Carbon has set up a $100,000 Pan-African fund to address the lack of funding and support holding back budding tech entrepreneurs on the continent.

Carbon’s mission is to empower opportunity globally through frictionless finance. that empowers individuals and businesses with access to credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. We are a global company of over 100 employees with operations in Nigeria, England and Kenya.

Carbon’s Disrupt fund, the first of its kind by an African fintech startup, will invest up to $10,000 per startup (for 5 percent equity) and give access to Carbon’s API, allowing investees to leverage Carbon’s growing customer base and innovative technology platform, to get to market faster. Acknowledging that its success is dependent on the growth of the tech ecosystem, Carbon expects the initiative to spark more collaboration and further investment that should drive growth across the ecosystem. It’s not all altruistic, unfortunately!

Carbon is now accepting applications from companies with operations in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Egypt. Startups looking to apply for the fund must have a functioning product, post revenue and looking to operate in multiple countries. The fund has a wide investment mandate but target sectors include insurance, health, education which have not seen as much investment as the fintech space.

More than 50 percent of startup funding on the continent in 2019 went to fintech firms1, despite the abundance of opportunities that exist in other sectors. Carbon’s Disrupt fund has been developed to tackle this head on, making it easier for entrepreneurs across all sectors to access the funds and support they need to establish their solutions and achieve their business objectives. The fund will also provide mentorship, access to Carbon’s customers and payment platform, as well as office space in Carbon’s Lagos offices.

According to Chijioke Dozie, CEO and co-founder of Carbon, “Common investor wisdom is to stay in your market and dominate. This assumes that you are expanding on your own but we believe that by collaborating and partnering deliberately, Carbon and other tech companies can scale faster and build more enduring platforms.  There are many excellent companies across the continent looking for the kind of scale Nigeria offers and we are excited to partner with them to provide the support and financial investment they need. We are equally excited to expand beyond Nigeria and Kenya by working with a new generation of innovators across the continent and sharing our experience to tackle common obstacles to growth”

Ngozi Dozie, co-founder of Carbon, added “The investing environment for early stage startups has improved in recent years. However, a key issue for most startups that has not been addressed is the cost of customer acquisition. A lot of money is spent on acquiring customers, mainly via social media, when a more collaborative approach among tech companies could be more efficient. Our fund will enable this collaboration, allowing others to market to our customer base and vice versa – a win-win for everyone. As the saying goes, ‘if you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together’”.

Since launching in 2016, Carbon has amassed 2.1 million users. The company disbursed more than $63.7 million in loans in 2019 and processed more than $140 million in transactions. In December 2019, the company announced its expansion into the Kenyan market, as well as its Carbon for Business platform which provides startups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and FinTechs with access to uncollateralized credit, secure online payments, reliable funds transfer and fast KYC (know your customer) compliance obligations.

Interested entrepreneurs can apply to access the fund via https://getcarbon.co/disrupt-fund.

Source: press release

While growing up, I read mystery novels that told stories about ghost-writers and ghost-writing. Then, I thought ghost-writing was all about writers shadowing important people so they could chronicle important events in their lives. All I knew about ghost-writing centred around writing true stories on people’s lives.

Later, I found out that ghost-writing isn’t just about writing stories on people; it is all about writing things that wouldn’t fetch you any credit, except the money you will be paid. I learnt this when I started writing speeches and addresses for my bosses. That was when I realised that presidents and CEOs don’t have to write their speeches. All they needed to do was to hire ghost-writes and then edit what was written.

But today, ghost-writing is taking another dimension. People still hire others to write their stories and speeches as well as textbooks and novels, which is ok as far as I know. But the one that is gradually taking over the ghost-writing business is what I call “academic ghost-writing”.

Understanding Academic Ghost-Writing

Remember, ghost-writing involves writing piece of works for others and taking no credit for them. A ghost-writer is what he is – a ghost. He’s invisible in all ramifications. He writes what was contracted to him as if he was the client. When the work is done, the client’s name is published as the author. And the ghost-writer, who is the actual author, vanishes into oblivion. Most clients do not even allow their ghost-writers to keep copies of their works. Some don’t allow these ghost-writers to present their works as samples of their creation. These clients assume authorship and seal up any portal that will link those works to their ghost-writers.

This is ok and acceptable in the world of creative writing for so many reasons, such as want of time, expertise and resources. But when students and academics hire ghost-writers to write their academic articles, assignments and projects, then ghost-writing becomes ruinous.

I know people may jump to conclusions by stating that this situation is peculiar to Nigeria, but I am here to make it known that this is a global thing. Yes, we see and hear of students paying other students to write their assignments, tests and exams for them; and we know some projects and thesis were ghost-written; but I know that these attitudes were frowned at and discouraged by academics. In fact, some project supervisors, who suspect their supervisees of hiring ghost-writers, ask that students continue to re-phrase, re-cast and restructure their works until they are sure the work is original. These students may see them as mean but it is all for their own good.

