We welcome the Block Process Limited team to Tekedia Mini-MBA even as they announce the launch of Agrific – a technology-driven agro-trading market place for agriculture commodities in Africa.

Agrific is a B2B2C platform that offers on-demand commodity supply-chain, connecting producers and offtakers with a platform that supports a fair exchange of value.  Agrific’s platform serves to build relationships between local farmers and major processors, aggregating commodities while paying attention to the unique specifications of the buyers. The system allows off-takers to fund the process of buying and selling what farmers have already harvested. This will give every farmer that has produced high quality farm produce, the opportunity to sell to major buyers through Agrific’s portal

Agrific firmly commits to the transformation of food and agriculture to achieve the SDG’s, by build an all in one import and export portal to facilitate international trade between Nigeria and the rest of the world  riding on a model that matches farmers to processors and off takers by eliminating several layers of intermediaries. By doing this, Agrific optimizes market access to African farmers and also improves their income by at least 45%.

Agrific’s unique proposition lies in its end-to-end integration, firmly consolidating all value chain actors in one platform inclusive of logistics, quality assurance, payment protection and insurance of all traders through its trusted partners.

The central system of the platform is a pipeline through which agro-commodities agreed to be sold, accessed and certified to be of the quality assured. Sellers have the luxury of customizing their catalogue with an alert system that enables them to engage real-time with potential buyers who are interested in the commodity they aggregate.

Buyers, depending on the quantity or quality needed, can either trade on the central system or use the demand-supply feature of the platform to buy their desired product.

To learn more about Agrific, please visit https://agrific.co

At Tekedia Institute, we are co-learning with Agrific Team and Linda I.A Obi as they begin this playbook for Africa. Welcome to the Institute.

The US government is taking a new approach to its bilateral relationship with China, particularly on technology.

On Wednesday, the White House released a statement detailing president Joe Biden’s new executive order, easing the uncertainties of apps of Chinese origin operating in the United States, and altering former President, Donald Trump’s many executive orders targeting Chinese tech companies.

The shift from his predecessor’s approach comes with two new executive orders requiring the Commerce Department to review apps with ties to “jurisdiction of foreign adversaries” that may pose national security risks.

In August, Trump had issued executive order mandating short video app, TikTok to sell to US entities, as part of wider aim to stop the Chinese companies, including WeChat from operating in the United States. The second of Trump’s executive order announced in January, targeted eight Chinese services including WeChat’s payment feature, Tencent’s QQ messenger, and Ant Group’s Alipay wallet.

“The following orders are revoked: Executive Order 13942 of August 6, 2020 (Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok, and Taking Additional Steps To Address the National Emergency With Respect to the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain); Executive Order 13943 of August 6, 2020 (Addressing the Threat Posed by WeChat, and Taking Additional Steps To Address the National Emergency With Respect to the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain); and Executive Order 13971 of January 5, 2021 (Addressing the Threat Posed by Applications and Other Software Developed or Controlled by Chinese Companies),” the statement said.

The bone of contention has been national security and protecting the privacy of American consumers from the Chinese military. While there was a bipartisan support for the move to protect Americans from data harvesting through tech companies by China, Trump style of stopping it was under question.

A District Court Judge had in November, enjoined the Commerce Department from barring data hosting, content delivery services and other technical transactions within the United States for TikTok.

TikTok has become a darling video platform, commanding millions of users, especially young people. Its popularity played a huge role in the ruling.

The judge ruled that Trump’s order would “have the effect of shutting down, within the United States, a platform for expressive activity used by approximately 700 million individuals globally. Over 100 million of these TikTok users are within the United States, and at least 50 million of these US users use the app on a daily basis.”

However, the ruling was just a reprieve, TikTok’s future in the US was still hanging on uncertainty until now.

While Biden reversed Trump executive orders, he also introduced new rules in their stead, elaborated to govern software applications and gadgets coming from other nations, not just China.

• In evaluating the risks of a connected software application, several factors should be considered. Consistent with the criteria established in Executive Order 13873, and in addition to the criteria set forth in implementing regulations, potential indicators of risk relating to connected software applications include: ownership, control, or management by persons that support a foreign adversary’s military, intelligence, or proliferation activities; use of the connected software application to conduct surveillance that enables espionage, including through a foreign adversary’s access to sensitive or confidential government or business information, or sensitive personal data; ownership, control, or management of connected software applications by persons subject to coercion or cooption by a foreign adversary; ownership, control, or management of connected software applications by persons involved in malicious cyber activities; a lack of thorough and reliable third-party auditing of connected software applications; the scope and sensitivity of the data collected; the number and sensitivity of the users of the connected software application; and the extent to which identified risks have been or can be addressed by independently verifiable measures.

