Few will argue against using digital payment systems to improve access to financial services for the 1.7 billion unbanked people in the world, but there are risks that regulators will need to check before allowing such innovation is launched on a massive scale, says Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) at a seminar on Big Tech and the Future of Finance at the annual meetings of the IMF/World Bank.
Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England (BoE)
Most central banks, he notes, are behind the digital financial innovation curve and as such, would need to step up their game to mitigate risks that may lurk in such good ideas. “New innovations in digital financial services are in positive themselves. However, good ideas can create unintended problems in other areas,” he says.
The BoE Governor cautioned against stifling innovation, but instead advised central banks to put in place regulatory guiding principles. It is still far too expensive, he says, for people to send money across borders and even domestically. For efficiency sake, Fintechs and digital payment systems can be of help.
India is a global leader in digital payment system, according to Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies, thanks to development of an inter-operable, open access digital payment architecture that covers 100 percent of the population. Digital payment, he adds, requires a smart phone to store data, however, the Indian model made provision for those without smartphones and even those without phones. Several countries are already looking to emulate the model, he claims.
A key worry over big tech’s inroad into digital payment system is the need to keep them from building dominant platforms and becoming monopolies, according to Jason Furman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University.
“The Ethos of ‘break things and repair them later’ doesn’t work for the global financial system,” he says.
David Marcus, Facebook’s head of Calibra, its yet-to-be-launched digital wallet, says its firm is sampling regulatory concerns before it launches next year.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.
THE equal work, equal pay movement surely got new converts after Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s new Managing Director made bold commitments to enforce pay parity at the IMF. “At the end of this meeting, I will sit down with human resources to discuss and review fairness across board,” she said emphatically.
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s new Managing Director
In a one-on-one conversation on Women, Work and Leadership moderated by Ravi Agrawal, Managing Editor of Foreign Policy at the ongoing annual meetings, Georgieva says everyone benefits from gender equality. Tracing her professional journey, she recounted how she used to work harder than her male colleagues as a professor just to earn equal pay, saying “we cannot afford to be gender blind anymore”.
“I used to be gender blind and believe you are either good at what you do or not,” she added
Beyond the moral argument for equality, the IMF, she says, bring evidence-based approach to the debate and show the economic benefits of gender equality. An IMF study finds that global GDP could be boosted by between 35 and 40 percent if unpaid work is captured in official statistics even as more women entering the labour force will help to attain the SDG’s.
She advocates for legal changes that can enable women achieve their full potential as about 1.7 billion women globally are hindered from fully achieving their potential due to legal constraints such as land ownership. How to achieve this? It will take nothing short of societal transformation to achieve gender parity while not unmindful of the fact that there will be pushbacks from more conservative societies, says Georgieva.
Firm political commitments and messaging from the top, she adds, will help sway public opinion and help more women in such societies get into the labour force.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.
AS changes in global climate wreaks havoc from coast to coast, the need to transition from fossil fuel as a source of energy to more sustainable renewable energy is now more urgent. However, this can be quickly achieved if the world invests more in new technologies to achieve energy efficiency, according to an IMF study, whose findings were discussed at the ongoing annual meetings.
Lama Kiyasseh of the IMF Research Department
The study, which looked at historical data covering 150 years and about 100 countries, shows that economic growth contributes increased consumption of energy as a growing middle class snap up energy-hungry durable products such as cars, fridges and air conditioners. However, the good news is that there is a decoupling of energy consumption growth and income growth at higher income threshold.
“Richer economies consume more energy than poorer ones. But only to a point because as countries get richer they move from biomass to more efficient sources of energy,” says Christian Bogmass of the IMF Research Department and one of the study authors.
The chokepoint of energy consumption, the study finds, is at $12,000 per capita income with an estimated energy peak at $120,000. Although, this means that energy consumption is increasing in emerging market economies such as China and India, it is levelling off in developed countries just as energy efficiency has reduced the energy consumption peak to $55,000 per capita which many rich countries have achieved.
To curb greenhouses gases, the world, according to Lama Kiyasseh, one of the study authors, must reduce its consumption of fossil fuel which could be achieved by an acceleration of the energy transition from fossil fuel to low carbon energy sources or a peak and decline in global energy consumption.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.
