(This was written before I knew that Queen Elizabeth had died. May her soul rest in peace.)

Last year I wrote when the United Kingdom could not find truck drivers: “Feel free to throw the verbal flames. Yes, why should this village boy from Nigeria be discussing what is happening in the UK. I have to because it is a free world. When the UK voted for BREXIT, they voted for “freedom”. Yes, that guy is coming for my lunch. But interestingly, that guy coming for your lunch may be the one making sure you have breakfast and dinner.”

I made the point that the UK scored an own-goal by executing BREXIT. In our modern world, coming together deepens competitive and comparative advantages since we’re all living in gloCal (global + local) world. But when you disconnect, you pay a penalty. Yes, igwebuike – “strength in unity”

As Liz Truss takes over as the UK Prime Minister, starting with tax cuts and the typical conservative playbooks, there are many shifts she has to manage. And those shifts are invisible like the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith’s thesis many centuries ago. For those British doctors to thrive, they may need a garbage cleaner in that community. If you disconnect those cleaners, you introduce fudge factors that can be devastating to the economy.

People, the British Pound Sterling “dropped as much as 1% to $1.141, a low last reached by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1985.” Within the next 4 years, I predict that the US dollars will be stronger than the Sterling. The primary reason is that the BREXIT is rebalancing the British currency, weakening it in the process.

A bleak economic outlook and the most recent surge in the value of the US dollar has caused the pound to decline to its lowest point in over four decades.

Sterling dropped as much as 1% to $1.141, a low last reached by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1985.

The economic picture is difficult, just like then. Double-digit inflation and the potential for a protracted economic downturn are two concerns that Britain is currently battling. The Bank of England has issued a more than one-year recession warning.

In MTH 201 in FUTO, we studied L’Hopital’s rule or what some like to call Bernoulli’s rule. The rule does one thing really well: helps you  evaluate limits of indeterminate forms. You differentiate the numerator;  differentiate the denominator. Then, you take the limits. Just like that, a difficult problem has a path to a solution.

Look at this plot, you can see Nigeria’s problem. Our revenue has stayed largely flat over years when the expenditure (funding bureaucracy) has ramped up. As in business, when expenditure does not impact revenue growth, over time, you could be in trouble. Typically, you cut down expenses to address that imbalance and lack of correlation.

Nigeria’s future under this trajectory looks indeterminate and what that means is that Nigeria is not creating its future. And when a nation cannot create its future, it cannot predict it. You cannot have a linear growth under a parabolic expenditure and expect to have a stable future. (Enjoy calculus guys, I went to FUTO and studied under Prof Oyet and Prof Effiong, the finest breeds in calculus.)

For the 2023 elections, the key issue is who can engineer growth. Sure, you can include expenditure but I do think that Nigeria does not even spend a lot of money, because it has no money (relatively) to spend. Our budget is off by $100 billion to what South Africa spends on a population less than 30% of our population. Someone needs to ramp up growth! And of course spend smartly to impact revenue.

Comment  on LinkedIn Feed

Comment 1: Nice Analyses Engr. Ndubuisi, always proud of you. Your evaluations were quite clear in your use of fundamental expressions. There is need to develop a good prediction model using the present economic reality to find the best measure to predict and address the future economic behavior in the country due to its uncorrelated characteristic. This will help for a better stability determination in the economy especially when it has to do with the income and expenditures even in a worst case scenario, otherwise, our economy will keep dwindling until it gets to a point of no recovery.

Investors continue to pump money into Nigerian fintech startups. Many will say when will this stop? People, this will be decades-long. Why? The digitization and transformation of African financial services is still at infancy. Yes, nothing has happened. The African banking sector was merely a rent collector for decades. Now, we are just beginning the redesign.

Of more than $360 billion that moves from consumers to businesses in Nigeria yearly, a huge part remains cash-based. In Oriendu Market in Ovim Abia State, business is all-cash. So, the fintech has not reached my village – and possibly they have not reached yours. Though they are fighting in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, etc, rural Africa runs on cash.

Tomorrow, big news is coming. A Tekedia Capital (our next investment cycle begins Sept 19, register and join us) portfolio firm will announce a raise. This business run by an amazing young woman will be HUGE. She is a visionary and one of the finest in the continent. Yes, it is fintech but the friction being fixed is unique. We support such innovators.

Because finance is the operating system of commerce, more money goes into it. That is why NowNow has just raised $13 million!

Nigerian-based fintech startup, NowNow Digital Systems, has raised $13 million in its seed round led by NeoVision Ventures Ltd., DLF Family Office, and Shadi Abdulhadi heralds, which will be used to implement the company’s plans to scale and expand its service offerings across Africa.

NowNow said the fund will be used to improve financial inclusion across Africa by providing financial services to the continent’s unbanked and underbanked.

The CEO & co-founder, NowNow, Sahir Berry, said besides driving financial inclusion across Africa, the new fund will be used to promote financial education as a way of empowering Africans at the last mile.

Yes, if finance is the operating system of commerce, Africa possibly has to fix it before we can redesign most other sectors. Yes, everyone wants to have a means to be paid. And because of that, investors are making friends with fintech builders!

Nigeria-based Fintech Startup, NowNow, Raises $13m in Seed Fund to Scale Operation Across Africa