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Beyond Airlines Like Enugu Air, Southeast Needs Rail Tracks To Advance

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Nigeria enters the era of state-backed airlines: “Enugu State has joined the exclusive club of Nigerian states running their own commercial airlines, following the official launch of Enugu Air on Monday. The new carrier becomes another state-backed aviation venture in the country, after similar initiatives in Imo, Akwa Ibom, and Cross River states.”

I want to wish Enugu the best of luck with this. Yet, my preference remains rail tracks to connect communities. The “main street” Nigerians do not fly; they move, and until we give them rail tracks, nothing much will happen. We can have airlines and airports, but we need train stations and tracks.

I call regional governors to come together and pull resources to have railway systems understanding that railways must not be designed to be profitable. Indeed, if we have a functional market system, we can tax the economic activities and cover losses from rail tracks. In other words, if Southeast Railways loses N0.5 billion but expands the economy by N200b, and when you tax that expansion, you can recover N2b which does imply, you are doing great. (Check Amtrak USA, which is yet to make any profit since 1971).

Enugu, Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, and Imo: we need a regional railway system. But since no one has the capital to do this alone, we need all to come together.  We want the trains even as we celebrate Enugu Air.

Enugu Air Takes Off: State Joins Aviation Industry Amid Questions Over Strategy and Ownership

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Enugu State has joined the exclusive club of Nigerian states running their own commercial airlines, following the official launch of Enugu Air on Monday. The new carrier becomes another state-backed aviation venture in the country, after similar initiatives in Imo, Akwa Ibom, and Cross River states.

The airline’s inaugural flight — a symbolic journey from Lagos — landed at the newly upgraded international wing of Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, marking what Governor Peter Mbah described as a historic moment.

Piloted by Enugu-born Captain Kelechi Ossai, the aircraft is one of three Embraer jets that make up the airline’s initial fleet.

Governor Mbah emphasized that the project is fully owned by the Enugu State government and is meant to serve students, traders, investors, and everyday travelers. He described it as a key part of his administration’s broader economic transformation agenda, aimed at turning Enugu into a premier destination for investment, tourism, and quality living.

“Enugu Air is a triumph of vision, a testament to Nigeria’s immense aviation potential and economic renaissance. It was established to create jobs and career paths for our young people; faster and more reliable access to markets, clients, and capital for businesspeople; simpler and more dignified access to home for the diaspora; and a ready gateway to collaboration and opportunity for investors interested in Enugu,” the governor said.

The launch ceremony drew top dignitaries, including Nigeria’s Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo, who pledged federal support for the initiative. He revealed that approvals for regional routes were underway and defended the federal government’s controversial decision to concession the Akanu Ibiam Airport, calling it a necessary reform.

Governor Mbah said Enugu Air would initially operate a triangular route linking Enugu, Abuja, and Lagos, with plans to extend to other major cities including Port Harcourt, Owerri, Benin, and Kano, before eventually branching into international destinations.

“This airline is a gift to the people of Enugu,” Mbah declared. “It is built to drive commerce, mobility, and investment. It reflects our administration’s vision of a thriving, connected, and globally competitive state.”

The airline is launching at a time when Nigeria’s aviation industry is seeing increased demand but also faces recurring challenges around safety, regulation, and operational sustainability.

FIJ Investigation Reveals Operational Gap

Despite the high-profile unveiling, a report by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) uncovered that Enugu Air currently lacks independent infrastructure for bookings or operational autonomy. When potential customers attempt to book a flight, they are redirected to the website of XEJet, a Lagos-based premium-class airline. A prompt on the site reads: “This flight is operated by XEJet and you would be redirected to the XEJet website to complete your booking.”

This has raised concerns that Enugu Air may, for now, be a rebranded partnership, rather than an operational airline with its own Air Operator Certificate (AOC) — a regulatory requirement for full-fledged flight operations.

Echoes of Nigeria Air

The situation has drawn unfavorable comparisons to the now-infamous Nigeria Air, a national carrier that was dramatically unveiled by the federal government in 2023. Then Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika paraded an aircraft in national colours and held a lavish unveiling ceremony—only for it to be revealed later that the plane was borrowed from Ethiopian Airlines for the event.

The airline lacked an operational license and had no real structure to begin flights. After public outrage and a barrage of legal and regulatory issues, Nigeria Air never took off, becoming one of the most ridiculed aviation projects in the country’s history.

A Familiar Playbook: Imo and Cross River’s Precedents

Enugu Air’s current arrangement draws parallels to previous state-run airline experiments that failed to take off sustainably.

