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Home Blog Page 4034

First Bank of Nigeria’s Parent firm Hits 414% YoY Profit Increase (Q2 2023)

By
Ndubuisi Ekekwe
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1

As I have written here many times since the floating and swimming of the Naira against the US dollars and other currencies, Nigerian banks are going to hit profit records. Why? It is simple mathematics: if you have a foreign currency denominated asset in your books, originally priced at N415/$, and you can now change it to N800/$, you have actually created a massive profit.

For banks which do not have a lot of foreign currency exposures, but which enjoy solid foreign-denominated investments, that exchange rate flip will deliver alpha at scale. Men and women will have great parties in Ikoyi, Victoria and Banana Island this season!

First Bank of Nigeria (yes, FBN Holdings Plc) has started the party: “FBN Holdings Plc, one of Nigeria’s largest banks released its 2023 second-quarter results showing pre-tax profits rose 5 folds to N150.1 billion (N29.2 billion Q2 2022). The increase in second-quarter profits helped its half-year profit before tax to rise by 213% to N206.2 billion compared to N65.7 billion same period last year. This is also the Bank Holding Company’s best half-year performance since it was listed on the Exchange,” Nairametrics reports.

First Bank of Nigeria (yes, FBN Holdings Plc) has started the party: 414% in PBT, from N29.2 billion in Q2 2022 to N150.1 billion in Q2 2023.

Other banks will report similar numbers. As I noted during Tekedia Investment class on Saturday, investors have been buying Nigeria’s big bank stocks, hoping to enjoy the rainfall on dividends (there would be many of them) since profits will be yakata (money everywhere).

Yet, as we attain an FX equilibrium with inflation hitting hard, purchasing power dropping and manufacturing output weakening, some of the investment exuberance will be time-limited for fun. So, it is really a strategy of knowing when to get in and get out!

But as things stand now, this will be the best profitable quarter in the history of Nigerian banking. I used to be among them; men and women will see GREAT digits on the bonus day.

Google is Testing New AI Tool ‘Genesis’, Capable of Writing News Articles

By
Ojukwu Emmanuel
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0

Tech giant Google is testing a new AI tool called ‘Genesis’, which is capable of writing news articles.

The AI tool can take in information, including details about ongoing events, and then generate news copy with the information gathered. Genesis is not only geared toward writing news articles but will also act as a personal assistant to journalists.

Reports revealed that Google has already pitched the AI tool to some executives at the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

However, some executives were reportedly not impressed with the tool as one described it as “unsettling”. Two others stated that the tool seems to take for granted the effort that goes into the production of accurate and artful news stories.

A Google spokesperson Jenn Crider speaking on the roll-out of the AI tool (Genesis), said,

“In partnership with news publishers, especially smaller publishers, we’re in the earliest stages of exploring ideas to potentially provide AI-enabled tools to help journalists with their work. For instance, AI-enabled tools could assist journalists with options for headlines or different writing styles.

“Our goal is to give journalists the choice of using these emerging technologies in a way that enhances their work and productivity, just like we’re making assistive tools available for people in Gmail and in Google Docs. Quite simply these tools are not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating, and fact-checking their articles.”

Google’s proposed launch of an AI news writing tool is coming amidst reports that some news organizations are using AI to generate news stories, which has been plagued with unpleasant experiences.

In January this year, CNET, an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally, CNET, reportedly used AI to publish news articles that were plagued with errors.

The news sparked outrage online as critics pointed out that the experiment felt like an attempt to eliminate work for entry-level writers, and that the accuracy of current-generation AI text generators is notoriously poor.

This prompted the news site to review and fact-check and edit every story curated with AI before hitting publish.

While there are concerns about AI tools generating fake stories, Google is seen to be taking a safer approach by positioning Genesis as an AI assistant tool for journalists rather than a possible replacement for news writers.

Google believes that its new AI tool will be a responsible technology and an alternative to the pitfall of generative AI. With this, Google will have to do a lot of work to ensure its news writing AI tool produces factual information.

As AI continues to show that no field is beyond penetration with its recent entry into the news writing industry, these tools have raised concerns among writers from not just media outlets, but also authors and script writers due to the system’s tendencies to inaccurately push, information that closely mimics human language and grammar, which makes it challenging to spot.

Also, experts are concerned if this will spark the layoff of workers in the newsrooms. Some think that these AI tools cannot and will not replace news writers as many things go into curating quality news content.  They noted that journalism relies on journalists to be knowledgeable and ethical when reporting on the news, and so, generative Al tools cannot be relied on to do the same, as they can hallucinate or output misinformation.

