When you look at intra-African trade, remittance startups do not pay a lot of attention to it. Why hire staff to facilitate trade between Nigeria and Gambia? Why waste all the efforts to build structures to make it easier for Ethiopia to trade with Gabon? Yes, the volume of the trade is small. Indeed, in the grand scheme of business, it is very hard to make money when there is no money available to be made.

Think of helping someone to find a job when there are no jobs! In that thinking, remittance companies focus on the US & Europe-Africa route because that handles more than 90% of the remittance transactions. The route between Mali and Gabon is a distraction, unfortunately.

Take that thinking to Apple, the rich dude ecosystem: Apple is now worth more than Facebook (Meta), Google (Alphabet) and Amazon combined. As inflation battles the every-customer ecosystem of Amazon, Facebook and Google, Apple users have tons of money in their bank accounts to spend. Indeed, at the top of the pyramid, they are not feeling the pains as those at the lower part of the pyramid.

At the same time, the market caps of its three tech giant peers added up to $2.306 trillion at the close of trading Wednesday. Google parent Alphabet’s market cap stood at $1.126 trillion, Amazon’s at $939.78 billion and Facebook parent Meta’s at $240.07 billion, Yahoo Finance data showed.

Overall, Big Tech stocks suffered a brutal selloff last week on the back of disappointing quarterly earnings. But Apple’s stock has outperformed its peers after it beat Wall Street’s revenue and profit forecasts for its fourth quarter.

What is your market positioning? You get 10 clicks from Facebook, none hits the BUY button. But you get 4 from LinkedIn and you get a sale. Make sure you are reaching the right customers.

Like Apple, Starbucks makes coffee which the upper class enjoys: “Rising prices aren’t keeping consumers from splurging on coffee. Starbucks reported record quarterly sales Thursday, notching $8.4 billion in revenue and a 7% rise in global same-store sales compared with last year. That number was higher in the U.S. — 11% — as Americans boosted their spending even as inflation continued to squeeze budgets. Though wage increases and training costs amid a chain-wide revamp cut into Starbucks’ store-level profit, interim CEO Howard Schultz says demand is strong.”

At $2.307trn, Apple Now Worth More Than Alphabet (Google), Amazon and Meta (Facebook) Combined

Rising economic headwinds are yielding inflation hampering revenue growth of tech companies, forcing many to cut workforce. This has erased significantly the Covid-induced economic gains made by some US tech giants, creating a wide gap between Apple and others.

In the report below, Insider noted that the Cupertino giant is now worth more than fellow tech giants Alphabet, Amazon and Meta combined, after it ended trading Wednesday with a market value of $2.307 trillion.

At the same time, the market caps of its three tech giant peers added up to $2.306 trillion at the close of trading Wednesday. Google parent Alphabet’s market cap stood at $1.126 trillion, Amazon’s at $939.78 billion and Facebook parent Meta’s at $240.07 billion, Yahoo Finance data showed.

Overall, Big Tech stocks suffered a brutal selloff last week on the back of disappointing quarterly earnings. But Apple’s stock has outperformed its peers after it beat Wall Street’s revenue and profit forecasts for its fourth quarter.

The iPhone maker’s shares soared 8% in the wake of its results. After their earnings reports, Meta plunged more than 20%, Amazon fell about 10%, while Alphabet saw a single-digit decline.

Alphabet, Amazon and Meta’s lackluster earnings signaled that demand for digital advertising is flagging. The poorly-received results have helped wipe billions off their market values as their shares fell, and pushed Amazon out of the trillion-dollar market cap club.

Over the past five sessions, Apple’s stock has risen 0.16%, while Alphabet has fallen 5.7%, Amazon is down 17.0% and Meta has lost 7.6% over that period.

Despite Apple’s achievement, its market cap has fallen back from its $2.193 trillion value at the end of 2021. A series of headwinds — high inflation, rising interest rates, fears of recession and the Ukraine war among them — have meant tech stocks have struggled in 2022 as investors lost appetite for higher risk assets.

In May, Saudi Aramco surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable company due to the oil windfall orchestrated by Russia-Ukraine war. The company amassed as much as $1 billion monthly in revenue. Though the surge in oil price is gradually subsiding, Aramco still has a high edge over Apple as a result of the global economic downturn.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) may start a fresh strike action a few weeks after it ended the notorious eight month long strike by the order of the court.