The new regulations will oblige domestic banks to withhold further funding where irregularities have been committed, and to cap the loan leverage of concerned micro-finance entities
Mr Tarek Amer, governor Central Bank of Egypt
The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has approved new regulations and terms regarding credit facilities provided by Egyptian banks to enterprises, associations and civil society organisations that provide micro-financing services.
The new regulations aim at establishing tighter controls on granting finance to those entities.
According to the new regulations and terms, banks have to submit those entities’ credit lines to the Egyptian Credit Bureau, I-Score, which will investigate the micro-finance enterprises or associations to ascertain that they did not take more than three loans from three different banking corporations.
Banks are also bound to attain a letter from the Financial Regulatory Association (FRA) affirming the performance safety of individual micro-finance enterprises or associations, their commitment to FRA micro-finance practicing standards, and verification that no prior breaches of standards have been committed.
The regulations also stipulate ceilings on entity leverage.
If micro-finance entities violate any provisions of Law №141 for 2014, which sets controls for micro-finance activity in Egypt’s domestic market, banks will be obliged to withhold further funds until the entity corrects any irregularities within a FRA-defined timescale.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
Freelancers play a very important role in the startup ecosystem today. Here are 4 important steps for hiring the right freelances to help you successfully launch a startup app idea.
Fifteen years ago, the thought of hiring complete strangers to build a startup app idea was out of the question for most entrepreneurs. Today, I could spend the whole day citing studies backing the significant contribution of freelancers to the startup community and the world economy at large.
Abdo Riani, founder of StartupCircle.co
When I started my first startup venture back when I was a Sophomore in college studying business, I didn’t have the programming skills to build my product. I thought it was impossible to bootstrap my venture without funding to hire and manage people with complementary skills. Freelancers made it possible.
One of the biggest lessons I learned working with over 70 freelancers over the years is that hiring the wrong freelancers and failing to carefully manage the projects will end up costing more than taking a more traditional full-time hiring approach.
In the case of application development, it can take months and tens of thousands of dollars to realize the product doesn’t meet expectations. Most entrepreneurs quit at this point after incurring a big loss without even getting to market. Making the same mistake twice is deadly. Follow these steps to hire freelancers that can increase the probability of success of your startup app idea.
1. Do Your Startup Homework
No matter the complexity of your introduced concept, there are many ways to test your business hypotheses before building an app. Getting hands dirty to maximize customer understanding in the initial stages will help you define what you need to build with higher certainty.
Like any business, startups require an investment. A big chunk of this investment is time. Funded or bootstrapped, it’s usually cheaper to waste time than money especially in things that can be tested by interviewing your potential buyers and using no-code tools to create quantitatively testable prototypes.
Once you’ve exhausted all channels to gather feedback, build an audience and perhaps even presell an idea before building the app, you’ve completed your startup homework and should be ready for the next stage. This first homework phase will also help you answer a very important question: is my idea even worth pursuing? If the answer is NO, it would have been very expensive finding this out after building an application.
2. Look For Entrepreneurial Freelancers
Picture this, you’ve been assigned a project with clear requirements. After spending weeks making a significant progress, your boss asks you to make changes that set you back weeks. A few weeks later, you get another call with more changes and additions. How would you feel?
This perfectly describes the nature of building a startup and how most freelance programmers feel about constant changes in project requirement. Even if they are compensated on an hourly basis, you’ll soon start feeling resistance and objections to many changes. You’ll hear comments like, “this will set us back a few months,” “why don’t we launch this version first,” “this will delay launch and significantly increase costs,” etc.
What you need is entrepreneurial freelancers. Those are entrepreneurs who offer freelance services but also have started and run several entrepreneurial projects. It’s not that freelancers with an experience building startups won’t occasionally disagree with changes in project scope, they’re different because they can ask you the right questions, help you design the best launch plans and guide you to build a successful venture.
If it’s the first version of your startup app idea, entrepreneurial freelancers will make sure you only build the needed features that will allow you to test the riskiest assumptions quickly. They’ll help you analyze data and translate feedback into features that people need. They’ll tell you when it’s the right time to iterate, pivot or change ideas completely. Essentially, they’ll help you build a startup not an app. It’s easy to build an app, the question is how to build an app that people use and pay for.
3. Set Business Goals
Entrepreneurial freelancers would understand this even if the performance of the startup may not be solely dependent on the quality of the product they build. Business goals like signing the first 50 beta testers, acquiring the first 10 paying customers, or building the first key partnership will help the freelancer do a better job in terms of defining project requirement, timelines and priorities.
