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2025

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Umaru H Modibbo leads a new Board of Keystone Bank Nigeria

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Keystone Bank on Tuesday announced the appointment of Alhaji Umaru H. Modibbo and Mr. Hafiz Bakare as board Chairman and acting Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer respectively.

According to the statement: “The transitional governance arrangement, which will take effect from the 1st of April 2017 is subject to approval by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

“By the 31st of March 2017, the current board of the bank (including the MD/CEO, Mr. Philip Ikeazor) would have fully disengaged, except for Mr. Bakare and Mrs. Isichei, who will continue as part of the transitional governance board.”

Do imitation legally; as Facebooks copies Snap, it’s all business

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Everyone is complaining that Facebook is imitating Snap. Please if you can find someone to copy, legally, do so immediately. The key is making sure it is done legally. We are all copying in this world. Do not be worried with feeds like this from Fortune:

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Facebook likes to flatter Snapchat so much the two companies should just drop the charade and get hitched down at City Hall in front of a justice of the peace and whoever they can find at the bus station to act as a witness.

Of course, Facebook famously tried to arrange a marriage with Snapchat in 2013, but the smaller company rebuffed its advances. And now, Snap has grown into a massive competitor, with a market valuation of close to $28 billion following its initial public offering.

Facebook, meanwhile, has continued adding new features that either imitate or flat out duplicate popular features on Snapchat. This morning, it ramped that flattery up even further, with the addition of a camera function with customized filters and the launch of Facebook Stories.

The camera interface, with a button that lets users add animal faces or animations to their photos and videos, is almost identical to Snapchat’s interface. And the new Facebook Stories feature—a way of collecting and sharing photos and video and sharing them with specific friends or on the timeline—is almost identical in both function and name to Snapchat’s version.

Facebook has a long history of trying to duplicate Snapchat’s features, and most of those efforts have been forgettable. But Instagram’s launch of a similar Stories function recently appears to have eaten into Snapchat’s market share, according to some reports.

Snapchat has clearly found a niche with younger users, but Facebook has almost unlimited resources and a dedicated user base of more than 1.5 billion. If the ability to add funny filters to a video or photo is what Snapchat was hoping would be its unique offering for the consumer marketplace, it might have another think coming.

Now, go and copy someone, legally.

Kenyans like mobile money even those living outside Kenya

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To mark the 10th anniversary of ground-breaking mobile money service M-PESA, WorldRemit has released new data showing that the Kenyan diaspora is the biggest sender of digital remittances to mobile accounts.

Transfers to mobile money accounts make up 93% of WorldRemit transactions to Kenya now – showing that Kenyans continue to be early adopters of innovative technology, even when abroad.

Mobile money has played a key role in the growth of WorldRemit’s Kenyan customer base, attracted by the low price, speed and convenience of sending instant remittances from the app or website directly to a mobile phone in Kenya.

  • In January 2017, WorldRemit customers transferred more than $140m (at annualised rate) to Kenya, making WorldRemit one of the largest remittance companies serving the Kenyan diaspora.
  • Top remittance-sending countries are the UK, Australia, US, Germany, Canada and Nordic countries.
  • Around three million Kenyans live abroad, with large communities in North America, Europe and Australia.
  • Remittances play an important role in Kenya’s economy – inward remittances reached a record value of just under $161m in November 2016, according to the Central Bank of Kenya, making it one of the nation’s top earners.
  • WorldRemit is now connected to over a fifth of all mobile money accounts – 112 million of 500 million mobile money accounts around the world.
  • 74% of all international remittances to mobile money accounts coming from money transfer operators are sent via WorldRemit.

The company has pioneered mobile to mobile remittances, sending to 32 mobile money services in 24 countries – more than any other money transfer service.

Globally, WorldRemit customers send more than 580,000 transfers every month to over 140 destinations. WorldRemit makes sending money as easy as sending an instant message.

Ismail Ahmed, Founder and CEO at WorldRemit, comments: Kenya is famed for leading Africa’s digital transformation, and today it’s Kenyans abroad who are at the forefront of digitising international money transfers. Most of our Kenyan customers use our mobile app, demonstrating the strong demand for convenience when sending to friends and family.

“With half a billion registered accounts worldwide, mobile money continues to transform lives by allowing people to access financial services for the first time. WorldRemit customers now send more than 65,000 transfers to the country every month from the WorldRemit app and website with over 90% going to M-PESA”.

