Logistics is commerce. And whenever there is paralysis in logistics, supply chain struggles. Nigeria and indeed Africa have doses of supply chain paralyses at scale. Yes, while many just complain, some brilliant minds are out to fix the frictions and enjoy the glories. Gokada, Zido, Kobo360, Max and other transportation sector related startups have been in business to fix the frictions at different levels and domains: Kobo360 with trucks, Zido with tricycles and Gokada with motorcycles.

The big news today is that Uber is expanding operations in Nigeria and broad West Africa with UberBoat. (Uber is currently operating in the region; it is simply upping the game with new investments.) Yes, Gokada went for it, Max followed and now Uber has come for the moments. Just for saying that, Uber saw its stock onto the northstar, rising 5%. You know what? Markets like that Uber will swim in the Lagos waters to help Nigerians move faster. Game on – logistics; may the best solution win!

Uber is looking to expand into West Africa. Shares of the ride-hailing company rose as much as 5% on Thursday after an executive told Reuters that Uber was talking to regulators in the region about expanding its services in Senegal and the Ivory Coast.

Uber is also exploring the possibility of offering boat rides on waterways in Lagos, Nigeria, to alleviate street traffic, according to Reuters. The company started offering boat rides in Mumbai, India, earlier this year. Uber already launched a ride-hailing service in Lagos, a city with 20 million people, in July 2014.

By Sani Nahuche

An organizational culture is difficult to characterize, yet it’s woven into everything an organization does. It’s the reason workers love or loathe their employments, or clients can feel esteemed or overlooked. Like notoriety, it takes a very long time to assemble a decent culture, yet just a couple of stumbles to destroy everything. That’s why smart founders focus on developing company culture from day one, and work like mad to protect it for the duration.

Start-up founders typically focus on improving their hard metrics that they think little of the organizational culture. They have outsourced that responsibility to someone in the firm. Yet, organizational culture isn’t just about office game rooms, free titbits or easy-going Friday. It’s about how your group cooperates. It’s what your group has confidence in, and what they esteem the most. For the staff to work together, a solid organizational culture is important.

Here are some pointers to build an authentic and engaging culture irrespective of the size of your firm – stat-up, ramp-up  or an established organization.

1.      Clarify the mission

With new businesses, the impulse is to promptly begin building items and visiting clients. In any case, the time spent characterizing the mission and culture is basic. Regardless of whether an organization is beginning sans preparation or from a current parent organization, the mission must be clear and moving. Rising up out of a bigger partnership implies you’ll have a blend of inheritance representatives and new abilities.

New workers will hold unexpected perspectives in comparison to prepared ones, making arrangement significantly increasingly basic. At the point when all representatives comprehend the organization’s central goal, they will feel engaged to work autonomously and effectively.

2.      Do team activities outside work

Organization retreats and outdoor activities are extraordinary approaches to encourage group building. These activities unite individuals who don’t more often than not work next to one another to construct companionships. Organizations get more grounded when individuals get along well.

3.      Value employee feedback

I view organizational culture as the manner in which representatives feel in light of the spot they work. Some state culture resembles the air you inhale; however, I trust it’s substantially more unmistakable than that. A working environment evokes genuine feelings that effect representatives’ lives. They may feel nervousness, stress or experience difficulty resting, however they likewise can and should feel cheerful, energized and persuaded by their work.

As founders, we must comprehend what representatives are feeling – both the great and the terrible. A decent culture is one of trust, criticism and energy instead of ping pong tables or free bites. It’s tied in with making a situation that enables representatives to convey on the organization’s central goal and objectives.

4.      Value Employee like customer

Similarly, as each organization should take course from its clients, associations should likewise request that representatives help control work environment culture. You can’t right issues that you don’t think about, so ordinary criticism is basic. You may find solutions you don’t care for; however, those are regularly the most important. I tune in to workers through occasional studies, group gatherings and one-on-ones that enable us to learn and change.

In our firm, one study uncovered that our parent organization’s fundamental beliefs – genuineness, honesty, decent variety, commitment and prevalent execution – were values that our workers overwhelmingly needed to proceed in our new pursuit. Without this criticism, while we were attempting to separate ourselves, we might’ve missed the solid culture that was ideal readily available

Merchant ads of the future favor ecommerce platforms where users are in active mindset of shopping. It is better to show a mother diapers from your Amazon-native estore, when she is browsing diapers, than on Facebook when she is posting baby photos, or on Google when she is searching how to use diapers effectively.

Amazon merchant ad conversion rate will be higher, ahead of whatever Facebook and Google offer. For merchants, Amazon ads will send dollars faster to bank accounts, Facebook will give likes on profiles, and Google will send traffic to websites; Amazon wins.Amazon wins because most merchants do not even bother having physical stores anymore in America; the stores are in Amazon.com and the fulfillments are handled by Amazon. Those merchants’ jobs are simply to get people to buy – from them! Jumia and Konga must learn lessons here.

Largely, depending on your priorities – I will vote for more money to bank accounts – I see a huge opportunity for Jumia and Konga as they deepen their platforms. Yes, the ecommerce companies can anchor something that will unlock local merchant advertising in countries they operate.

