A thought that frequently persists with me when I create a new post on Linkedin… Where are my viewers really located?

85%+ of my connections are based in Nigeria and its reasonable to expect most of my viewers would be there. I’ve had formative years in Trinidad, and of course by birth I am Irish with ancestry all the way back to Fir Bholg and beyond.

This is a deep triangle of ‘being’ that I take with me everywhere else.

My market for most of the last twenty years has been Nigeria with a collateral exposure to a lot of West Africa. Much of the content I create here on LinkedIn is market centric, a sensible position to take as the platform is a tool for business and career promotion.

As part of my interest in auditing how effective I am on the platform, of course I am curious to find out where my viewers are based.

Is the location of the relevant ‘Tier 1 Network Peer’ an issue?

Tier 1 Networks are huge interconnected data-centres that connect with each other right across the world. The simplest way to describe them is to consider them internet mirrors. That is storage locations of every website and piece of online content in the world at any time. They constantly update each other over the connections they have with each other.

This means that when an end user makes a demand for access to particular online content, the data request only needs to follow the path through sub provider(s) reaching the primary provider in the commercial chain, and not all the way to some other Tier 1 Network much further away, where the content author or website admin created the content or update.

To be a Tier 1 Network they have to meet two key criteria –

1. Reach every other Tier 1 network on the Internet solely via settlement-free interconnection
2. Provide ‘IPv6’ routing/connectivity across each ‘peer’ connection.

There are roughly twenty Tier 1 networks in the world. Countries that have one or more Tier 1 Networks include France, Germany, Hong Kong,  Japan, India, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK and US.

It may be, then that my Irish, Nigerian, and Trinidadian viewers are being misidentified with the location their connection is getting Tier 1 Network service from.

This however, does not explain why I am told when I have visitors in either Johannesburg or Cape Town in South Africa.

Bitco site in South Africa claims Axxess, Bitco, Cool Ideas, Frogfoot, and  Seacom, are Tier1 networks, but I can’t find any independent verification of this. It is more than likely that, at best,  while these providers ‘may’ have settlement free connections with each other, they are each most likely paying transit fees for peering with a limited number of global Tier 1 Networks outside Africa.

Wikepedia article on Telecoms in South Africa focuses on the usual suspects of  Vodacom, MTN, Cell C,  and Telkom but doesn’t say how they get their internet. It also only mentions Axxess and Seacom in the last paragraph while referring to Seacom as a submarine cable only.

Separately, AFRINIC, based at Mauritius, which is the controller of IP allocation for the continent, has not succeeded in implementation of IPv6 yet, and for the most part is on IPv4. Until this is resolved it’s additionally difficult to see how any provider in Africa can be deemed Tier 1.

I’ve scoured the internet for any explanation of why LinkedIn cannot give me accurate stats on my my Irish, Nigerian, and Trinidadian viewers but can specify South African ones. Clearly services in South Africa are able to meet some sort of criteria LinkedIn is recognising, which services in Ireland, Trinidad and Nigeria are not.

It is a curious development in the light of my most recent Tekedia Institute article exploring the skill of search engine use, but I have drawn a blank.

It however is an opportunity for me to throw down the gauntlet to contributors who in Ndubusi Ekekwe’s push of my article on LinkedIn, described themselves as ‘Googlers Par Excellence’

I’ve little interest in the viewing exploits of those in Alberta, Canada, but am hugely interested in qualitative divergence between Lagos and Abuja.

It seems absurd to me that LinkedIn cannot offer comparative internal stats on the biggest economy in the biggest continent in the world.

Until it does, the periodic spam trying to entice me back as a premium user will fall on my selective eyes. It may be in view, but it will not meet my vision.

References and Acknowledgements (not in the main text body) :

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_2_network

www.bitco.co.za/5-of-the-best-south-african-telecom-fibre-companies-why/

www.internetgovernance.org/2021/08/16/the-narrative-crisis-at-afrinic-apple-breaks-privacy-gifct-participation/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_South_Africa

The case the government made against the investing apps like Bamboo, Trove, Chaka, Risevest, pushing the federal court to freeze the bank accounts of the startups is now public. Here are the key things:

• The government noted that the entities are majorly owned by individuals and firms based in the United States of America.
• The government thinks the firms are operating as  asset management companies without the necessary licenses, violating a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) directive issued in its circular referenced TED/FEM/FPC/GEN/01/012 and dated July 1, 2015.
• The government is unequivocal that the operations of these firms are contributing to the weakening of Naira: ‘He said there was the need to block 15 accounts of the firms for 180 days to stop the firms from moving their funds out of Nigeria. “We need to write the embassy, we need to go to the Foreign Affairs, the minister will serve the U.S. to seek assistance so that we can block these linkages.”’
•  Dealing in cryptocurrency trading, a contravention of the CBN policy.

The core issue here is that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is not happy that these firms source forex in Nigeria and then use them to buy financial products like bonds, stocks, etc in US and other global markets. Largely, they are importing things into Nigeria with the undesirable impact of pushing Nigeria’s balance of payment into an unfavourable column. 

Read here on how the money moved around from Flutterwave, Paystack, Monify, Paystack, BuyCoins, etc.

The 6 boards of these companies should come together and engage CBN immediately. They should push for a small fine and warning so that they do not go under. Also, CBN should modulate and find a workable framework like appointing a commercial bank custodian for the startups. If these 6 firms go under, Nigeria loses. So, here, I expect the apex bank to act as a regulator and a growth enabler at the same time.

Meanwhile, I am waiting to read from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which baptized some of these startups with a “license” to do their thing. It needs to help them.

Yet, everything happening here is a pure lack of how software is eating and saving the world by our  government. Yes, what these companies are being accused of are what treasury departments of big banks do daily for the 1%. So, if the apex bank is worried about Nigerians investing in foreign financial products, it should also close treasury departments of banks which help the big guys onload on New York and London stocks.

That these apps have provided a way for the small people to get into the games which the rich have been practicing since Lord Lugard woke up with a chosen mistress, and concatenated this nation should not be criminalized.

Nigeria needs to engage and avoid this culture of BAN and SUSPEND. If there is anything these companies are required to do, CBN should help them. Yet, our firms must ensure they understand the laws of the land and go out to ensure they comply.

Nigeria’s Court Freezes Bank Accounts of Chaka, Bamboo, RiseVest, Trove, etc on CBN Request

Tekedia Capital congratulates our portfolio TradeGrid for beginning a new patent in the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Let’s build the digital operating system for new energy and the downstream sector of oil & gas. All the way to the big bell ringing guys.

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