Traditionally, building technology products starts by creating a project scope that lists the features, requirements, deadlines and costs. Freelancers are hired to turn a dozen pages into a functional application.
Product development changes happen when the freelancers are not involved in the startup. It’s when founders talk to more people, run more tests and realize things must be done differently. This creates tension, resistance and disagreements. Make sure to evaluate and define business goals with your hires. It will make their job easier and more fun.
4. Compensate Fairly
Freelancers run a business. Betting on a startup idea that may realize a return a few years later is not going to pay the bills today. While hiring freelancers is in my opinion one of the best ways to turn an employer/contractor relationship into a co-founding partnership, until then, be sure to compensate them fairly so that they don’t have to think about the money in your partnership building the startup.
An equity agreement or a promise of a future increase in payment will most likely turn badly once the first version of the product is out. When inexperienced freelancers realize the amount of time it will take them to reach later stages in the business, they start losing interest. This usually doesn’t take long.
Lastly, the most important freelance hiring tip is to understand that startup development cannot be outsourced. Not even the most committed freelancers in the world will be able to build your startup for you, care as much as you do and be as passionate as you are. Hire the right freelancers to make your job easier as a founder.
Abdo Riani is the founder of StartupCircle.co
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
Members of the Libra Association, the governing body for Facebook ’s proposed stablecoin, gathered at their inaugural meeting at the headquarter in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday, in order to discuss and chart a course for the forthcoming Libra coin following last week’s setback according to reports.
Ever since the whitepaper for the rumored crypto endeavor lead by the social media behemoth came out, it unleashed Pandora’s box of mounting regulatory issues for the proposed cryptocurrency. After several rumors and speculations regarding the shaking beliefs of certain members in the project, six key backers parted ways with the coalition over the weekend.
Libra lost its major global payment backers on Friday when Mastercard and Visa pulled out of the project. Now the only payments firm remaining is the Netherlands-based PayU, which unlike its former financial services fellows, does not operate in some of the biggest and prominent markets including the United States, Canada, certain areas of Africa and the Middle East.
In addition to that, fintech startup Stripe, payments company Mercado Pago and eBay also decided abandoned ship. Moreover according to reports, earlier today Booking Holdings, the owner of travel sites booking.com, priceline.com, agoda.com and Kayak, followed suit and withdrew from the Libra Association.
Thus the social media giant’s ambitious crypto endeavor faced major setbacks as the consortium, which initially comprised 28 members, spanning over several major industries, has now come down to only 21 members. Reportedly all the members would have invested the handsome amount of $10 million into the new stable coin in exchange membership and associated voting rights but even the investment couldn’t get companies to stick around for the long haul.
Stripe, ebay, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal have all dropped out of the Libra Association
Agenda of the Meeting
According to Reuters, the remaining members of the Libra Association are moving ahead of the hurdles and the exodus of several key members. Dante Disparte, head of policy and communications for the Libra Association shared a rather optimistic approach in light of the recent events as he said:
It is a correction; it’s not a setback.
During the inaugural meeting the Libra Association, or what’s left of it, selected a five-member board on Monday, which included Facebook’s David Marcus as well as representatives from PayU, venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, blockchain company Xapo Holdings Limited and non-profit Kiva Microfunds.
Furthermore, members laid out a number of bylaws describing the process for electing new board members, voting on proposals, and adjudicating disputes. According to a fact sheet provided by the Libra Association during the meeting, all the members agreed upon interim articles of association laying out how the organization will be governed, as required by Swiss law.
Additionally, it was decided that most decisions would require a majority vote of the group’s governing council. However, any changes to the membership or the management of the reserve would require a two-thirds supermajority, the report explained.
Despite the series of withdrawals, the bylaws do not force the remaining member organizations in any sort of unbreakable bond. On the contrary, they specifically spelled out that any of the members from the Libra Association remains free to leave the consortium for any given reason.
However, the organization’s membership cannot be transferred under normal circumstances but that rule can be bent and the transfer may be allowed under more limited circumstances.
Considering the recent news about the project, one would think that Facebook’s endeavor is on the verge of the collapsing however the optimism of the Libra Association suggests otherwise. It seems that apart from the likely push back on the Libra launch, there’s no other downside.
