All the consultants noted that Airtel Africa will be saved by London within the nexus of stock market. But it seems Nigerian investors will help the company. Airtel Africa listing in London was no-good! But the listing in Nigeria is looking really great. In short, the secondary listing is now bigger than the primary listing. Go figure. MTN Nigeria is also doing great in the Nigerian Stock Exchange despite the challenges in the global telecom stock market value (Bloomberg uses black market rate, I used official rate in my MTN market cap).

MTN Nigeria now enjoys a market cap of N2.636 trillion ($8.5 billion), clearly more than 20% of the total value of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. This is simply amazing because the global average of telecom stocks is actually below water, according to data compiled by Quartz. Yes, despite the largely boom stock era in the developed world, the telecoms have struggled. In the developed world, telcos have been normalized – dead pipes powering modern commerce. Yes, they are stuck at the center of that smiling curve.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe had since resigned from Kobo360 board.

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) will need modern logistics to thrive. Kobo360 CEO, Obi Ozor, releases a short statement informing our customers – from Dangote Group to Flour Mills, from Unilever to Olam, and indeed from SMEs to the largest corporations in Africa – that Kobo360 will be ready.

As a Member of the Board of Directors coordinating Strategy, I join our CEO to assure our customers that Kobo360’s G-LOS (global logistics operating system) is already working to ensure we are ready on DAY 1 of ACFTA to power Africa.

We are growing, and bringing efficiency in the utilization of the factors of production through supply chain. Think Logistics. Think Kobo360.

Kobo360 is a tech-enabled digital logistics platform that aggregates end-to-end haulage operations to help cargo owners, truck owners and drivers, and cargo recipients to achieve an efficient supply chain framework. Through an all-in-one robust logistics ecosystem, Kobo uses big data and technology to reduce logistics frictions, empowering rural farmers to earn more by reducing farm wastages and helping manufacturers of all sizes to find new markets. Kobo enables unprecedented efficiency and cost reduction in the supply chain, providing 360-visibility while delivering products of all sizes safely, on time and in full. The Kobo mission is to build the Global Logistics Operating System that will power trade and commerce across Africa and Emerging Markets

Baidu, China’s leading search engine, and Intel are partnering to make AI chips: “Intel said it’s collaborating with Chinese search company Baidu to develop a specialized computer chip to speed the process of training deep-learning systems”, Fortune reports.

Today at the Baidu Create AI developer conference in Beijing, Intel Corporate Vice President Naveen Rao announced that Baidu* is collaborating with Intel on development of the new Intel® Nervana™ Neural Network Processor for Training (NNP-T). The collaboration involves the hardware and software designs of the new custom accelerator with one purpose – training deep learning models at lightning speed.

“The next few years will see an explosion in the complexity of AI models and the need for massive deep learning compute at scale. Intel and Baidu are focusing their decade-long collaboration on building radical new hardware, co-designed with enabling software, that will evolve with this new reality – something we call ‘AI 2.0.’”
–Naveen Rao, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the AI Products Group

Few months ago, Intel also announced that it was working with  “Facebook to develop a computer chip to aid with A.I. inference, which happens when an A.I. system acts on the data it ingests”. A specific brand of electrical engineering called Neuromorphics is going mainstream right now with these AI chips.

Neuromorphic systems are inspired by the structure, function and plasticity of biological nervous systems. They are artificial neural systems that mimic algorithmic behavior of the biological animal systems through efficient adaptive and intelligent control techniques. They are designed to adapt, learn from their environments, and make decisions like biological systems and not to perform better than them. There are no efforts to eliminate deficiencies inherent in biological systems.