Several other experts believe it will be an interesting time to see whether AI tools will displace news writers in the future.

As followers find 9ja Cosmos brand page, LinkedIn finds Nigeria!

By
John Mc Keown
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0

By now, some of my followers will be aware, that the 9ja Cosmos Website is done ( a few tie ups remain on the channels page), and we have also put up a business page on LinkedIn.

This got me to think about some posts I produced in the past for Tekedia – first one I produced in August 2021, where I shared that at that time, 85% of my LinkedIn contacts were in Nigeria, but LinkedIn didn’t seem to be able to capture them as part of my engagement statistics.

I went into some of the data transport arguments that might explain why that was, but nothing seemed conclusive to me.

Why doesn’t Nigeria show in the stats??

Roll on to November of the same year, and another post remarking that a relatively small business like Tiny URL has succeeded where LinkedIn had not.  (LinkedIn has been owned by Microsoft since 2016)

TinyURL ‘knows’ Nigeria !

Having got past the first 100 followers for the 9ja Cosmos brand page, I decided to have a good look at who had decided to join and where they had been joining from. I was surprised at the level of geo detail.

Since I was moaning in 2021, the improvement of detail in the 9ja Cosmos page stats as of July 2023 are far superior. It even lists Ruwa Wuri, a very small place in Sokoto State, Nigeria.

From a specimen of 140 members, London UK scored the highest for a single location – 9/140, though Nigeria took positions 2-6 of the top 10 locations. and as a nation, the largest presence overall. The city of my birth, Cork in Ireland sneaked into the top 10, with similar showings from Frankfurt,  Germany; Randstad, Netherlands; and Washington DC.

In the extended list there were many locations with a single follower, one of which simply said ‘Poplar Bluff’, which is this small town in Missouri, US at the foot of the Ozark Mountains – probably a bit like US version of Ruwa Wuri!

There were also 78 followers LinkedIn couldn’t say where they were. That’s about 55%, so still a lot of potential business intelligence not captured. Still a massive improvement in being able to name Nigerian cities and towns though, as compared to 2021.

I then decided to look at the stats of my most recent post, to see if this new geo inclusion capability was replicated elsewhere, and not just a feature of the 9ja Cosmos brand page.

This just gave me a top 5, and was unable to give me any details of what it failed to capture – though again, much better than what had been available two years ago. This was the post entitled ‘A SUNDAY MUSING’, a ‘direct to LinkedIn’ post with no Tekedia piece. It didn’t especially have a ‘Nigeria’ focus, so interesting that Lagos blitzed London on it.

Thank you to those who have come out to support the new 9ja Cosmos page

We do however need the strong support of ‘Tekedians’ to move the needle forward, so more followers for the page are urgently needed.

9ja Cosmos is here… 

Get your .9jacom and .9javerse Web 3 domains  for $2 at:

.9jacom Domains

.9javerse Domains

Visit 9ja Cosmos

Follow us on LinkedIn HERE

 

All reference sites accessed 20/07/2023

poplarbluff-mo.gov/

linkedin.com/company/98217334/admin/analytics/followers/

linkedin.com/analytics/post-summary/urn:li:activity:7086401079734587392/

Registration for Next Tekedia Mini-MBA Opens; Programs on AI in Business, Project MGT Unveiled

By
Ndubuisi Ekekwe
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0

Greetings! Tekedia Mini-MBA opens registrations for the next edition (Sep 11 – Dec 2, 2023). Please go and register; beat the early bird deadline and save with awesome benefits. Here is our curriculum: 14 modules for close to 100 courses, taught by executives of some of the finest companies you admire.

Week 1: Innovation, Design Thinking & Growth
Week 2: Business Systems & Processes
Week 3: Business Model & Transformation
Week 4: Exponential Technologies and Singularity
Week 5: New Technologies, Growth, Disruptive Innovation

Week 6: Finance, Investing, Fundraising
Week 7: Logistics & Supply Chain Management
Week 8: Marketing, Sales Management & Business Objectives
Week 9: Law, Contracting & Globalization
Week 10: Leadership, Human Capital & Project Management

Week 11: Business Communication, Design, Media & Branding
Week 12: Accounting, Sustainability & Risk Management
Week 13: Growth, Pricing & Taxation
Week 14: Startups, New Businesses, Products, Markets, Customers
Final Week: Business Execution and Closure

Also, we’re launching two new programs:

  1. Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass: Tekedia Artificial Intelligence in Business Masterclass will focus on how AI (artificial intelligence) will redesign the world of business, and re-architect economies even as it transforms markets, communities and organizations.  The program runs for 8 weeks and costs $400 (or N200,000).
  2. Tekedia Program Management Program: Tekedia Project Management educates on how to manage projects efficiently and effectively, using modern project management methodologies, to deepen capabilities and accelerate productivities, for the best project outcomes.  The program runs for 8 weeks and costs $400 (or N200,000).