French pharmaceutical company Biogaran acquires Nigeria’s Swipha

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Biogaran, a French pharmaceutical company specialized in generic and biosimilar medicines, has announced the takeover of all the activities of Swipha, a Nigerian company that manufactures and distributes pharmaceutical products known for their quality.

In order to develop new markets to meet its commitment to provide all patients with quality medication, Biogaran, a pioneer in generics and biosimilars, and a subsidiary of Servier, has just taken over Swipha, a Nigerian pharmaceutical company that produces medicines to meet local health needs. Its portfolio is mainly focused on three families of products: anti-anxiety and tranquillizers, antimalarial drugs and antibiotics, which treat Nigeria’s most widespread infections and health issues.

Swipha was the first Nigerian pharmaceutical company to obtain ISO 9001 certification in 2007. Approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014, Swipha employs 300 people locally and generated record sales of NGN 4bn (approximately € 20 million) in 2012. Beyond its production unit, the company also has a wide distribution network covering most parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most dynamic country, with more than 184 million inhabitants in 2016 according to the IMF.

Health issues are particularly important in Africa. Beyond significant needs for good quality, affordable and efficient medicines, the problem of counterfeits is also becoming of concern. The WHO estimates that 100,000 deaths are due to fake medicines in Africa every year. In this context, supplying Nigeria’s population with reliable medicines that are produced locally is a strong commitment made by Biogaran.

How to Create an effective Fitness Workout Routine

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It is very good to keep fit (jogging, working out at home or the gym, eating healthy and so on) because of the many health benefits that come with it. But many a time, people start a fitness program with the thought that the journey to those fitness goals is going to be a rosy one. By the time they attempt some programs for one or two weeks, they lose enthusiasm because of the type of discipline and patience, in weeks of consistency, required in order to start seeing the results on their body, and therefore slump back to their old lazy, unhealthy-eating-habit, chubby selves.

The reality is keeping fit and getting results is not a day or a week’s job. You have to know right from the very beginning that it will need discipline and patience. To develop this discipline and patience, you should have as a guide, the following acronym called SMART:

1. S is Specific

Meaning you should have in mind what you wish to achieve with starting a fitness program: do you want to lose a certain amount of pounds in weight; develop your muscles; or improve your endurance level. Having a specific target will help keep you going on days when you’re likely not to be in the mood.

2. M is Measurable.

You should find ways to measure periodically, maybe weekly or every two weeks, the impact of your fitness program. It may be discouraging sometimes with little to no or even worsening results, but this helps you critically evaluate yourself to find out and correct what you might have done wrong in the preceding weeks as regards your fitness.

3. A is Attainable.

Before you begin your fitness journey, ensure you plan it in such a way that you will be able to faithfully adhere to the earmarked fitness activities, without regular impedance from your work schedule and other engagements you have on a daily basis. This means if you work till evening, you should have your fitness activities inserted in the early morning or late in the evening when you will have time to actually work out. Planning in this way and sticking to it will help you make your fitness activities a subconscious routine which is one of the best things that can happen to you.

4. R is Realistic.

Before starting out on that fitness journey, you must have realistic expectations; if your belly is ballooned out with fat, don’t expect to have six packs after one month of fitness activities. Instead, bear in mind that that belly fat will probably take months to burn before another work starts on toning your abdominal muscles to six packs. So, measure your waist circumference monthly and track and celebrate those tiny centimetres that disappear as a reduction in abdominal fat.

5. T is Transparent.

You should be able to share your fitness activities and the gradual progress you’re making with friends, colleagues and even with social media friends on a periodic basis. Being transparent in this case is not forcing you to share your fitness journey; it is more of a choice, but it can help keep you motivated to continue: friends encouraging you and those who may start looking up to your fitness journey and progress as an inspiration to start their own fitness journey.

You can get a kind of fitness diary where you can draw up a weekly schedule using the SMART guideline. You should be honest with yourself in the area of requirements needed for your fitness activities (going to the gym, waking up very early to jog, stopping unhealthy eating habits and so on), and possible constraints such as unplanned emergencies that may come up in your workplace or other engagements, taking extra hours or days and your fitness program in those periods.

There’s no rule on working out every day of the week. But try and make it at least 2 times a week. And don’t beat yourself or get discouraged when urgent work engagements mess up your fitness program day. Make up for it the next available time.

If you found this tip useful, don’t forget to share with your friends and family with the share button on the top right of this page.

For more advice and help, feel free to ask a Doctor on Kangpe.