In 2017, Imo State’s former governor Rochas Okorocha launched Imo Air, claiming the state had acquired five aircraft and was partnering with Dana Air to run them for 10 years, since the state lacked a license. The airline’s operations quietly faded within a year, with no significant follow-up from the government.

Similarly, in July 2021, former Cross River governor Ben Ayade launched Cally Air, operating through Aero Contractors. While Ayade said the airline was fully owned by the state with no loans taken, there were never clear operational guidelines or financial disclosures. Cally Air quickly faded from the aviation radar, its planes reportedly absorbed into Aero’s broader operations.

Enthusiasm Meets Skepticism

Although Governor Mbah insists Enugu Air is built for long-term value, Nigerians are skeptical. Some note that reliance on existing operators, and a lack of independent booking systems are red flags that have plagued similar ventures in the past.

“In 2025, a state govt. in Nigeria launches a 3rd party airline where the state acts as an affiliate marketer, then goes around to throw a ceremony and party at the airport for the same affiliate marketing project …  indeed “Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” Chris Ani, a social media user, posted.

Others also question whether the state has provided enough transparency around the financial and legal arrangements with XEJet — including how much public funds have been committed, whether the aircraft are leased or state-owned, and the duration and terms of the partnership.

Nevertheless, Enugu’s move underscores a growing interest by subnational governments in air transportation as a tool for economic development — particularly in regions underserved by Nigeria’s limited airline options. This is as experts call on the federal and state governments to focus on rail transport, providing an affordable alternative to road transportation.

2025’s Top New Slot Hits for Aussie Casinos

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Australian casinos are undergoing a high-stakes upgrade as 2025 brings a wave of next-generation slot titles. As detailed in the latest analysis from online-pokies-real-money-australia.com, online pokies are rapidly evolving into sophisticated digital experiences with cinematic visuals, complex mechanics, and multi-level bonus engines.

These changes aren’t isolated — major venues such as PlayAmo Casino, WooCasino, and Ricky Casino are expanding their slot line-ups, reflecting a national trend toward gamified gambling entertainment.

Slot Mechanics — Complexity Drives Engagement

What kicked off as a simple pull of a lever has now turned into something closer to an interactive puzzle. The latest slots dropping in 2025 aren’t just about spinning reels — they’re packed with cascading wins, fat progressive jackpots, cluster-style payouts, and full-blown storylines that shift as you play. It’s less one-arm bandit, more full-on digital adventure.

Developers are catering to a generation raised on mobile and console gaming, integrating:

  • progression systems
  • character arcs
  • unlockable content

This shift in Aussie online pokies lines up with the growing appetite for more immersive play and a bit of skill in the mix — all while sticking to the rulebook. We’re seeing bonus rounds that jump between screens and even in-game buys using virtual credits popping up in demo mode. And this isn’t just talk — the newest slots hitting in 2025 are already running with these features, blending layered gameplay and sharp pacing. What follows are prime examples of how far online pokies Australia have stepped things up.

The Big Lap: Rapid Link (NetGame)

This slot plays on the Australian love for long road trips and big rewards. “The Big Lap: Rapid Link” from NetGame showcases a 5×4 reel grid with a built-in “rapid jackpot” system. Featuring outback visuals, this game introduces a fast-paced link feature, where landing six or more fuel symbols can instantly trigger one of fixed jackpots.

The standout is its Route Bonus, where each landmark hit during free spins increases multiplier values. Simulated tests show a 96.1% RTP and medium volatility — ideal for players who enjoy build-up mechanics. The title is already live at multiple pokies online operators, including those servicing mobile casinos exclusively.

Le King (Hacksaw Gaming)

“Le King” by Hacksaw Gaming is a slick-looking slot that throws you straight into a neon-soaked version of retro Paris — think old-school charm with a bit of glitz. It spins on a 6×5 grid and dishes out cascading wins, so every cluster you hit clears the deck and lines up another crack at a payout without coughing up more coins.

The real kicker? Golden Squares. These beauties can pop out instant cash, juicy multipliers, or even tee you up for one of the fixed jackpots — with the top prize punching out a whopping 20,000x your bet. Throw in random extras like the cheeky Clover symbol and the Treasure Pot, and you’ve got a game that keeps you guessing every spin.

With an RTP of 96.14%, “Le King” offers a balanced risk-reward profile. Hacksaw has also made it available in free demo mode both on their official website and through selected Australia online pokies platforms, allowing users to explore the slot’s full functionality before committing real funds.

Dragon Queen Megaways (BGAMING)

Riding the wave of fantasy fanfare, BGAMING’s “Dragon Queen Megaways” whips out six reels packed with up to 20,000 ways to win. It’s running on the Megaways engine, which means every spin shakes things up — the number of symbols per reel changes on the fly, so your odds are always on the move and no two spins feel the same.