According to a report from Techcrunch, Libra Association announced that there are about 1,500 organizations interested in hopping aboard the project and of those, 180 have successfully met the eligibility requirements for becoming a member. It’s probably that some of these mystery organizations could replace the seven companies that dropped out of the Association.
Moreover, when the Libra Association was first introduced with its 28 members, it shared its aims to reach a hundred members ahead of a scheduled 2020 launch. This newly discovered crop of recruits could help in achieving that goal before Libra is cleared for launch by regulators, which isn’t going to be anytime soon it seems.
As of now, the Associations has not announced any changes in their strategy or any other plans to counter and convince the regulators for Libra.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
There is an African proverb that says: “Your food is supposed to be your medicine and your medicine is supposed to be your food.” Yet millions of people on the continent are not living their lives to the fullest because the food they’re eating is not providing them with enough nutrients to feed their brain and body.
The theme of this year’s World Food Day – Healthy Diets for a Zero Hunger World – calls on everyone to start thinking about what we eat.
Iron, a key nutrient to develop children’s brains and help adults live productive lives, is acutely lacking in people’s diets. Iron deficiency is the most common and widespread nutritional burden across the globe. Young children, adolescent girls and pregnant women are the ones who suffer the most. It disables their bodies, reduces their capacity to learn and work to earn a good living, and in its most severe forms – anaemia – contributes to women dying during childbirth delivery.
But why should we care? Because iron deficiency inhibits the sustainable, economic growth of Africa.
Do you know if iron deficiency is affecting you or your family?
Tiredness, fatigue, paleness and being short of breath are all symptoms of iron deficiency anaemia.
But the reality is, most people in Central and West Africa do not associate these symptoms with the lack of iron and are therefore not aware of the dire consequences it can have on their lives and their families.
In Ghana, more than one out of five children below under the age of five years old are iron deficient. In Côte d’Ivoire, iron deficiency anaemia affects 80% of preschool children as well as 50% of schoolchildren and women.
With iron deficiency being the cause of half of the anaemia cases, over 75%+ of youngsters under the age of five are anaemic in Sierra Leone, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Gambia, as reported by the World Bank in 2016.
Iron deficiency is not only preventable; its solutions are inexpensive and effective.Iron deficiency need not be an on-going ailment. We can stop this hidden hunger weakening the lives of millions. Solutions are within our reach and it’s up to us to address and prevent it.
More people need to know about iron deficiency
People in Central and West Africa need to know about the symptoms and the severe, long-term consequences of iron deficiency. Food companies and civil society need to rally behind health authorities to promote locally available foods that are rich in iron and balanced food habits to maximise iron absorption in the body.
Eat more locally grown iron-rich foods
Topping up iron intake is simple and accessible. From dark leafy greens to legumes, and giblets, fish to red meat, including these in your daily mealtimes can help boost your iron intake. Eating these with foods that are rich in vitamin C, such as lemons, oranges, papayas, tomatoes and some green vegetables increases the absorption of iron in your body.
Fortify your diet
Meeting iron requirements may be challenging, especially for young children and women. Eating fortified foods are a good way to boost iron intake and other vitamins and minerals that may be lacking in people’s diets in an affordable way.
In Central and West Africa, food fortification is one cornerstone of how Nestlé enhances quality of life and contributes to a healthier future by providing affordable and accessible nutrition.
Back in 2009, we started mapping out the different micronutrient deficiencies in the region and identified the most relevant foods and beverages to fortify to fill in people’s diet gaps.
Maggi bouillon was one of the most obvious solutions as they are widely consumed across the region and across all income levels. This is why we launched iron-fortified Maggi bouillon cubes, with each serving providing 15% of the recommended daily allowance of iron, in addition to 30% of the recommended daily allowance of iodine. Cerelac infant cereals is another food solution that provides loads of nutrition for small tummies, which is fortified with iron, zinc, iodine and vitamin A and B, along with Nido milk and Milo beverages.
Other ways to enrich people’s diets is to use naturally biofortified crops, such as the vitamin A-rich orange maize, which is grown in Nigeria with the support of the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Harvest Plus. These are win-win crops: farmers can consume it in their households and food companies can include it in their products. By 2020, Nestlé will integrate at least 1,000 tonnes of biofortified maize in its Golden Morn cereals in Nigeria.
In 2018, we provided 73 billion fortified food servings to families in the region and made sure that 100% of our children’s food portfolio is fortified.