However, things are getting digital these days, so that today it is easier to hire ghost-writers from different parts of the world. This is made possible as a result of internet platforms that bring together academics and students solely for this purpose. These platforms usually advertise openings for academic writers, research writers, researchers and so on. Those that seek for ghost-writers that will carry out location-bound research only hire people that live within that location. Some look for only people in specific fields of learning. Others pick academics based on their highest qualifications and quality and quantity of publications. These platforms can be found in every remote work advertising websites.

Kindly understand that academic ghost-writing is not the same thing as seeking out researchers, who will supply their clients with data which will be used in research. It is also not the same thing with looking for editors, who will point out loopholes in their clients’ works. Academic ghost-writing here is a situation whereby an academic or a student pays someone else, in whatever form it may, to carry out studies and research, structure them, outline the paper and then write them. After which the client will assume full authorship for a paper the content of which he didn’t know how it was arrived at.

Dangers of Academic Ghost-writing

I know many people benefit from these transactions but I believe this may have negative effects in the long run if it is not curtailed. I’ll try as much as I can to state the side effects of hiring ghost-writers for academic works.

1. Plagiarism

This is the commonest problem associated with academic ghost-writing. Plagiarism will be almost impossible in situations where the writer tells stories of someone’s life or writes speeches for specific occasions (except in the few embarrassing instances we witnessed in Nigeria). But in academic works, plagiarism is high. This could be linked to the fact that academics accept and write papers on areas of their specialty. And when they are to write on the same subject matter for two or more different persons, they will be tempted to simply twist some words and phrases and then push out the works.

Cases such as this have been witnessed in academic project defences, where two or more students wrote almost the same content but with modified project topics, or where students copied an existing project verbatim. In most cases, investigations reveal that the affected students used the same ghost-writers. Well, they pay the price by having their works cancelled.

2. Half-Baked Graduates

This stands to be debated because I know a lot of people argue that it’s not a must that students need to write their assignments and projects before they become good in their fields. In as much as I know that empirical study can show this as true, it is still worthy to note that one of the things expected of a student is to be able to outline his assignments and then write them analytically. If a student finds it hard to study a phenomenon, read up past works on it and analyse his findings, then I don’t see that student graduating as a professional.

3. Recycling Information

As I always tell my students that when one thousand students are given the same assignment, the lecturer expects to see one thousand new ideas. But in a situation where the one thousand students decide to use ten ghost-writers, only ten ideas will be projected.

This is more noticeable in the cases of dissertations, where topics that have been in existence for donkey years were written over and over again and the same results are given. The effect of these is that we have so many hands that would have helped to solve the world’s problems, but because these hands entrusted this responsibility to just a few people, the same old solutions are used to solve new problems.

4. Unprofessionalism

This is more pertinent in the case of academics hiring ghost-writers to conduct research and write their academic papers. As a lecturer, I have been approached by several colleagues, who wish to pay so I could include their names in any paper I wanted to publish. These people are only interested in getting their next promotions and never bothered about professionalism nor knowledge acquisition. By the end of the day, we have so many top academics, who have little knowledge of their fields because they have not bothered about conducting research and publishing them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not kicking against people seeking help from academics across the globe in doing their assignments and other academic publications. My take here is that the whole work shouldn’t be left to ghost-writers to perform. The essence of academic works is to acquire further knowledge, which will be lost if academic ghost-writing is allowed to get out of hand.

Over the years, the singular issue that confronts most young people is “how do I get out of the meanness of the circumstances of my birth to achieve greater milestone, greater happiness, more contribution to humanity, fulfilment.”

If we’re sincere to ourselves, we’ll agree that this is the central reality that underpin our daily efforts as youths.

I do believe that we as young  individuals can really do something to make life worth living and fulfilling, not just only for ourselves, but also for those around us.  And I believe that there are no quick fixes to building a solid foundation that supports our progressive advance in life and works.

The surest way through which we can improve our lots, if we’re serious about the milestone we seek to attain in our lifetime, is to develop undying appetite for the following:

• • Consistent Discovering of our knowledge and skill gaps, that needs filling, as we move along;
• • Persistent learning, through books, other publications, seminars, from colleagues, mentors, great leaders and role models… to close those gaps;
• • Undying commitment to actually taking reasonable actions.

It’s important to remind ourselves  that not every deed  we do  along the way, that may produce the target we’d hoped to attain by doing those deeds. But every step we take certainly take us a little away from our challenges. And every step we take can help us to see what we can do next.

However, If we know so much and we don’t border to apply them, there will be just no way to actually figure out what works. It’s through ‘doing’ that we get to know what does or doesn’t work. It’s through actions that we get to grow.

If it’s taking years to figure out how you can get past your present life dilemma, you must remember that it actually takes a lifetime to get past the cares of life.

Thanks to Ms. Hyacinth who said “… A four year degree earned after seven years, is still a degree…”

This should make us focus on solving our problems instead of counting how long it’s taking to get done, the things that make our lives better.

The priority should be, at first, to start. As we grow, we’ll have the need, and necessarily take steps, to becoming more efficient at what we do.

I’m a young man. I live in the reality of the challenges of youths. I believe in the potentials of youths.