A push against China indeed. Where are the muscles? Let me write here: if you look at 2,000 years of economic history, it is going to be a very hard one. In at least 6 centuries where China dominated in the last 10 centuries, what we are experiencing now followed the same trajectory. Joe Biden calls Nigeria, Gabon, Kenya, Argentina, etc and offers a line of credit. China calls and gives CASH, soon e-yuan. Who do you think they will listen to?

As the UK cuts its health aid, hitting nations like Nigeria, Kenya, etc, it will be shocked that its aid would be replaced with loans from China. Then magically, calls from Boris, UK prime minister, to African capitals get muted.

“The United Kingdom is a major provider of foreign aid, and is the world’s second largest bilateral health aid donor after the United States. The UK is also a major donor to the global health multilateral agencies. However, the UK government recently announced it will only supply bilateral aid to 34 countries, thereby eliminating the aid budget for 102 previously supported countries. The consequences of this sudden departure will affect health systems globally. “

A report by Premium Times notes that pregnant women and new babies will be affected in Nigeria. Of course, the government has to look for how to make up the budget. If China helps, that adds up to the affinity.

The National President of the Medical Women Association of Nigeria under the Partnership for Advocacy in child and family health At Scale, Minnie Oseji, has lamented the decision of the United Kingdom to withdraw the annual £3 million into the basket fund for Family Planning (FP) commodities of Nigeria.

Mrs Oseji, in a statement issued to journalists in Abuja, asked the Minister of Finance and Nigeria’s federal government to step in and fill the gap to prevent the negative consequences that poor funding of family planning can cause in an already overpopulated country with dire demographic challenges.

“Between 2012 to 2020, the UK government pledged and paid into the Nigeria FP commodities basket fund a total of 21million pounds for the procurement of FP commodities. UK government support contributed to saving the lives of millions of Nigerian women who would otherwise be unable to delay pregnancies and be at risk of maternal death,” she said

The fact is this: pushing against China from Washington DC, London, Berlin, Brussels, etc without taking into consideration how it is making friends in the growing economies of the future will not amount to much.

This is my summary: the world should learn how to live with China because China stubbornly bulldozed its way to the big club, to the surprise of the gatekeepers, via its own model, and it deserves respect. I call African leaders to learn from China: you need to come up with your own playbooks because the UK, US, Germany, etc playbooks are not the only ways.

Good People, I am very happy to announce that one of our portfolio firms in Tekedia Capital is going to Y Combinator. The startup which is not even up to 90 days caught my attention when it was just 3 weeks old. We closed a small deal. And yesterday, it was on stage during Tekedia Capital Demo Day. And this morning, the news came: US-based Y Combinator, the world’s finest and largest accelerator & incubator, has accepted it.

YC is the gold standard and the best; it incubated some of the finest young startups in the world. The specific startup Overview has been updated in Tekedia Capital Syndicate Board; check.

Glory because we are going to the mountaintop. As I told our members, we have developed seven core metrics which we use to assess Africa-operating startups, and increasingly, our bets are outperforming.

Tekedia Capital Members: there is nothing to worry. I have told the team to keep our space in the cap table and they promised. We are not new there, we are simply expanding.

Congrats to Team – I hope to make a post in the coming weeks once we finish all paperworks. YC, thank you. I have my bell ready and cannot wait to ring in New York, London or Lagos.

Learn more about Tekedia Capital.

How would you fix a problem in your country? A president responded: “That IPOB is just like a dot in a circle. Even if they want to exit, they will have no access to anywhere.

“And the way they are spread all over the country, having businesses and properties, I don’t think IPOB knows what they are talking about.

“In any case, we say we’ll talk to them in the language that they understand. We’ll organise the police and the military to pursue them.” – Mr. Buhari, President of Nigeria in AriseTV interview

Note the phrase “a dot in a circle” and the most unfortunate, equating IPOB to the whole Igbo Nation. 

Mr. President, I am very disappointed with your view of Nigeria and Southeast Nigeria. As a General, I am very confident that you attended the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru where they taught you about the nation. 

You fought in the Biafra war. But one of the finest moments in Nigeria was when the cholera vaccine invented during the Biafra war by Prof Njoku Obi was later used by WHO to stop the Kano cholera outbreak in 1972. Two things happened there: Nigeria was uniting and the nation was moving on! Yet, you never allow this to just go!

You keep missing moments to bring the nation together. Associating lawbreakers with a tribe is unfortunate. You had an opportunity to say the “dot people” are everywhere in Nigeria, and those causing problems do not represent them. That the “dot people” are everywhere in Nigeria is a sign they actually believe in Nigeria.

Mr. President, open your mind to be a president for ALL NIGERIANS. Live your moment. Everyone is a victim in Nigeria but you can help ALL RISE.

This is Sunday, a day of resurrection. The Day many remember for taking them out of the miry clay into the greener pastures of hope. But as mothers withdraw their kids from schools in Southeast Nigeria due to collateral damages from the Police and army who are looking for lawbreakers, Nigeria is removing ladders for the future.

As mothers prefer to keep their children due to fear of being kidnapped in the northern part of Nigeria, Nigeria is removing ladders to the future. As Southwest loads with killer herdsmen and areas like Benue fully loaded, causing fears, Nigeria removes the ladder from the base!

Today, Nigeria’s most important infrastructure is SECURITY, and if we cannot build it immediately, nothing makes sense. Join me to tell our political leaders, do not REMOVE THE LADDER because if our young people cannot be in school, we cannot predict the future. In the Southeast, for example, students are leaving hostels, preferring to abandon university education over being rounded up by the police and army.

#KeepTheLadder

MultiChoice has gone betting and it likes what it sees. The media giant is increasing its stake from 20% to 49% in BetKing in a US$281 million deal: “MultiChoice will make a formal offer of around R4 billion (USD281.5m) to increase its stake in Blue Lake Ventures Limited (BetKing) from 20% to 49%, the company has announced.” This is strategic because there are many products within MultiChoice which will capture value via sports betting. 

The board approved the formal offer to acquire more of the sports betting company on 10 June 2021.

It said that the offer is subject to the substantive conditions being met and the transaction becoming effective.

The equity investment will also result in payment of the contingent consideration of USD31m (ZAR0.5bn) relating to the acquisition of the first 20% in BetKing.

This comes after MultiChoice announced in November last year that it had acquired a 20% stake in BetKing for approximately R1.8 billion.

“Sports betting is an interesting market that is aligned to our Pay-TV business,” MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela said at the time.

“We have a lot of sport on our platform, and many people that are betting watch more games.”

BetKing started in Nigeria and Mawela said that it has shown rapid growth over the past two and a half years.

“They plan to be pan-African and will be entering South Africa at some stage too,” Mawela said.

This will reverse the lost value where MultiChoice was creating value for betting websites. Now, it wants to keep the value in-house through BetKing. Indeed, MultiChoice/DStv was not capturing any of those massive betting revenues. During the last edition of BBNaija, many betting sites built products around BBNaija, and many of them made tons of money.

For DStv, buying a part of BetKing is to keep that value in house by now using the betting platform as its official partner. Possibly, through that, it would capture value. This is a good example of a Double Play Strategy: MultiChoice is going to capture tons of monetary value through BetKing with the show serving as the One Oasis.