For these new courses and more, please go here and register; all programs are online-based with pre-recorded and live Zoom components. Tekedia Mini-MBA is among the best business schools in Nigeria and Africa with a deep focus on entrepreneurial capitalism and personal career development.

StarkNet’s TVL surpasses $100 Million with Record TPS and Reduced Latency

By
Paul Ugbede Godwin
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0

StarkNet, the decentralized and scalable layer-2 solution for Ethereum, has reached a new milestone in its growth and adoption. According to the latest data from DeFi Llama, StarkNet’s total value locked (TVL) has surpassed $100 million, making it one of the largest layer-2 platforms in terms of assets secured.

StarkNet’s TVL has increased by more than 10x since its launch on mainnet in November 2021, when it had around $9 million locked. The rapid growth of StarkNet’s TVL can be attributed to several factors, including the launch of new applications and integrations, the improvement of user experience and developer tools, and the enhancement of network performance and security.

Some of the notable applications and integrations that have contributed to StarkNet’s TVL growth are:

The launch of StarkEx 3.0, which introduced Cairo-based smart contracts and enabled developers to deploy any DeFi application on StarkNet. The integration of several popular DeFi protocols, such as dYdX, Immutable X, Paraswap, and SushiSwap, which leveraged StarkNet’s scalability and security to offer better user experience and lower fees.

The improvement of StarkNet’s performance and reliability, which achieved record throughput of over 9,000 transactions per second (TPS) and reduced latency to less than 10 minutes. StarkNet’s impressive metrics demonstrate the potential of its technology, which is based on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). ZKPs are cryptographic techniques that allow users to prove the validity of their transactions without revealing any sensitive information. This enables StarkNet to process thousands of transactions off-chain and batch them into a single proof that is verified on Ethereum, thus reducing congestion and costs.

StarkNet’s vision is to become a fully decentralized and permissionless layer-2 network that supports any DeFi application. To achieve this goal, StarkNet is working on several initiatives, such as:

The launch of Planets, which are independent shards that can run different applications and communicate with each other via cross-shard messages. The transition to a decentralized governance model, which will allow the community to propose and vote on upgrades and parameters of the network.

The development of a rich ecosystem of tools and libraries, which will make it easier for developers and users to interact with StarkNet. StarkNet is one of the most promising projects in the layer-2 space, as it offers a scalable and secure solution for Ethereum’s scalability challenges. With its TVL surpassing $100 million and its performance reaching new heights, StarkNet is proving that ZKPs are the future of DeFi.

Paraswap, the popular decentralized aggregator for token swaps, which integrated with StarkNet in January 2022, offering users lower fees and faster transactions. DeversiFi, the decentralized exchange for professional traders, which announced its upcoming migration to StarkNet in February 2022, promising to deliver high-speed and low-cost trading with full self-custody.

In addition to attracting more applications and users, StarkNet has also improved its user experience and developer tools, making it easier and more convenient to interact with the platform. Some of the recent improvements are:

The launch of Cairo Playground, a web-based IDE for developing smart contracts in Cairo, the native programming language of StarkNet. The release of Cairo Lang Server, a VS Code extension that provides syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and error checking for Cairo code.

The introduction of StarkNet Bridge, a cross-chain bridge that allows users to transfer assets between Ethereum and StarkNet with minimal friction. The support of EIP-712 signatures, a standard that enables users to sign messages with their Ethereum wallets without exposing their private keys.

Finally, StarkNet has also enhanced its network performance and security, delivering faster and more reliable transactions with lower latency. Some of the recent enhancements are: The upgrade to Alpha 3, the latest version of StarkNet’s protocol, which increased the throughput from 3K to 9K transactions per second (TPS) and reduced the latency from 30 minutes to 10 minutes.

The deployment of Cairo Prover Service (CPS), a decentralized network of providers that generate zero-knowledge proofs for StarkNet’s transactions, ensures their validity and finality. The implementation of Validium mode, a configuration that allows applications to store their state data off-chain, reducing the gas costs and increasing the scalability.

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