The much anticipated Monetary Policy Committee meeting was held in Abuja, the nation’s capital, on Tuesday. Following the MPC meeting, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), announced that the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), which measures interest rate, has been raised to 15.5 percent from 14 percent.

The MPR was raised by 150 basis points from 14 percent as the financial regulator seeks to tame rising inflation that currently stands at 20.52 percent.

The asymmetric corridor of +100/-700 basis points around the MPR was retained but the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) was raised to a minimum of 32.5 percent. The Liquidity Ratio was also retained at 30 percent.

CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said on Tuesday that the decision to raise the interest rate has come from the majority of the MPC members.

“The committee voted unanimously to raise the MPR…The MPC voted to raise the MPR to 15.5, retain the asymmetric corridor at +100 -700 basis points around the MPR. Increase the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) to a minimum of 32.5% and retain liquidity ratio at 30%,” he said.

Emefiele explained that the decision was informed by the members’ deliberation on the impact of the widening margin between the current policy rate of 14 percent and the inflation rate of 20.52 percent.

“At this meeting, the option of reducing the policy rate was not considered as this would be gravely detrimental to reigning in inflation. The committee thus agreed unanimously to raise the policy rate to narrow the interest rate gap and reign in inflation. The committee thus voted unanimously to raise the MPR.

“10 members voted to raise the MPR by 150 basis points, one (voted to raise it) by 100 basis points and one by 50 basis points. 10 members voted to increase CRR (Cash Reserve Ratio) by 500 basis points, while two members voted to increase it by 750 basis points,” he said.

However, the MPR, which is the highest in 20 years, has raised some concern. The concern stems from the impact the new interest rate will have on the entities under the CBN debt list. The CBN has lent about N20 trillion to the federal government and about N10 trillion to selected entities.

Experts believe that raising the interest rate to 15 percent on all the loans will severely impact local production.

“No SME producing locally can survive with 15%+ interest rates,” Kalu Aja, a financial expert wrote.

The central bank had in its last MPC meeting, increased the interest rate from 11.5% to 14%. But the decision failed to tame the surging inflation rate, which rose from 19.6 percent in July by 0.92 basis points to 20.52% in August, the highest in 17 years.

Forex scarcity has been fingered as the major cause of the rising inflation, which the CBN’s policies, including schemes and intervention programmes, have failed to mitigate.

For years, African restaurants have struggled with procurement and preservation of foodstuffs, resulting in waste of food products and loss of revenue. This situation created a huge friction in the African food markets that inspired Tunde Kara, Olumide Fayankin, Gatumi Aliyu, and Wale Oyepeju, to found Vendease.

The startup, which focuses on procuring and preserving food for restaurants in Africa – moving food from farms to restaurants, has grown into a multi million dollar company that has continued to attract investors.

Vendease announced that it has raised $30 million ($20 million equity and $10 million debt) in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Partech Africa and TLcom with participation from existing investors such as VentureSouq, Hustle fund, Hack VC, GFR Fund, Kube VC, Magic Fund and Kairos Angels.

Kara CEO, Fayankin COO, Aliyu CPO and Oyepeju CTO, came together in 2020 with the vision of solving Nigeria’s food industry’s inefficiencies and eventually expanding to other African markets. The platform is designed to mitigate losses and help food businesses thrive.

In about two years since it was founded, Vendease has raised more than $35 million. Last year, the YC-backed startup raised $3.2 million to expand its operations across Nigeria.

Kara told TechCrunch that the company plans to use the new funds to expand and consolidate its operations in eight cities in Nigeria and Ghana. He also said that it is planning to move into new markets and build new products to increase customers’ efficiency.

“We’re building technology to efficiently move food from the point of production to the point of consumption. Everything we build at Vendease: financing, logistics, warehousing, inventory management, is tailored towards ensuring that food flows efficiently from that point of production to the point of consumption,” he said.

Vendease, described as a series of stacks, said most of its customers, including restaurants and food businesses, hospitals, hotels and schools, are subject to $100 billion in annual losses due to several factors. The factors include unreliable supply, wastage, limited data on making informed procurement decisions and little or no capital to fund procurement.

Over the last 12 months, the company said it has moved approximately 400,000 metric tonnes of food for its over 2,000 customers, helping them to save about $2 million in procurement costs and over 10,000 in person-hours.

Kara said that Vendease has saved its customers almost $500,000 in wastage costs due to overstocking by using the businesses’ data and providing them with the necessary resources — particularly around inventory management.

“Since businesses don’t have access to accurate data, they usually buy what they don’t need. We help them to solve that problem in two ways. One, because businesses know they can get anything on our platform in 12 hours, they don’t need to stock some of the things they would’ve stored before. Two, they can also track what they bought and know how much is left before they need to buy again,” he said.

