There is a huge pain in Uganda. Yes, hackers broke into Pegasus, a mobile money integrator for banks, telcos, etc, stealing millions of dollars from Airtel, MTN, Stanbic Bank, etc in Uganda: “In a joint statement …, Anne Juuko, Wim Vanhelleputte, and VG Somasekhar, the CEOs of Stanbic Bank Uganda, MTN Uganda, and Airtel Uganda respectively, admitted there was an “incident”, but did not give details.” Yes, it is always the weakest link, and typically comes  from the flanks. You had sealed and hardened your systems, but are your partners in compliance and protected? 

Here, the banks and the telcos did not know the mayhem would come from an integrator. If you do not know where to start on how to deal with this type of problem, I refer you to portfolio company, Infoprive, which secures most startups, banks, airlines, etc in Africa and middle east.  

Unidentified hackers broke into the systems of Pegasus Technologies, a company that integrates mobile money transactions between telcos, banks, and other local, regional, and international money transfer services, making off with a yet to be known sum, but said to be in billions of Shillings.

The most affected firms are the leading telcos, Airtel and MTN Uganda, as well as Stanbic Bank, Uganda’s largest bank that also backs up most of the mobile money transactions.

In a joint statement released on October 5, 2020, Anne Juuko, Wim Vanhelleputte, and VG Somasekhar, the CEOs of Stanbic Bank Uganda, MTN Uganda, and Airtel Uganda respectively, admitted there was an “incident”, but did not give details.

“Stanbic Bank Uganda, MTN Uganda and Airtel Uganda inform the public and their customers that on Saturday, October 3, a third-party service provider experienced a system incident which impacted Bank to Mobile Money transactions.  All Bank to Mobile Money/Wallet services have since been temporarily suspended,” the trio said.

“This system incident has had no impact on any balances on both Bank and Mobile Money accounts. Our technical teams are analysing the incident and will restore services as soon as possible.

“We apologise to all customers for any inconvenience that this has caused and reiterate our commitment to delivering seamless banking and mobile money services,” they added.

Ronald Azairwe, Managing Director Pegasus Technologies Limited, could neither deny nor confirm the incident.

Zenvus Yield has updated its algorithms. We now process data on the fly. It is a monster mathematical model which is super amazing. We are now shipping this version to partners in development mode, via licensing. With that you can integrate our technology in your product. For end users, we are here to support you.

Zenvus – intelligent systems for agriculture.

Thrive Agric defaulted on its crowd-sourced investment commitments, creating the typical scenario which the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) Nigeria has been warning people for years. People had invested with promises of fixed percentage returns. But when Covid-19 came, Thrive Agric went into extended coma as farming systems froze. Unfortunately for the startup, the investors were promised an amount, and they rightly expected to be paid.

To cause more pain for the investors, Thrive Agric insurer, Leadway Assurance, just put out a statement, informing the world that it only insured the farms, not the individual deposit’s money. That complicates the whole system.

Expect the SEC to draw the hammer here and fines could fly. Unless Thrive Agric could raise money, and pay these investors, it could be in real troubles as the loop has been  broken. Yes, not many people would be open to invest new resources, bringing the business model into paralysis.

That said, as individual investors, we need to understand the risks in these investments. Agriculture is a tough business and when someone is promising high returns, you need to understand the risks. The fact is this, running business operations in Nigeria at the moment is expensive. So, margins may not just be there for high payouts, no matter the promises on paper. Of course, that is not to say that people should not be paid as put on contracts.

Largely, this is a case study why government is not stupid when they put these regulations which many of us hate. Government wants to protect your N1 million and you are angry you cannot be allowed to get your “guaranteed N200k” yearly returns on your own money. Now, a bad thing has happened, and everyone is asking the government for help.

People, 9Mobile Nigeria has started growing again. That is a very good inflection point as the 4th mobile carrier added about 33,000 users in the month of August when compared to July. For months, 9Mobile has been bleeding users. So, that it added new users in two consecutive months should be seen as a welcome development. The new CEO, Alan Sinfield, may have a magic wand here.