Key features include Wild Multipliers, Refilling and Buy Bonus, where players can win max x6000. The average RTP sits at 96.75%, slightly lower than peers but balanced by frequent mid-range wins. Australian online pokies operators report that it’s among their most replayed titles in Q2 2025. Free versions are available both in casino lobbies and through the BGAMING site.

Heist Guys (ELK Studios)

ELK Studios brings humour and action to the reels with “Heist Guys”, a 5×5 cascading slot that tells a full comic-book-style story of two bumbling crooks. It features Walking Wilds that progress toward safes, triggering cash multipliers.

“Boost Mode” allows players to buy direct access to special rounds — a controversial yet effective feature that’s now regulated on AU online pokies casinos. RTP is 94%, with a max win potential of 10,000x.

Play Modes: Real Cash and Free Versions

Most of the featured titles are available in dual modes. Free versions — identical in gameplay, minus withdrawal potential — are increasingly common across online pokies sites. This trend serves two roles: providing entertainment without risk and functioning as soft onboarding for new users. Developers like NetGame and BGAMING also embed playable demos on their official websites, contributing to a 22% increase in organic traffic over the past 12 months.

Why these Slots Matter in 2025

Slots are no longer one-dimensional experiences. The newest games double as interactive entertainment products, sometimes resembling mini-games more than traditional pokies. The latest generation emphasises visual fidelity, interactive choices, and gamified progression. Titles like “The Big Lap” and “Heist Guys” showcase how the industry is shifting — with top Aussie online pokies venues quickly adopting these updates to stay competitive in both land-based and digital formats.

Gamblers are spending longer on individual sessions, partly due to the layered bonus structures and partly because the content itself is engaging. And as these trends continue, pokies online developers are set to push even further into territory once reserved for video game studios.

South African AI Startup Cerebrium Raises $8.5M to Scale Serverless Infrastructure For Real-Time AI Applications

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Cerebrium, a serverless AI infrastructure platform designed to simplify the development and scaling of multimodal AI applications, has raised $8.5 million in seed funding.

The round was led by Gradient Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Authentic Ventures, and several strategic angel investors and operators.

With the fresh capital, Cerebrium plans to bolster its engineering team to keep pace with enterprise demand and accelerate product development. The company aims to introduce new features to enhance its platform’s capabilities, particularly in real-time AI applications like digital avatars, which could have far-reaching implications for industries such as gaming, entertainment, and telehealth.

Founded by Michael Louis and Jonathan Irwin, Cerebrium is a serverless AI infrastructure platform built from the ground up to power the next generation of high-performance AI applications.

Cerebrium emerged from the founders’ own frustrations while building AI-powered products. “Tooling was fragmented, there was an education gap between theory and production, the unit economics didn’t make sense, and development cycles took months,” explained CEO Michael Louis. “We built Cerebrium so engineers can focus on building AI products users love with real business impact without needing a dedicated infrastructure team or incurring massive cloud costs.” 

Cerebrium supports applications like voice AI, real-time digital avatars, and healthcare solutions, offering low-latency, cost-effective serverless GPU infrastructure with sub-5-second cold-start times and up to 40% cost savings compared to traditional cloud providers. From real-time voice bots to multimodal inference pipelines and large-scale batch jobs, the platform makes it radically easier for teams to deploy, scale, and operate AI workloads without managing a single server.

Cerebrium’s platform powers some of today’s most cutting-edge AI startups, including Tavus, Deepgram, and Vapi, among others. It is specifically optimized for real-time, high-performance use cases such as voice agents, LLM fine-tuning, video model inference, and large-scale data analytics.

Beyond its core offering of serverless GPU infrastructure, Cerebrium provides support for batching, multi-region deployments, and large-scale data processing. This allows engineering teams to seamlessly run compute-heavy workloads with minimal configuration, scaling on demand while only paying for what they use. Importantly, the platform also meets enterprise-level security and data residency requirements, reducing the burden of compliance.

The AI infrastructure platform performance has won praise from key users. Roey Paz-Priel, ML Engineer at Tavus, noted, “We run a range of real-time audio and video models, and performance is everything. Cerebrium consistently delivers the speed and reliability we need without overhead. Even as we scaled rapidly and went viral, they met our compute demands with stability.”

Eylul Kayin, Partner at Gradient, added, “What the Cerebrium team has accomplished with such a small group is impressive. They’re enabling some of the most advanced AI voice and video applications to scale effortlessly. As real-time AI becomes foundational to digital experiences, specialized elastic infrastructure like Cerebrium’s will be essential.”