Food fortification is cheap – it only costs between 2-5% of the cost of the raw material, helps leverage people’s current food habits and is effective in reducing deficiencies.
Other useful solutions
Timing your usual coffee or tea 30 minutes or more after a meal may help as these beverages contain ingredients that limit iron absorption. If you are concerned about your iron intake, consult your doctor about taking an iron supplement, particularly if you are pregnant.
Why act now?
Iron deficiency undercuts the future success of millions African children and women. Yet, it is preventable through solutions that are affordable and accessible to all. So it is up to all of us to tackle iron deficiency and anaemia using a collaborative approach.
This can be as simple as raising awareness about the benefits of a balanced and iron-rich diet to people through engaging campaigns and relevant messaging. For example, we aim to make progress in this area by launching an iron deficiency awareness campaign on World Food Day, together with experts, regional personalities and the First Lady and Africa Nutrition Leadership Champion for Ghana, Rebecca Akufo-Addo.
By working together, we can also all help to improve people’s health and nutrition. From government to civil society, to farmers and companies, it should be our priority to make healthy and sustainable diets affordable and accessible to everyone. Doing so will contribute to Africa achieving the Sustainable Development Goals . We have the means to make this a reality – let’s act now.
By Rémy Ejel is the Market Head for Nestlé CWAR Ltd.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.
Going by statistics, the whole of debt owed by Kenya ’s entire government, both federal and regional now stands at $56.9 billion (Sh6 trillion), roughly 55.2% of its GDP, even as it emerged that 44 new foreign loan agreements have recently been put before Kenya’s Parliament for approval, or are under negotiation. With this figure, every Kenyan is now about $1150 in debt.
Here Is All You Need To Know
Kenya’s total domestic debt is at Sh2.836 trillion while the total external public liability was Sh3.066 trillion — making a total of Sh5.902 trillion.
However, this did not factor in external debt that may have been incurred between July and this month, which could bring the total to at least Sh6 trillion.
Just last week Kenya’s Parliament also approved the increase in debt threshold to Sh9 trillion as part of its efforts to ensure that the Treasury is able to meet its annual Budget going forward.
As at the end of the 2018/19 fiscal year in June, the total public debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) was 55.2 percent with the gross amount at Sh5.8 trillion.
The Kenya ‘s Treasury insists that the debt, which it says it assesses with a 20-year forward outlook, is still sustainable as long as it is below the threshold of 70 percent of GDP.
“Kenya’s debt ratios show external debt is within sustainable levels for a country rated as a strong performer. The debt sustainability indicators show that Kenya faces a moderate risk of external debt distress,” said the Treasury in its preliminary Budget for the next fiscal year.
“Total public debt as a proportion of GDP remains well below the Lower-Middle Income country debt sustainability benchmark of 70 percent of GDP in present value terms. Overall, debt sustainability analysis indicates that public sector debt continues to be sustainable although Kenya’s current external debt risk of distress categorisation has moved from low to moderate,” said the Treasury.
China Is Leading The Lender
The biggest increase in Kenyan public debt in recent years has come from China and also multilateral lenders such as the World Bank.
Citi Global Markets analysts said that Kenya — alongside Angola, Ethiopia and Congo — is among the countries in Africa that has received the largest disbursements from China.
“The China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University research efforts show that from 2000–2017, Chinese disbursements to Africa from various sources totalled $143.4 billion … Of this total, the reality is that the bulk was committed to a relatively small group of countries: Angola ($19.2 billion), Ethiopia ($13.1 billion), Kenya ($9.8 billion) and Republic of Congo ($7.4 billion),” said Citi.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
Rwanda has just set the pace. Mara is coming to South Africa this week, and the strategy is to penetrate the African market in a way that is both revolutionary and unprecedented. President Cyril Ramaphosa, as part of the recently launched District-Based Development Model, will later this week launch the Mara Phone Plant at Dube Trade Port in KwaZulu-Natal. Would Mara be the next Tencent of the continent? With exposure to over 80 million people in both South Africa and Rwanda so far, this will have to be the most powerful way to announce arrival.
Mara’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ashish Thakkar
Here Is All You Need To Know
During South Africa’s inaugural Africa Investment Forum in November last year, Mara’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ashish Thakkar, 38, announced that his phone company would invest R1.5 billion in a South African business venture over the next five years.
