That is a Live  TV looting – and trying to take the goods home. But the car cannot just make space available. But while this is happening in South Africa, I am hoping that African Union calls an emergency meeting to evaluate the state of the continent. What we are witnessing in South Africa is no more about Jacob Zuma. Yes, this is a broken system where failed humans are using an unrelated issue to do what they have been dreaming: let us make everyone like us. Yes, loot and get the economy to ground zero so that poverty is equitably shared! It is very painful indeed.

Go back to the recent history of Africa, before the age of Twitter and Facebook, people demonstrated and blocked roads. This new dimension of looting is exceedingly new. And I cannot understand how it became what it is today.

The Aba Women demonstration got the deal done without looting. Many demonstrations during the IBB and Abacha regimes in Nigeria happened, but  no looting. But today, any instance of a  protest brings low humans out, breaking and looting private properties.

Who will build the shops and malls of the future if protests end with looting? This is a risk vector for investors and I am saddened by what is happening in Africa. We are scaling madness!

China is expected to roll out the e-yuan, its digital currency, at scale, later in the year. The United States has also started work on e-dollars. Nigeria plans to launch a digital currency next year. The Central Bank of Nigeria boss revealed this plan during the 279th MPR meeting – “We are committed in the CBN and I can assure everybody that digital currency will come to life even in Nigeria”.

At 7pm WAT, Tekedia Live will discuss the implications and opportunities of this redesign. 

Thur, July 15 | 7pm-8pm WAT | Digital Currencies: E-Yuan, E-Dollars, E-Naira – Franklin Peters Bitfxt (Dubai, UAE) 

Zoom link in the Board

Apple plans to offer Buy Now, Pay Later service. With that consumers can pay for any Apple Pay service in installments over time, rivaling the “buy now, pay later” products popularized by fintech powerhouses like Affirm and Paypal. In other words, Apple is now a lending company, and can technically make small marginal gains on the loans! That is good news for Goldman Sachs, its partner, as the bank continues to recalibrate for the new age where volume, even at low margins, is critical. Yes, Goldman Sachs can help process that $99 “loan” through Apple Pay Later. Just a few years ago, no one could have expected that from GS.

The upcoming service, known internally as Apple Pay Later, will use Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as the lender for the loans needed for the installment offerings, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Goldman Sachs has been Apple’s partner for the Apple Card credit card since 2019, but the new offering isn’t tied to the Apple Card and doesn’t require the use of one, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing unannounced products.

As Apple works on lending, Netflix is preparing to offer video games. The company has hired a former Electronic Arts business leader to drive game development, with a view to offering games within the next year. That is a very important playbook if the plan is to do all necessary to get people to renew their subscriptions.

Netflix’s growing fascination with video games will soon explode in the form of a full-fledged game-publishing arm.

While Netflix has yet to post its own announcement about the initiative, the streaming-video provider has confirmed to Ars Technica that it has hired a former EA and Oculus exec to lead a Netflix game-publishing team.

The newly hired exec is Mike Verdu, who most recently worked in developer relations with Facebook’s Oculus VR team (his public profile still says that’s his current job). He has worked in game development and publishing since the early ’90s, and his first studio, Legend Entertainment, was eventually acquired by GT Interactive.

Then, I report that Google has bought a fintech company: “Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has agreed to buy Japanese payments firm, Pring. The startup’s three top shareholders – Metaps, software company Miroku Jyoho Service Co Ltd, and Nippon Gas Co – announced on Tuesday they would sell their combined 87% holding in Pring to Google.”

You may ask: what is going on here? What is happening here is the power to do anything because once you have the foundational technology stack, you can easily combine and recombine things on the top stacks. Apple can add lending. Even GS can offer cheap loans. Netflix can go into gaming because it has all the core pieces already. And Google is adding payment because there is no reason not to. For Google specifically, it comes down to what I have called fintechnolization: the stable state of most digital platforms is to add a financial service product.

This thing called software will eat the world – and will also save the world, economically. It will bring a unification in many business sectors as everything business becomes a technology company, offering nothing but services in many verticals. The bank of the future will be tech firms which offer banking as a service, just as insurers of the future will be technology firms which offer insurance services.