Originally founded in Cape Town, South Africa, and now headquartered in New York City, Cerebrium plans to use the new capital to build additional features and meet growing enterprise demand. The company’s move to the U.S. reflects its ambition to compete globally, while its South African origins underscore the growing influence of African tech in AI innovation.

In A Blow to Google, Replit Joins Forces with Microsoft in Azure Partnership, Targeting Business Users and App Builders

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Replit, one of the most prominent rising stars in AI-assisted software development, has struck a strategic partnership with Microsoft that could significantly expand its reach while positioning Azure as a key player in the growing low-code/no-code development space.

Under the deal, Replit will become available through Microsoft’s enterprise cloud app marketplace, Azure Marketplace, enabling enterprise customers to purchase Replit subscriptions directly through Microsoft’s cloud platform. Additionally, Replit is integrating its platform with key Microsoft cloud services — including containers, virtual machines, and Microsoft’s flavor of Postgres, Neon Serverless Postgres, which is already supported by Replit’s backend.

The partnership means that Azure will capture revenue from Replit-built apps running in production, marking a mutually beneficial arrangement. While Microsoft already owns GitHub Copilot — one of the most widely used AI coding tools — Replit is not a direct competitor in the traditional sense. GitHub Copilot is geared toward professional developers using code editors like VS Code, and it competes more directly with tools like Cursor by Anysphere.

By contrast, Replit is aimed at a wider audience, including novice users, business managers, and professionals with little or no programming experience. Its browser-based interface allows users to describe the kind of application they want, and the platform handles everything from database setup to storage and authentication. Experienced users can dig deeper, using Replit’s support for various programming languages to customize or extend functionality.

Competing With Figma for Prototyping — Not Copilot

This partnership is being framed as a design and prototyping solution for non-technical users, with the companies positioning the tool as something akin to Figma, rather than a traditional developer IDE. In this use case, a non-programmer — like a sales manager—could use Replit to create internal apps, such as a dashboard that tracks the correlation between contract renewals and customer support tickets.

“We are enabling all employees across all functions to develop apps, regardless of coding experience, so we are complementary to Copilot from that perspective,” a Replit spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Replit’s Explosive Growth

The deal follows a period of staggering growth for Replit. In June, CEO Amjad Masad revealed that the company grew from $10 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just six months, a tenfold leap that puts it in elite company among venture-backed software startups.

Replit raised $97.4 million in its last funding round at a $1.1 billion post-money valuation, backed by Andreessen Horowitz and supported by notable investors like Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Coatue, Bloomberg Beta, Naval Ravikant, Y Combinator, and ARK Ventures. Masad said in June that the company has yet to touch most of its capital: “We still have over half our funding in the bank.”

Replit now claims over 500,000 business users on its platform, underlining its traction beyond just the hobbyist or solo developer crowd.

A Blow to Google Cloud?

The Microsoft deal could come as a blow to Google Cloud, which currently hosts many of Replit’s apps. Google had proudly featured Replit as a customer success story, but with Replit now integrating deeply into Microsoft Azure’s ecosystem, the partnership suggests a broader multicloud strategy that gives Replit flexibility and scalability — and gives Microsoft an edge in enterprise adoption.

However, Replit confirmed to TechCrunch that the deal with Microsoft is non-exclusive, meaning Google Cloud will continue to support Replit-hosted apps, but Azure will now serve as another major partner. This approach also leaves room for other vibe coders to strike similar integration deals with cloud platforms, signaling how rapidly the AI coding landscape is evolving.

Rising Competition in the “Vibe Coding” Arena

Replit’s rise comes amid stiff competition from other startups riding the same trend. Lovable, a European rival, has reportedly hit $50 million ARR and is said to be raising funds at a $2 billion valuation. Another startup, Bolt, hit $40 million ARR in just five months. These companies are defining what’s being dubbed the “vibe coding” space — a blend of AI, low-code, and user-friendly design-first programming experiences.

The Replit–Microsoft tie-up signals a broader shift in software development: more enterprise teams building internal tools without waiting for IT, and more non-engineers prototyping applications that once required full-stack developer support.

It also highlights Microsoft’s evolving strategy in AI and developer tooling. By supporting Replit — even while owning GitHub Copilot — Microsoft shows a growing interest in fostering diverse entry points into AI-powered software creation, from hardcore coders to curious first-timers.

With AI transforming the software stack at every level, this deal between Replit and Microsoft could mark a pivotal moment — not just for the two companies, but for the way software gets made across industries.