Almost 11 months later, the Rwanda-based Mara group has made good on its promise.
The modern state-of-the-art plant, with an annual production capacity of over 1.2 million handsets, is expected of manufacture two models of smartphones — the Mara X and Mara Z.
The phone company plans to launch upgraded versions annually.
The venture will generate hundreds of high-skilled direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs. It will contribute to the transfer of technology and high-tech knowledge in South Africa.
On its Twitter account, Mara Phones said more than 60% of the staff at the plant are women while 90% of the workforce will be youth.
The production is expected to serve the domestic market as well as the regional market, especially the SADC region, contributing to strategies that position South Africa as the gateway to Africa.
Given the location of the operations, Mara Phones will be designated as a local product once production commences.
Promotion will be conducted through a mix of traditional and digital/online media while utilising local platforms to influence local markets.
The phones are expected to be listed on commerce sites such as Jumia, Konga, and Amazon.
The company also plans to sell the phones via retail partnerships with telecom operators Vodafone, MTN and Airtel.
Mara Will Be Looking At The Newly Signed AfCFTA As The Ultimate Statregy To Scale
Addressing reporters at the Investment Forum last year, Thakkar said his company had plans to develop the phone in plants across the continent’s five regions.
“We all know the importance of high quality and affordable smartphones and the impact this can have on the continent. Quality smartphones mean we can truly enable financial inclusion, micro-lending and micro-insurance. This can translate into better education, digital healthcare and agriculture efficiency and improve commerce.
“If this is all going to be possible… we [need] quality and affordable smartphones. Unfortunately, we have quality smartphones but they are not affordable and if it is affordable, it is not quality,” he said at the time.
Give it to Mara. With the coming into effect of AfCFTA, this move is a deal breaker. Low entry barrier, low tariffs, a smart appeal to a continent of over 1.2 billion people, Mara would definitely win a substantial market share, even though it may be selling at prices higher than other brands. With Mara’s phones produced locally on the continent, it is safe to say that other brands, especially China’s Tencent would have to reconsider their strategies. This may finally be the time for these brands to relocate to Africa, if they are to remain profitable in the long run. Recall that Rwanda is giving Mara tax relief for 7 years under the country’s extant laws.
Needless to say also that this launch of Mara Phone ’s first cellphone manufacturing plant in South Africa is a major boost to South Africa ‘s efforts to revive its sluggish economy and create the much-needed employment for its 56.40 percent unemployed youth population.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
Today Africans remember with a tinge of nostalgia and anger, one of the truly people-centric leadership this continent ever had; Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara, former president of Burkina Faso. Today marks the 32st anniversary of the assassination of Thomas Sankara, leader of the Burkinabè August Revolution which overthrew country’s corrupt military leadership in 1983.As Africans remember one of the greatest leaders to emerge from the continent, one whose life was albeit cut short; many are of the view that Sankara was the right man who came at the wrong time. A time when the cloak of imperialism was still heavy, and the African narrative did not have the African perspective.
Some say that his greatest sin was that he tried to be honest in a dishonest and highly corrupt system. Born 21 December 1949, Sankara was a Burkinabé revolutionary who presided over the affairs of the country from 1983 to 1987. A core Marxist and unarguably the most authentic pan-Africanist after the liberation fighters of the 1960’s, Sankara was viewed across Africa as a charismatic and highly iconic figure of revolution in the mold of both Che Guevara, and Fidel Castor, both of whom inspired him greatly.
After basic military training in secondary school in 1966, Sankara began his military career at the age of 19 and a year later was sent to Madagascar for officer training at Antsirabe where he witnessed popular uprisings in 1971 and 1972 against the government of Philibert Tsiranana and first read the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, profoundly influencing his political views for the rest of his life. Returning to Upper Volta in 1972, he fought in a border war between Upper Volta and Mali by 1974. He earned fame for his heroic performance in the border war with Mali, but years later would renounce the war as “useless and unjust”, are flection of his growing political consciousness.
