It is a very beautiful vision and one we must commend and support: “The Federal Government has said that it is targeting an increase in e-commerce trading, from the current market value of $13bn to about $75bn by 2025. The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Evelyn Ngige, who disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja at the second National E-commerce Roundtable organised by the ministry noted that e-commerce had grown from 14 percent in 2019 to 17 percent in 2020.”

This is how great things happen provided we can walk the talk. The future of markets in Nigeria would be digital because the transition from meatspace to the digital space will continue for decades. Yes, Nigeria has decades-long opportunities to redesign its industries and commerce is a big component.

Yet, if Nigeria wants to make this $75 billion ecommerce business come to pass, it has to do two things: fix postal service (PPP or joint venture with private sector) and stimulate ecommerce spending.

In the United States, they used the initial sales tax waiver collection to make things online cheaper. In other words, because the old Amazon was not required to collect local sales tax, things in Amazon were cheaper than your neighbourhood store. 

If you spend $1000 on Amazon, you do not have to pay an extra $80 sales tax unlike in your local store which is required to collect it. And with free shipping, many would wait for the extra two days it would take Amazon to ship the items, to save that $80. So over time, ecommerce became a destination for shopping. American policy seeded that redesign.

The second part is that without a good postal service, there is nothing like a dynamic ecommerce sector at the consumer level (B2B ecommerce is flourishing). The marginal cost of an ecommerce business is captured by transaction and distribution costs. The distribution cost is physical (yes, you have to actually move the item from the warehouse to the buyer) and the internet will not solve that cost element. So, without a postal service in Nigeria, we cannot have a dynamic ecommerce since participants would be required to build huge logistical systems. Not many have that resource. So, Nigeria needs to get the postal service working for us to touch that $75 billion.

Doable? Yes if we focus on some pillars and anchors. In short, $75 billion is very small. The total consumer spending in Nigeria is close to $350 billion yearly; we have rooms to digitize.

Tekedia Institute offers many tracks in the Advanced Diploma programs which run for 8 weeks. A track has no Live Zoom session, and it is completely self-paced and online. Upon payment, you have immediate access to start learning. The program includes class notes, flash cases and videos. Here are the tracks:

Advanced Diploma in Logistics & Supply Chain Management
Advanced Diploma in Business Innovation, Growth & Sustainability
Advanced Diploma in Project Management
Advanced Diploma in Risk Management
Advanced Diploma in Business Administration
Advanced Diploma in Innovation & Design Thinking
Advanced Diploma in Accounting, Auditing, Forensics & Taxation

Cost: Each track costs $100 or N36,000 naira per participant. Register here.

Some major events in the next coming days in Nigeria. I take you back to this post and the Dec 2020 one. Politics is a permanent interest game, no enemy and no friend.

In December 2020, I wrote, thus: “It seems some politically sagacious northern states’ governors in Nigeria’s ruling party, APC, want former President Goodluck Jonathan to be APC presidential flagbearer in 2023, if Jonathan agrees to decamp from PDP to APC. Lol. That is really unfair as Ndubuisi Ekekwe has not even tasted any water in Aso Rock, and they are focusing on making more presidents out of former presidents. Haba Nigeria….Obasanjo, Buhari…and Jonathan.

It does not sound really crazy if you look at the permutation: Jonathan can only serve a single term. Period. And if that is the case, he is the only Southern Nigeria politician that would make it possible for many governors from the north to have a chance in 2027.”

As a school teacher, do I have a chance in a nation whose mission is to make more presidents out of the former presidents? Lol.

Here are the new products Apple announced today, plus their prices and launch dates:

Dear Co-learner,

Greetings and welcome. We are writing from Tekedia Mini-MBA support. We want to pass across the following updates: 

The first Zoom or live session of our program will begin on Saturday at 7pm WAT (Sept 18). Zoom in the Board.

Every Monday, the weekly courses are posted; Week 2 will be posted before 12 noon WAT on Monday, Sept 20. On the same Monday, we will publish the Zoom links with Faculty names and topics for Tue (Sept 21), Thur (Sept 23) and Sat (Sept 25). The same repeats until the end of the program. 

If for any reason you cannot figure out yet how to access your account, email us. We will do it manually here. But note this, there are really three things in our instruction manual https://school.tekedia.com/support/support/

•  STEP 1: reset your password so that you can pick your password. We created the account and you are required to reset to get a password (Think of changing your Facebook password)
• STEP 2: use that password to login (Think of logging with that new Facebook password)

• STEP 3: accept our terms to comply with global privacy requirements (if you do not click, you will not see your course under MY PROFILE).

On the same page above, we also have a short video which explains how to navigate the portal. We operate 24/7 and do try to provide support. But if you take time and read the updates, more than 99% of issues would be fixed. 

We do not send emails in this program; this may be the last one. Every Monday, we update the News Update & Zoom Scheduling page. We also post the same in the Hub. 

Registration continues here.

Regards,

Tekedia Support

tekedia@fasmicro.com