Our 2021 Q3 numbers are out and 2021 is looking SUPER-GREAT. Our leverages are compounding very well. We continue to be laser-focused on pricing because “the most significant opportunity for African B2C startups lies with consumers who earn between $4 — $8 per day … This is largely because that income band holds the highest concentration of discretionary spending power on the continent, as the graph below shows.”
Companies like Bigi Cola and La Casera understand this redesign. You can also make a case that the sachetization in places like Nigeria where everything is now bundled in sachets has a root therein. Simply, there are not many consumers outside that $4-$8 per day segment for any big B2C business (if you focus outside this segment, your business must have a dose of B2B).
Interestingly, that is also where I see a big percentage of my popular 30 million people who earn relatively decent income in Nigeria; those 30 million are the core of the consumer market.
Facebook announced on Thursday the launch of new products and features for businesses geared toward creating alternatives for its targeted ad business scuttled by Apple’s new privacy policy.
The social media giant said the new features will be helpful in an era where “people will want to easily discover products and services, get support and ask questions right from chat, and conduct transactions, all while having more control over their personal information.”
The privacy-driven policy that restricts Facebook from tracking people across iOS apps for targeted ads, has been widely accepted by users of iPhones, leaving the social network with no choice than to seek alternatives for its advert-based enterprise.
Facebook has been at the receiving end of heavy criticism over how it uses personal information, and many users are seeing the iOS policy update as a succor to their concern that their private information may someday be mishandled. Against this backdrop, Facebook is rolling out new features that will allow businesses to better position themselves in front of relevant audiences.
These new features are interconnected with Facebook’s sub-companies to enable businesses to have access to ads and interact with their customers.
“We want our family of apps to be the best place for businesses, especially SMBs, to run their business online. That’s why we are announcing new products to help businesses connect with their customers and simplify day-to-day management,” the company said.
Facebook has been expanding on e-commerce with features such as Marketplace and the newly introduced business directory on WhatsApp, which allows consumers to find shops and services on the chat platform.
As part of its push to create a business environment independent of third party services, Facebook has been trying many new features. TechCrunch noted that earlier this year began testing a way for customers to explore businesses from underneath News Feed posts by tapping on topics they were interested in — like beauty, fitness and clothing, and exploring content from other related businesses. The feature allows people to come across new businesses they may also like, and would allow Facebook to create its own data set of users who like certain types of content. Over time, it could possibly even turn the feature into an ad unit, where businesses could pay for higher placement.
For now, Facebook will expand this feature to more users across the U.S., and launch it in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa and the U.K.
The company has emphasized on using chat messaging to help businesses and customers communicate across its platforms.
“We are investing across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, in business messaging tools as well as omni-channel communication tools such as email. We’re using our expertise in person-to-person messaging to simplify person-to-business communications. These new tools are built to drive better business results across the customer journey – from higher-quality leads, to incremental sales, to higher customer satisfaction at lower cost,” the company said.
This means it will become easier for businesses to chat with customers, buy ads that encourage people to message them on Facebook’s various chat platforms — Messenger, Instagram Direct or WhatsApp, and also be able to choose all the messaging platforms where they’re available, and Facebook will default the chat app showcased in the ad based on where the conversation is most likely to happen.
The company will tie WhatsApp to Instagram, as well, as part of this effort. Facebook explains that many businesses market themselves or run shops across Instagram, but rely on WhatsApp to communicate with customers and answer questions. So, Facebook will now allow businesses to add a WhatsApp click-to-chat button to their Instagram profiles.
The company also announced new updates to Facebook Business Suite, where new technologies like automation, and simplifying how businesses manage their digital presence, have been featured. This will help businesses to focus on reaching their customers and growing their business.
Facebook said it is also introducing File Manager, a new feature that allows businesses to easily create, manage and post content within Facebook Business Suite, and also making post testing available in Facebook Business Suite to let businesses test and compare multiple versions of a post to see which one people are more likely to engage with.
Other new products include tests of paid and organic lead generation tools on Instagram; quote requests on Messenger, where customers answer a few questions prior to their conversations; and a way for small businesses to access a bundle of tools to get started with Facebook ads, which includes a Facebook ad coupon along with free access to QuickBooks for three months or free access to Canva Pro for three months.
Facebook said it plans to incorporate more content from creators and local businesses and new features that let users control the content they see.
Nigeria and other countries in the world have less than 10 years for the realisation of 17 Sustainable Development Goals accepted by the political and business leaders in 2015. In one of our previous article series on sustainable development, our analyst stressed the place of academics and academia in the attainment of the Goals.