This is due to developments that have followed the union’s efforts to resume academic activities in Nigeria’s public universities.

On Friday, the University of Jos chapter of ASUU ordered its members to stay at home indefinitely, pending when the federal government pays their withheld salaries.

On Thursday, Punch reported that the returning lecturers have been offered half salaries by the federal government even though they’ve not been paid since February. The federal government had in the midst of the strike, initiated no-work no-pay policy, but ASUU is believed to have had that resolved through the intervention of the House of Representatives.

The federal government’s decision to pay half salaries seems to have betrayed everything the parties have agreed on besides court order to call off the strike. It has also rolled off a stone that will likely pave way for another strike.

A statement signed by Professor Lazarus Maigoro of the Jos chapter of ASUU said its members have been directed to stay at home (though not on strike) until 50 percent of their salary backlog is cleared.

The statement partly reads: “One of the issues agreed at the meeting was that 50% of the backlog of eight months arrears of our withheld salaries will be paid to our members immediately but as at the time of writing this press release, only 17 days prorated October salary was paid to our members by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation.

“Having stayed for about nine months running now, our members in the University of Jos considered this an insult to them by the Accountant General of the Federation.

“Is the Accountant General of the Federation actually answerable to the Minister of Labour? So, if today the Minister of Agriculture directs the Accountant General of the Federation to withhold the salaries of the staff of the Agricultural Research Institutes who have been on strike for over a year, will he obey that?

“We wonder why Ngige is keen about withholding the salaries of ASUU members because staff of some Agricultural Research Institutes have been on strike for almost a year but they have been receiving their salaries regularly. Is this policy only for ASUU members?

“We are also aware that the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, wrote a memo to the Accountant General asking him to pay our members only from the day we suspended the strike. By this singular act, the Minister of Labour and Employment has casualised the work of the University Lecturers unfortunately.

“This further creates doubts on our minds as to whether the understanding reached with the leadership of the House of Representatives on some of the issues will be implemented at all by those who are saddled with the responsibility of doing so in order to avoid further needless strikes.

“From all indications, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has personalized the matter between him and our union and is on a mission for vendetta.

“It has become crystal clear now that he wasn’t happy that the House of Representatives brokered a truce on some of the issues we went on strike for and has gone behind to undermine it.

“It is also very clear to us now why he shamelessly walked out on the leadership of the House of Representatives at one of the meetings with all stakeholders to the glare of all Nigerians because he never wanted any form of resolution to be reached on the issues being discussed and is the nation.

“In view of the bottleneck placed by Ngige towards paying our members the backlog of our salaries, the congress of ASUU University of Jos met today November 4, 2022 and resolved to stay at home, though not on strike until the backlog of the withheld salaries are paid.

“For the avoidance of doubt, our members are back to work, willing and ready to work but are unable to work. Based on the revised academic calendar for

the 2020/2021 session approved by the senate of the University, lectures should have started already but the challenge of lack of payment of salaries has constrained our members from going to the classroom to teach.

“What this implies is that the students who have resumed already will have to wait indefinitely while we wait for our withheld salaries to be paid to us”.

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has drawn the attention of car users and dealers in Nigeria to some particular models of Lexus vehicles which have been recently recalled by the Toyota company due to detected faults.

This is contained in a statement issued by The Corps Public Education Officer, Assistant Corps Marshal, Bisi Kazeem, on Friday, in Abuja.

The statement reads:

“The Federal Road Safety Corps wishes to draw the attention of the motoring public, particularly those who are presently using Lexus NX260, Lexus NX3650h and Lexus NX400h+ manufactured between 31 March, 2021 to 26 April 2022 to a faulty programming of the Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) System, which has prompted the Company to recall the categories of the listed vehicles.

“According to the report contained in a memo forwarded by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the company is also recalling 6,491 Lexus NX260 with defective Electric Parking Brake (EPB) system which was manufactured between 19 April 2021 and 15 July 2022.

“The withdrawal is specifically premised on the fact that the vehicles will pose safety hazard to their users thereby leading to crashes.

“The Acting Corps Marshal, Dauda Ali Biu is by this notice, admonishing the general public, particularly dealers and drivers of these categories of vehicles, to desist from selling or using the identified vehicles on Nigerian roads to avoid any mishap”.