In the next few years, technology products will evolve: Facebook can do many things right there. So, the critical playbook for innovators is to think from day one on how to deepen their moats and protect their castles, and one way of doing that is to add physical domains in anything you are doing.  When you have physical components, digital firms cannot easily automate you out. A physical component could be providing dedicated payment systems to farmers and supporting those farmers with logistics provided they use your payment technology. As you provide that support, disintermediating you will become harder.

This is simply why productivity is dropping in Nigeria: “The cost of transporting a container from Apapa port to Ikeja, Lagos, has increased from N300,000 as of 2018 to N1.6 million or more in 2021. This represents an increase of 500% at the minimum. On the other hand, the cost of trucking the same container from Ikeja to Kano has only hovered around N600,000 within the period under review. This was disclosed by Oluwemimo Joseph, Strategy & Projects Head and Chief Financial Officer of JET Motor Company, during an exclusive interview with Nairametrics on Tuesday.”

“The cost of trucking a container from Apapa to Ikeja is twice the cost of taking the same container to Kano or Kaduna. The cost has increased from N300,000 in 2018 to N1.6 million by January 2021.

The major cause of this is because the truck owners will tell you that such task, which should have taken them two days will end up taking 6 or more days due to congestion at the port,” Joseph said.

With a broken supply chain system, Nigeria has a real challenge in the economy. We need to fix it and make sure that our processes and systems can run efficiently. And the nation seems to have a playbook with the selection of four asset managers to run the $37 billion fund for Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria Limited (Infra-Co) which is set up to deepen investment in roads, railways, power projects, and other sectors in Nigeria. The companies selected include Netherlands-based Sanlam Infraworks; AIIM, a unit of South Africa’s Old Mutual Group; Lagos-based Chapel Hill Denham; and Tripple A, a consortium comprising AfricaPlus Partners and Arc Asset Management as well as Afrinvest West Africa, a Nigerian investment bank.

The company is expected to begin operations in Q3 2021 according to the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Work has indeed attained an advanced stage and we have received the approval of the Chairman of the Steering Committee, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, for the approval of the appointment of KPMG as the transaction advisers and only recently we also obtained approval for the appointment of asset managers.

So, following conclusions of these arrangements and further activities, I like to assure all of us that the Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria is expected to begin full operation by the third quarter of 2021.

We believe that through a partnership with the private sector, Infraco will be able to leverage close to N15 trillion over the coming years to close the country’s infrastructure gap.

I’m happy to acknowledge that the establishment of the Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria has generated a lot of interest from both local and international private fund managers who are keen to work with the promoters in deploying private sector capital to support investment in key infrastructure in Nigeria.’’

Meanwhile, the Petroleum Industry Bill is causing a problem with this line: “Section 317(8) in the Senate’s version of the Bill states that licence to import any product shortfalls shall be assigned only to companies with active local refining licences.” Expectedly industry players are concerned that refiners like Dangote Refinery will simply take over the market if this has to stay.

Any provision that does not guarantee a free and open market will give room to price inefficiencies and eventually kill off small businesses in the downstream sector.

“This provision will stifle price competition and leave pricing to be solely dictated by a few local refiners. If Nigerians are to pay higher international prices at the pump, we should also benefit when prices go down internationally,” they stated

They argued that this was not guaranteed unless there was healthy competition.

“Prices must be kept competitive at the pump for the benefit of the average Nigerian whose income is constantly being eroded by inflation.

“Allowing imports by major players across the supply chain will protect consumers by ensuring that local pump prices are not higher than regional and international prices.

“MOMAN and DAPPMAN remain committed to the sustainability and institutionalisation of a viable downstream petroleum industry for the social and economic growth of Nigeria,” they stressed.

I pointed this out many months ago: “So, the problem is not just refiners importing, the problem is that some could become exporters. Yes, they get the local crude oil and they simply export it! The Petroleum Industry Bill  must fix these loopholes with criminal penalties”

If you are in the business of importing crude refined products, there is a disintermediation on the way. Yes, Dangote Refinery is pushing that “license to import any product shortfalls should be assigned only to companies with active refining licenses. Import volume to be allocated between participants based on their respective production in the preceding quarter. ’’

Punch had reported that Dangote Group has desired  for inclusion in the Petroleum Industry Bill a requirement that the license to import petroleum products should be given only to companies with active refining licenses. The company does think that by having that requirement, companies will invest in local refining business.