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 SKAAP Reinvents Scan-and-Go Retail, Brings Self-Checkout to Canadian and US Stores
Long queues, crowded aisles and slow checkouts are a universal frustration for shoppers and a costly headache for retailers. For Samuel Ayo Oyedemi, the solution is to let customers scan, pay, and walk out. This drove Oyedemi to develop SKAAP, a mobile scan-and-go platform designed to make checkout seamless for small and medium-sized stores.
What sets SKAAP apart is its focus on accessibility and practicality. Rather than replacing existing systems, the app sits on top of a store’s current inventory, offering frictionless shopping without expensive hardware.
After testing in Canada, Oyedemi is now preparing to take SKAAP to the United States, aiming to bring the convenience of self-checkout to markets where higher foot traffic and tech-savvy shoppers can fully embrace it.
“I saw a company in Nigeria doing something similar, and I said to myself, if this technology can exist there, then there’s definitely a problem worth solving,” he said.
Other Tech News Stories You Should Read:
Nigeria’s Reevar Launches AI-Powered Digital Minds to Unlock On-Demand Expertise for Founders and Enterprises. Read now.
Ricursive Intelligence Raises $300m to Automate Chip Design with AI. Read now.
Wadhwani AI Global and Smart Africa Partner to Advance Responsible AI Adoption Across Africa.Read now.
On Startup Spotlight:
How Mark Essien is Building TripDesk, an AI Platform to Tackle Compliance in Corporate Travel
Nearly a decade before launching a new venture, Mark Essien had already begun to notice a structural flaw in the way large organisations manage travel. While building Hotels.ng, the platform he founded in 2012, Essien observed that booking a hotel room was rarely the real problem for corporate clients.
What began as recurring feedback from enterprise customers gradually revealed a deeper inefficiency. Large companies were not struggling to find rooms, they were struggling to navigate their own processes.
“They needed a more adapted interface, or something that works better for the actual problems that they were having,” he told TechCabal in an interview. “So, not just the booking platform, but something that works within their own constraints, which is that they tend to be very large and have a lot of approval processes.”
That realisation would eventually lead Essien to found TripDesk in 2025, an AI-driven platform built not to sell travel, but to untangle the bureaucracy behind it.
Quadri Adejumo brings you all the details. Read here.
Also Read:
Kenyan Startup Exodus Mobility Seeks to Bring Structure, Safety, and Predictability to Africa’s Informal Transport System. 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