In the analysis, it was specifically stated that academic publications such as peer reviewed journal articles, chapters in books and whitepapers would go in a long way of calling attention of relevant stakeholders to the need to priorities the Goals and their specific targets before 2030. Similar submissions have also been made in other analyses, especially on the place of strategic partnership and lack of data for evaluating and measuring progress.
As one of the key stakeholders, academics, development specialists and other professionals who are connected with the path of realising the Goals directly or indirectly have hinged that universities and other higher education institutions have teaching, collaborative, evidence-based knowledge, measuring and evaluating, and advocate roles to play if countries, nations, cities, towns, villages and communities would ever realise the Goals by 2030.
Teaching role requires that HEIs have appropriate academic curricula that disentangle each of the Goals for the students and members of the Institutions’ immediate community. This role also requires that the teachers of the trainees or trainers of the teachers have adequate knowledge, skills and experiences that would enable them to transfer necessary knowledge, skills and experiences associated with effective problem identification and provision to targets/beneficiaries of each Goal.
Since teaching cannot be a single approach to educating relevant stakeholders about the significance of attaining the Goals, universities cannot do without collaborating with other key stakeholders. For instance, our analyst notes that universities-industry partnerships in Nigeria needs process and people reengineering. This is premised on the recent experience which shows that both the gown and the town are collaborating less towards solving varied issues in the two climes.
From publications, universities are in a better position to ensure evidence-based solutions provision and application. With the appropriate understanding of how researches fuel development and shape societal issues and needs, universities cannot do without creating necessary and relevant metrics for monitoring and evaluating progress of each Goal before 2030. While performing these roles, strategic advocacy and civic engagement cannot be jettisoned. This is needed whenever research outcomes show grey areas in the private and public sectors’ activities related to the Goals. It is also important that universities engage policy makers and implementers on the need to consider the outcomes for emergent policy formulation and implementation in the key industries and sectors that align with the Goals.
As debates about the roles of universities continue, in this piece, our analyst examines effectiveness of academic programmes’ number of aims and objectives in the sciences and social sciences on the reflection of the SDGs’ related courses. For the two faculties, analysis suggests possible teaching of climate change as topic more than sustainability and environment.
Applied Geophysics, Biochemistry, Biology, Biotechnology, Botany, Brewing Science and Technology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Criminology and Security Studies, Demography and Social Statistics, Development Economics/Studies, Economics, Economics and Development Studies, Environmental Management and Toxicology, Geography, Geology, Industrial Chemistry, Information Science and Media Studies, International Relations, Marine Science, Mass Communication, Mathematics, Meteorology, Microbiology, Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, Petroleum Chemistry, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Science Laboratory Technology, Science Laboratory Technology (Biology), Science Laboratory Technology (Microbiology), Social Justice Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Statistics, Tourism Studies and Zoology are the programmes chosen for analysis.
Analysis specifically considers some of the premises for the inclusion and teaching of SDGs in schools. For instance, Professor Sahagian Dork recently noted that “there are at least two key aspects of incorporating SDGs, and sustainability in general, into courses and curricula at the college level. The first is through sustainability and environmental degree programs, whose students plan to pursue these topics as a career and whose faculty have already made this their career. The second, and more difficult, aspect is incorporating SDGs throughout the entire college curriculum to reach those students who may not be pursuing sustainability as their life’s work.”
Our analysis shows some levels of alignment with Professor Sahagian. We found that none of the programmes in the two faculties is specifically designed for teaching of sustainability and environmental issues. We only discovered courses within programmes that suggest the possibility of teaching SDGs related issues and needs. However, Environmental and Sustainable Development is a course in the General Studies Programme and being taught in twice in 200 levels. Majority of the courses within the selected programmes that align with the SDGs partially are being taught in 200, 300 and 400 levels.
Our analysis reveals that Environmental Management and Toxicology, Development Economics/Studies, Marine Science, Geology, Meteorology are more aligned with SDGs than other programmes. We equally found a strong association of the number of aims and objectives with the courses that establish possible teaching of climate change and sustainability as topics, but not for environment as topic. For sustainability and climate change to be taught as topics significantly, analysis shows that a programme needs between 5 and 11 strategic aims and objectives.
Exhibit 1: Number of Aims and Objectives in Selected Programmes in Relation to Selected Courses Per Select Faculties
Source: National Universities Commission’s BMAS, 2015; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
Key: Number of Aims and Objectives are repeated when a programme has more than one course that aligns with SDGs [fully or partially]
Exhibit 2: Severity of SDGs Reflected Courses by Faculties
Source: National Universities Commission’s BMAS, 2015; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
Key: 201 SDGs reflected courses for sciences; 155 SDGs reflected courses for social sciences
Source: National Universities Commission’s BMAS, 2015; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
As chip shortage continues to hold the tech world in a tight grip, limiting production and spiking product prices, the EU is seeking to use legislation to push for greater resilience and sovereignty in regional semiconductor supply chains.
