Sit back, while I walk you through.
Top Story: Nigeria’s Polytope Labs Builds Hyperbridge to End Crypto’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Bridge Hack Crisis
After years of catastrophic bridge exploits that have drained billions of dollars from the crypto ecosystem, Seun Lanlege, CEO and co-founder of Lagos-based Polytope Labs, says it wants to fix this.
According to him, Polytope Labs is building Hyperbridge, a cryptographic interoperability protocol designed to allow blockchains to verify each other directly without relying on humans, committees, or multisignature custodians.
In a sector defined by fragmentation and repeated security failures, Lanlege wants Hyperbridge to become the interoperability standard for the global blockchain industry.
“A multi-chain world has created fragmentation for everyone,” said Lanlege. “Users have their assets spread across multiple blockchains. We’re thinking about ways of consolidating this experience, kind of like how Google consolidated the internet.”
Other Tech News Stories You Should Read:
The Risks and Rewards of Investing in Startups: An In-depth Guide. Read now.
How to Start a HealthTech Startup: A Comprehensive Guide. Read now.
Temu Enters Strategic Partnership with Nigeria’s Dellyman to Ensure Seamless Delivery Across the Country. Read now.
On Startup Spotlight:
Zazu Raises $1 Million to Make Banking, Payroll, and Compliance Easy for African SMEs
Zazu, a digital financial operating system for African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to position itself as a “Mercury-style” banking experience for Africa.
Founded in 2024 by Rinse Jacobs and Germain Bahri, both former Solarisbank employees, Zazu says it raised the funding to accelerate its expansion in South Africa and Morocco, laying the groundwork for a pan-African rollout in 2026.
With more than 50 SMEs already in beta and a waitlist exceeding 1,000 businesses, the startup says it aims to address the funding and operational gap affecting Africa’s “missing middle.”
“Traditional banks have very archaic measures and metrics about how they deal with and bank SMEs,” says Jacobs. “There is a big mismatch at the moment between the daily tools that SMEs are using versus the kind of tools that they’re using in their banking environment.”
Quadri Adejumo brings you all the details. Read here.
Also Read:
MEST Africa Challenge 2025: Black Swan Wins $50,000, Showing a New Phase in Data-Driven Fintech Innovation. Yakub Abdulrasheed brings us the details, here.
Quote of the Day:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke.
Thank you for joining me yet again this evening. Stay safe, and see you tomorrow for the next tech newsletter.
Best, Quadri
