👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – GoTyme employees to receive stocks

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Nigeria’s healthtech sector is built on a paradox: post-pandemic startup growth surged 195%, with 65 new startups entering the market between 2019 and 2025, yet capital is concentrated, and infrastructure is strained. This report maps where the sector actually stands.

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Don’t let the ‘capitalism is all sorts of things’ gimmick fool you; the reward for good work is more shares.

If you are a GoTyme Bank employee, the South African digital bank that earned $84.42 million in revenue in 2024, then you must have been grinning from ear to ear all weekend. 

The company, backed by billionaire Patrice Motsepe, said it will offer ownership shares to over 2,000 employees, directly setting them up to benefit from any growth it records in the near future.

The shares, called Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), give employees the right to own equity in the company and are becoming a common way for startups to attract talent and improve performance. In global tech, ESOPs have minted millionaires; at Google, many early employees became wealthy after the company’s 2004 IPO turned stock options into life-changing payouts. 

In Africa, former employees at Moniepoint, the Nigerian fintech unicorn, became millionaires after the startup raised a Series C round, creating a liquidity event. Employees at Arnergy, a Nigerian solar-tech startup, also made millions of naira after selling back shares to the company in 2025. ESOPs were also reportedly at the centre of a 2022 controversy at Flutterwave after several former employees alleged that the company withheld payments and reneged on agreements after their resignations.

While GoTyme, Africa’s most recent unicorn, has not disclosed how many stocks it will issue, the company said it will apply to employees across all levels.

These stock options typically vest upon a liquidity or exit event, such as a company raising funds, being acquired, or getting listed on an exchange. In GoTyme’s case, CEO Cheslyn Jacobs has hinted that the company plans to go public and is targeting a multi-billion-dollar valuation. 

The company, valued at $1.5 billion in its last funding round in December 2024, would be a welcome addition to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), where it would join tech-focused companies such as Optasia, Lesaka Technologies, and Karooooo. And there seems to be some urgency to it: the mood around a potential listing has shifted from a distant, next-decade prospect to a much shorter three-to-four-year horizon, said Jacobs.

Vumatel, South Africa’s largest fibre network operator, will fully acquire Herotel, the country’s fibre network provider, after four years of flirting with the idea.

In February 2022. Vumatel first bought a 45% stake in the fibre business, a move that helped it grow its customer base and reach by expanding fibre access into smaller towns and secondary cities, rather than just the big metros. 

In August, Vumatel announced its plans to acquire the entire business. However, that plan dragged on for years. 

Vumatel was seeing results, so it never gave up the pursuit.

The initial Herotel acquisition helped expand its network to 600,000 homes with about 274,000 active connections. It also enabled Vumatel to expand its overall fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) footprint to more than 2 million homes passed and nearly 830,000 connected by the end of 2024, reaching about 1 million active subscribers by early 2025. 

After years of pushing, South Africa’s Competition Commission, its antitrust regulator, approved the deal in March 2025. One year later, Vumatel has now received the telecoms regulator’s approval.

A fibre family tree: In August 2025, Vumatel’s parent company, Maziv, was itself acquired by Vodacom, South Africa’s largest telecom operator, following the Competition Commission’s approval to acquire a co-controlling stake. Vumatel, along with Dark Fibre Africa, Maziv’s other subsidiary, had already built a strong case as a key asset for South Africa’s largest telecom operator. With Herotel joining the family, the group further strengthens its reach into smaller towns and underserved markets, rounding out a broader national fibre footprint.

One of the key conditions regulators set for the Maziv deal was that Vodacom must keep its fibre network open to smaller Internet service providers. With Herotel now in the mix, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT), which sets policy direction for South Africa’s telecoms and broadcasting sectors and has been pushing for stricter infrastructure-sharing rules, will be keen on keeping that influence in check.

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a16z, one of the largest US venture capital firms, backs Stitch, a Saudi Arabia-based fintech with African operations

Mohamed Oueida, founder of Stitch, a Saudi Arabia-based fintech operating in African markets like Egypt and Kenya. Image Source: Wamda

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the Silicon Valley firm with $90 billion under management, has led a $25 million Series A round in Stitch, a Saudi Arabia-based fintech building the infrastructure layer that enables banks and financial institutions to move money and offer financial services via APIs. Stitch provides the plumbing that powers payments, accounts, and financial products behind the scenes for banks, lenders, and fintech apps. 

The round, which brings Stitch’s total funding to $35 million, marks a16z’s first investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and includes participation from Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed Ventures, and SVC. Founded in 2022 by Mohamed Oueida, Stitch said it has processed over $5 billion in transactions in the last six months alone, and its revenue grew 20x in 2025. 

Why does this matter for Africa? What makes a16z’s move notable is that it rarely leads early-stage rounds in this region, especially in infrastructure plays. Its last high-profile African bet came in 2023 when it backed Carry1st, the South African mobile gaming company, in a deal that showed just how selective its exposure to the continent and even the GCC has been. 

The venture capital firm called the Stitch deal a “rare greenfield opportunity” that exists in the Middle East. Stitch is not a consumer fintech app; it sits underneath the financial system, powering the rails that banks and fintechs build on. That kind of positioning is exactly what has made similar “invisible infrastructure” companies in the United States and Europe highly valuable, and why a16z is betting that the same shift is now playing out across the GCC and broader emerging markets. 

a16z also continues to run its Speedrun accelerator, a 12-week programme open to global founders, including Africans, offering up to $1 million in funding, along with visa and relocation support, for selected startups. 

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