Compared to other regions, the EU is the most disadvantaged when it comes to semiconductor production, apart from Africa. Now the bloc sees legislation as a way to augment existing plans to increase chip production in Europe.
“But while global demand has exploded, Europe’s share across the entire value chain, from design to manufacturing capacity has shrunk. We depend on state-of-the-art chips manufactured in Asia,” the EU president, Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday during a state of the union speech.
She explained that gaining greater autonomy in chipmaking is now a key component of the EU’s overarching digital strategy. Presenting the “European Chips Act”, she explained that the EU should harp on a strategy backed by legislation to ease production bottlenecks and protect the bloc’s interests.
“There is no digital without chips,” said von der Leyen. “While we speak, whole production lines are already working at reduced speed — despite growing demand — because of a shortage of semiconductors.
“So this is not just a matter of our competitiveness. This is also a matter of tech sovereignty. So let’s put all of our focus on it.”
Ursula called on the bloc to build on existing collaboration that has seen Europe contain covid-19, in tackling the bloc’s chip dependency.
The Chips Act will aim to link together the EU’s semiconductor research, design and testing capacities, she said, calling for “coordination” between EU and national investments in this area to help boost the bloc’s self-sufficiency.
“The aim is to jointly create a state-of-the-art European chip ecosystem, including production. That ensures our security of supply and will develop new markets for ground-breaking European tech,” she added.
Besides covid, Ursula pointed at the Galileo satellite navigation the EU launched 20 years ago, in a bid to stir the belief that the bloc can attain chip self-sufficiency if it bands together. Though she admitted the task ahead would be daunting.
“Today European satellites provide the navigation system for more than 2 billion smartphones worldwide. We are world leaders. So let’s be bold again, this time with semiconductors.”
The EU had in March unveiled the Digital Compass plan, designed to help the bloc produce 20% of the world’s cutting-edge and sustainable semiconductors by 2030%. The proposed European Chip Act is meant to elaborate and accelerate the plan.
Per TechCrunch, the EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, explained in his that the legislation will help the Commission to integrate Member State efforts into a “coherent” pan-EU semiconductor strategy and also create a framework “to avoid a race to national public subsidies fragmenting the single market”.
The aim will be to “set conditions to protect European interests and place Europe firmly in the global geopolitical landscape”, he explained.
According to Breton, the Chip Act will comprise three elements: Firstly, a semiconductor research strategy that will aim to build on work being done by institutions such as IMEC in Belgium, LETI/CEA in France and Fraunhofer in Germany.
“Building on the existing research partnership (the KDT Joint Undertaking), we need to up our game, and design a strategy to push the research ambitions of Europe to the next level while preserving our strategic interests,” he noted.
The second component will consist of a collective plan to boost European chipmaking capacity.
He said the planned legislation will aim to support chip supply chain monitoring and resilience across design, production, packaging, equipment and suppliers (e.g. producers of wafers).
The goal will be to support the development of European “mega fabs” that are able to produce high volumes of the most advanced (towards 2nm and below) and energy-efficient semiconductors.
However, the EU isn’t planning for a future when it can make all the chips it needs itself.
The last plank of the European Chip Act will set out a framework for international co-operation and partnership.
“The idea is not to produce everything on our own here in Europe. In addition to making our local production more resilient, we need to design a strategy to diversify our supply chains in order to decrease over-dependence on a single country or region,” Breton went on. “And while the EU aims to remain the top global destination of foreign investment and we welcome foreign investment to help increase our production capacity especially in high-end technology, through the European Chips Act we will also put the right conditions in place to preserve Europe’s security of supply.”
“The US are now discussing a massive investment under the American Chips Act designed to finance the creation of an American research centre and to help open up advanced production factories. The objective is clear: to increase the resilience of US semiconductor supply chains,” he added.
“Taiwan is positioning itself to ensure its primacy on semiconductor manufacturing. China, too, is trying to close the technological gap as it is constrained by export control rules to avoid technological transfers. Europe cannot and will not lag behind.”
Politics in Nigeria – only fools and simpletons risk their lives to defend the words and ambitions of politicians. Today, former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, has officially dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Premium Times reports.
For FFK, if politics is an industry in Nigeria, APC holds the largest market share and the positioning is better therein. In the next 8 months, expect many more to move. Mr. President welcomes the new convert.
We’re still waiting for the big masquerade to come out.