He also became a popular figure in the capital of Ouagadougou. Sankara was a decent guitarist. He played in a band named “Tout-à-Coup Jazz” and rode a motorcycle. In 1976 he became commander of the Commando Training Centre in Pô. In the same year he met Blaise Compaoré in Morocco. During the presidency of Colonel Saye Zerbo, a group of young officers formed a secret organisation called the “Communist Officers’ Group” (Regroupement des officiers communistes, or ROC), the best-known members being Henri Zongo, Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani, Blaise Compaoré and Sankara. After a coup which brought the military to power in 1982, Sankara was appointed Secretary of State for Information; he was attending cabinet meetings on a bicycle which endeared him to the masses. But he resigned his portfolio on 21 April 1982 in opposition to what he saw as the regime’s anti-labour drift, declaring it a misfortune to those who gag the people.
These disagreements led to another military coup on 7 November 1982 which brought Major-Doctor Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo to power, and he made Sankara the Prime Minister in January 1983, but Sankara soon fell out with the Head of State, and he was subsequently arrested and placed under house arrest with his comrades, Henri Zongo and Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani. In 1983, a group of revolutionaries seized power on behalf of Sankara (who was under house arrest at the time) in a popularly-supported coup in 1983. Sankara was made the Military President at the age of 33 to the admiration of the masses.
He hit the ground running by launching programmes for social, ecological, and economic change, and renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (“Land of Incorruptible People”). His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalising all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritising education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating 2,500,000 children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.
Other components of his national agenda included planting over 10,000,000 trees to combat the growing desertification of the Sahel, redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents and establishing a road and railway construction programme. On the local level, Sankara called on every village to build a medical dispensary, and had over 350 communities build schools with their own labour. Moreover, he outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, as well as appointing women to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school, even if pregnant. He encouraged the prosecution of officials accused of corruption, counter-revolutionaries and “lazy workers” in Popular Revolutionary Tribunals. As an admirer of the Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. His revolutionary programmes for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africa’s poor. Sankara remained popular with most of his country’s citizens. However, his policies alienated and antagonised several groups, which included the small, but powerful Burkinabé middle class, the tribal leaders who were stripped of their long-held traditional privileges of forced labour and tribute payments, as well as the governments of France and its ally the Ivory Coast.
On 15 October 1987,Sankara was assassinated by troops led by his very closest friend Captain Blaise Compaoré, who assumed leadership of the state shortly after. A week before his assassination, Sankara declared: “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas”. While the Burkinabè August Revolution lasted a mere four years and two months, from August 1983 to October 1987, its tremendous political, economic and social accomplishments remain unparalleled. Among the realisations were clear advances in health care, gender equality, food self-sufficiency and small-scale agricultural production (with Burkina Faso became a net exporter of food stuffs), reforestation, expansions in public transport, promotion of the arts, refusal of debt, rebukes of neo-imperialism, promotion of fitness and collective practices, and more.
That these achievements occurred amidst continuous political and economic sabotages and significant material challenges, only renders the story of Thomas Sankara and the August Revolution even more emboldening for humanist struggles for wellbeing. Some of these economic successes would be noted after Sankara’s death by those institutions heralding the compulsion for neoliberal economic policies across the African continent, including in BurkinaFaso. The World Bank country report for Burkina Faso, for example, reveals the determination of capitalist actors to appropriate critical and anti-capitalist actions as their own triumphs. In the years since his assassination, international environmental movements have gained momentum and some of Sankara’s groundbreaking policies have been adopted by transnational and largely neoliberal organisations.
There has been the mainstreaming of his policies across the world, especially his insistence on the importance of gender equality for social wellbeing (or ‘human development’) and the adoption of initiatives in support of grassroots efforts to green and re-tree the Sahel, including the Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative, a project colloquially believed to have its genesis in Sankara’s ecological projects among others.
After his death, the government of Blaise Compoaré initiated a ‘rectification period’ that withdrew the radical economic and social programmes central to the revolution. Until 1998, references to Sankara were prohibited while publically the government alternately sought to discredit Sankara or to take credit for the successes of the revolution.
Before the United Nations General Assembly in1984, he said, ‘I make no claims to lay out any doctrines… I am neither a messiah nor prophet. I possess no truths. My only aspiration is twofold: first, to be able to speak on behalf of my people, the people of Burkina Faso, in simple words, words that are clear and factual. And second, in my own way to speak on behalf of the “great disinherited people of the world”’. In his yearning to create a grassroots resistance consciousness of self-empowerment, Sankara defined the tradition of hero-worship. He discontinued the practice of hanging presidential portraits in public buildings.
Till date, no African leader dead or living evokes the kind of emotion and passion especially among young people across the continent as Thomas Sankara, a true African Hero.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.