Besides food procurement and preservation, Vendease also offers financial services – Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) to its customers, which it now uses financial institutions that provide its financing – a different format from its earlier method. The company said it has been able to provide businesses more than $12 million worth of inventory via this embedded finance product.

“Something important to us about our current growth and impact is despite the ongoing global food supply shortage and inflation, Vendease is helping our users save big and provide relative stability for their stock levels. Shielding them (to a large extent) from the most severe effects of the current global shortage. What excites us is we can have even more impact as we extend and entrench our technology within Africa and the rest of the world. And that’s what keeps us going,” Kara said.

Those days, in FUTO, JAMBITES were warned of a mystical course codenamed “O.D.E” and trumpeted in Igbo as “O di egwu” [something mystical, dangerous and challenging]. That course was actually Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE).

Interestingly, it was the easiest course in the university because two smart men taught it: Dr Oyet and Dr Effiong. “Recall from equation 10 before the strike”…Effiong would begin. Effiong had no course notes and could remember the last thing he wrote on a blackboard four months later. He was simply amazing!

As you try to deal with these men, another great man – Dr. Ngochindo – who taught Organic Chemistry was memorable. His style was unusual: the bonds are there and you must see them as he backed the class talking to the blackboard!

These men are needed for a major service in Nigeria on a new poll: “A new poll conducted by a public advocacy group We2Geda Foundation said the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, is ahead of other candidates by 51 percent. The poll result was dated September 17, 2022, and signed by the Chairman, Board of Trustees of We2Geda, Ibrahim Abdulkareem, as well as a member of the BoT, Muna Obioha.”

The group said 51 percent of respondents suggested voting for Obi as their preferred candidate, 25 percent suggested voting for Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) while Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ranked third in the voter preference poll with 19 percent.

“Further analysis also shows that Peter Obi remained a consistent favourite in the four major geopolitical zones including North-Central, South-South, South-West and South-East, while Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was the poll leader in the NorthEast and North-West zones,” the group said.

We2Geda explained that Nigerians between 26 and 50 years constituted the highest number of respondents in a random survey with a total of 15,438 registered voters in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

Can someone solve the ODE of Nigeria and connect the bonds via these polls? It is #open

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

Comment : Its not about the chart or variance. For this poll to be considered at all, the volume of respondents is needed and if I may ask, how did you go about checking for uniqueness of responses?

My Response: The questions you are asking are things they provided in their report. Of course, I cannot add those in a LinkedIn post!

Comment 1b: 15,438 registered voters in 36 states too insignificant to matter for a country of over 200million. I’ve just read an extract of their report. Thanks and no thanks

My response: You need to revisit your statistics class notebook. They oversampled. 15,500 for 200 million in a scientific poll is oversampling! Typically, you need about 800-2,000. It is scientific but it is voodoo for those who do not understand the science of polling. In US, the average size is 1,000 and they use that to model for close to 330 million people . Look at the sample here https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/ .

Comment 1c: I do not need to revisit my statistics thanks. This is because I understand that the same techniques can not be applied as it was in the US to Nigeria whose elections are affected by various and different factors. This polls has used phones as a means of collecting data. Can this method effectively and uniquely cover 50% of the electorates in Nigeria? In the US maybe, in UK maybe, in Australia, maybe, in Canada maybe but in Nigeria, I ask again can it? Same can be said of online polls when it comes to Nigeria. So using a sample data that effectively omits a vast majority of the electorates should be ignored and politely made insignificant.

My Response: his polls has used phones as a means of collecting data. Can this method effectively and uniquely cover 50% of the electorates in Nigeria?” Yes, weight. If Americans can use 1,000 to model 330m people, 15,500 for 200m is just enough with appropriate weighing. Yet, I am not saying they are correct but I am saying that the sample size does not need to be 10 million to be accepted. I do not believe these polls because the models are nascent with limited historical data for validity. But the sample size is fair.

I want to congratulate our CinderBuild Inc. team for the successful fundraise today. Congratulations. Cinderbuild is Africa’s leading building and construction material marketplace. It brings bulk off-takers and suppliers onto one collaborative platform, streamlining the materials procurement process from requisition to delivery.

It offers financing, logistics, price discovery, etc by digitizing every aspect of buying and selling these materials. As you buy building materials, look for the Cinderbuild Partner seal in stores. We power vendors as we deepen the operating system to fix frictions in that industry.

Cinderbuild is a Tekedia Capital portfolio startup. To learn more about Cinderbuild, go here 

For Tekedia Capital, go here