Meanwhile, SCMP reported that China’s top legislative body has passed an anti-sanctions law, providing legal backing for sweeping retaliation against any individuals, their families and organizations responsible for imposing foreign sanctions against the country.

The legislation was passed on Thursday at the closing session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, but details of the law were not made public. The law was effective from Thursday.

It was the pattern that China had followed to counter Trump’s move to sell TikTok in August. China announced new restrictions on artificial-intelligence technology exports that further complicated the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations, making it difficult for the US to singlehandedly make decisions on the sale of the video app.

The United States has been confronting Chinese cross-border operations with sanctions. The new law thus signals China’s readiness to protect the operations of its tech companies among other interests abroad, especially in the United States, even though Biden is taking a different route from Trump’s aggressive sanctions.

Skype has started collecting VAT for Nigeria.  It is important to note that the government has not even done anything but these global firms are already moving ahead to rectify the tax paralysis. While many do not think that Nigeria needs to ask for this small money, I want to continue to encourage the government to make its case. Nigeria carries the African flag as the largest economy and we have the capacity to be heard.

I expect Google to follow on its Play Store and just like that, we could get extra $millions. Expect Netflix to fix its own issues. This is not protectionism; this is fair commerce and there is nothing wrong with that.

Sure – I get it, it changes nothing because the money will be mismanaged. That is a topic for another day. But today, we simply want the money shipped to Nigeria first.

Poor Uber and Bolt. The news that the Professional E-Hailing Drivers and Private Owners Association (PEDPA) in Lagos has decided to adopt two indigenous ecosystems should remind them that its drivers are reading what their counterparts in London and San Francisco are doing: “these indigenous App companies would work with the templates and provide drivers with a good welfare package for riders’ satisfaction. This will enable the union to protect the collective interests of the drivers as decisions can now be jointly taken and approved before it is binding on both parties.” Simply, if you treat Londoners fine and you come to Lagos, and do nothing amazing, you may experience a little shock.

Shonuga said that both drivers and riders had to deal with the shortcomings in the e-hailing industry without any mutual written agreement between the owners of the cars and the foreign app companies.

He said, “As against the 20 per cent commission by the team giant App companies, Active Ride is charging 15 per cent commission on each trip. And out of the 15 per cent, five per cent is dropped into the driver’s cooperative wallet and can be accessed for a quick fix.

“This means that with the 10 per cent commission taken by Active Ride, drivers can now earn more and even save. They can now have a good maintenance routine which in turn translate to better customer service delivery.’’

Yet, these drivers will realize one thing soon: running a ride-hailing business is not really about apps. The marginal cost of this business is offline. So, installing new apps without the support system may not change much. Uber is shipping money to buy new cars in Nigeria, and hand them over to drivers. If you leave the ride-hailing pioneer, and those cars come along, new drivers will emerge. Now, at the end, the winner will be the platform chosen by the riders.

With all respect here, riding Uber is a commoditized job. If Uber offers hire purchase and a path to car ownership, some bank tellers will resign and join in Lagos. So, these drivers should not think that everything ends on uninstalling and installing new apps. They have to look at the whole playbook and make sure they know where they are getting to.

The reason why London and San Francisco drivers were successful in their requests was due to one thing: their governments led the charge against Uber. In Nigeria, a blue bird is distracting the government now, and these drivers may not get what they expect. Nonetheless, I wish them good luck as they push for their rights. The use of indigenous companies makes it even amazing.

I am very happy to announce that Tekedia Institute Mini-MBA and Tekedia CollegeBoost members will soon have access to world-class technical courses at no additional cost, courtesy of Amazon. These courses will cover IoT, cloud computing, cybersecurity, digital technology, ecommerce, AI, etc. By starting the edition 5 this week, we have stabilized the first phase of our playbook.

The next phase is helping managers become technical visionaries because every business is now a technology business. That translation has to be organic and done in ways that non-technical people will understand tech, because to drive productivity and competitiveness, technology is very critical.

Tekedia through Amazon continues to support innovators with up to $25,000 AWS credit; we invest via Tekedia Capital. I think we are the only affiliated-training institution in Africa that can give that amount! We have seeded innovators in our ecosystem and most have gone to raise $$millions. Just this week, one raised $700k; that journey began at Tekedia Institute. And if all goes well, something bigger is coming next month. #believeInAfrica #believeInNigeria