NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo [read Adetokunbo] has agreed to a five-year contract extension with the Milwaukee Bucks. The supermax deal is worth $228.2 million and is the largest deal in NBA history.  Along with the last year in his contract, Giannis will earn $256 million over the next six seasons. Giannis, born to Nigerian parents in Greece, is one of the finest all-ballers, leading his team in practically all positions.

I wrote about him a few years ago.

I just finished watching our young brother Giannis Antetokounmpo profiled on CBS’ “60 Minutes”, the best in American television. Giannis was born in Greece by Nigerian parents.  He plays for Milwaukee Bucks, an NBA team. In 2016–17, he led the “Bucks in all five major statistical categories and became the first player in NBA history to finish a regular season in the top 20 in total points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks”. He is a top five NBA star.

Giannis is a Greek. The Greeks rent trucks to see him play. He is a very humble young man, always joining them to sing their anthem. His story is very inspiring.

But watching news commentators reminds me of the double standard in this world. Giannis is profiled as a European but children of immigrants who run into troubles are always Nigerians.

The story of Giannis is the African story.

We wish him more wins.

Today, we received our first payment for Tekedia Mini-MBA via a cryptocurrency. Many young people have asked us to offer that option for months, but I ignorantly refused. But today, Chinenye Okenze pushed hard: he educated me!

Quickly, I called one of our startups, Bitfxt to provide guidance. Bitfxt focuses on conversion of crypto to fiat currency, offering debit cards which simplify the use of cryptos to pay for basic things. I had felt that it was a smarter idea to invest in the exchange, infrastructure, etc without getting into the coin itself.

But you know what? I was scoring own-goals by not offering a way for people to pay via crypto. But we have corrected our errors: starting immediately, you can pay for our programs via BTC, ETH and LTC besides other options like bank transfer, Flutterwave, Paypal, and debit/credit cards. From the little research I did, BTC, ETH and LTC seem to be on the money. Yes, those are the only coins I can trust for now. As we have more confidence, we will activate more. You need to use our automatic registration option to do that.

• Crypto payment: Pay with Bitcoin (BTC), ETH, and other coins by checking out here; select the product, add to cart, and select Coinpayment at checkout.

When we finished the integration – it took less than 10 minutes – Chinenye registered and our team sent him his login details. This is the message: listen to young people; they are smarter!

Tekedia Institute offers an innovation management 12-week program, optimized for business execution and growth, with digital operational overlay. It runs 100% online. The theme is Innovation, Growth & Digital Execution – Techniques for Building Category-King Companies. All contents are self-paced, recorded and archived which means participants do not have to be at any scheduled time to consume contents.

It is a sector- and firm-agnostic management program comprising videos, flash cases, challenge assignments, labs, written materials, webinars, etc by a global faculty coordinated by Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe.

Go here and register.

Tekedia Academic Programs

In all the editions we have run in Tekedia, there has been one huge missing link: translation of business frictions into components, and through Design Thinking fix them, practically. Our members come with business challenges and want to graduate with a clear methodology on how to fix them. To deal with that missing link, we are introducing a new course, right from Week 1 called Design Thinking and Innovation Lessons. 

Mr. Aderinola Oloruntoye (we call him Dean) will lead that course. In SAP, the global technology giant, he was the digital transformation & innovation lead in West Africa. Besides the course which is already ready, there would be five Tekedia Live sessions to help members through the processes. Those five sessions will deal with a methodology he has postulated on designs and innovations, within a contextual framework of Africa and emerging regions. His course on innovation remains a special moment for many.

It is a very great course and I look forward to the knowledge excursion with him guiding us. Click here to visualize our curriculum.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe receives the Focus Africa Award  for “immense contribution and services to your community, your country and Africa at large”. It is another one for the trophy box: my grandmother built a special one many years ago. Thank you Focus Africa for recognizing this village boy who through grace and favour is living the dream.  We will build this continent to greatness.

Prepare for 2021 and build on business models which can capture value. Even if you operate at the center of the curve, find ways to create a Double Play on your One Oasis to create leverages, and capture extra value. The category-kings are members of the edges. Yes, where you operate is even more strategic than the quality of your execution. Watch the video as Tekedia Institute flips 2020, and opens for 2021, our year of Accelerated Growth for members.

In Wall Street, many companies continue to capture value despite the global economic paralysis. Of course, I do expect them to take care of their workers.

Big business has flourished in America, despite the pandemic, and often at the expense of its workers. Between April and September, 45 of the 50 most valuable public companies in the U.S. made a profit, according to a Washington Post analysis. And 27 of those 50 laid off over 100,000 workers, collectively. Many CEOs touted efforts to focus less on shareholders and more on “the well-being of their employees,” but often, that did not occur. The top 50 firms distributed more than $240 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends between April and September, per WP data.

Watch our 2021 Outlook video below.

(The video issue has been fixed)