Simply, active shopping ads within ecommerce platforms look promising. Because merchants are big advertisers, there is disintermediation coming to that category in Facebook and Google businesses.

In the aggregation-integration construct, more values accrue to the entity that controls demand, not supply, since supply is largely unbounded and unconstrained. For example, the number of news sources (i.e. the suppliers) is large while the entities that host users and control their experiences like Twitter, Facebook, and Google (i.e. the aggregators) are limited. These aggregators accumulate most gains and also hold more power over the suppliers of news like newspapers.

The founding members of Facebook Libra which include Stripe, Visa, MasterCard, and Naspers will be suppliers. Facebook will be the only aggregator in the network and will enjoy the largest benefit in the Libra system. Why? Among all of them, Facebook is the only entity that actually has most control of the users through the Calibra, the Libra wallet.

Facebook Libra’s major competitor will be the credit card it will work to replace in the developed world. In developing world like Africa, the Libra competitor will be cash. I am close to saying that the friction on cash is higher, and Facebook could get traction if it works with networks of local agents across territories and domains. Replacing credit cards in places like America? I am not really sure about that. But who knows! WeChat has a different paradigm: attack cash since China was never a credit card nation to start with.

Nonetheless, Facebook Libra has a real chance of winning the peer to peer payment sector, challenging MoneyGram, Western Union and intra-nation platforms like Venmo.

So, the challenges for Libra are to win over credit card users in the developed world and make fans out of cash users in the developing world. Because it has WhatsApp and Messenger, I will vote for the win in the developing world. Fixing the cash challenges will be bringing the underbanked or unbanked into the fold through a global scale of financial inclusion. Possibly, with the help of Libra, the Central Bank of Nigeria will hit its financial inclusion target.

Put succinctly, our priorities at the CBN over the next five years are the following; First, preserve domestic macroeconomic and financial stability; Second, foster the development of a robust payments system infrastructure that will increase access to finance for all Nigerians thereby raising the financial inclusion rate in the country; Third, continue to work with the Deposit Money Banks to improve access to credit for not only small holder farmers and MSMEs but also consumer credit and mortgage facilities for bank customers.

We will be waiting how they will create that Libra initial money. If Facebook decides to give limited people equivalent of $50, I can assure you that many will become believers. Of course, getting Libra could be as simple as connecting your local Naira bank account to the Calibra wallet.

From the aggregation-integration construct, Facebook will control the users in Nigeria while the banks and some fintechs will become suppliers. Yes, Facebook Calibra stays at the edges of the smiling curve while others work at the center on the Libra project. In this world of blockchain, Libra is the genuine digital currency, Bitcoin and cousins will likely focus as store of values because if Libra takes off, the winner-takes-all effect will be normalized that even if Bitcoin wants to become a means of exchange later, it will not be accommodated.

Facebook Libra will use amalgam of suppliers like fintech and banks in Nigeria to architect a redesign, where as the super-aggregator controlling the users (i.e. demand, the Nigerians), will execute a framework that will possibly bring many people into quasi financial inclusion, where bank fees could be avoided, and stamp duty fees disintermediated. The Central Bank of Nigeria will win on its financial inclusion target but Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) may see its stamp duty fees disappear.

How Facebook Libra Cryptocurrency Will Affect Nigerian Naira, Inflation, Banking

In December 2017, I reported that Amazon had built a solid advertising business with its own category redesigning capabilities. Facebook has its walled garden ad, Google has its search ad which remains largely text-based, but Amazon has built what I will call “active shopping ad” as only those that are actively shopping get to see the ads. Yes, you must have gone to Amazon to shop, before you can see ads.

I will like someone that is in the shopping state of mind to see my ad, over someone watching a cat on Facebook, or researching a topic with no intention to buy anything as may be with Google. Amazon ad business is the best in terms of value for money especially for merchants. Markets are validating that construct as ad is the fastest growing unit in the Amazon empire.

I was on Amazon today working on gifting items when I noticed something: Amazon now runs a serious advertising business. And there are many companies putting money in that ecosystem. If companies think that advertising on Amazon is a better deal than promoting their websites on Google, it simply means that Google has a major problem in its hands.

Facebook has walled off the partying and events communities, and if Amazon takes care of the merchandise, I do not know what will remain for Google. Yes, we put adverts for two major things: events and products. If Google becomes a second-platform for both, there is a problem for Larry Page and his lieutenants in Alphabet, the parent to Google.

The experts are here with data:”the e-commerce giant’s ad business will grow more than 470% over the next five years, outpacing the growth rates of both Google and Facebook in that period, and making it one of Amazon’s fastest-growing and most profitable business segments.” This is a slam dunk – there is no reason to put adverts on Google for anything that can be sold on Amazon.

Facebook will be a waste of efforts if Amazon carries that item especially if you have a merchant store within Amazon. Both Google and Facebook will give you clicks from adverts; Amazon will deliver sales to the bank accounts. That makes Amazon ad business a superior business. If ads are to take users to commercial sites, Amazon wins because it is the grand-dominion of all digital commerce sites.

Amazon is expected to pull in $40 billion in annual ad revenue by 2023, new research shows, up from miniscule levels just a few years ago. According to recent report from Juniper Research,

Amazon has been expanding its offerings to advertisers over the years, selling inventory across its sprawling website to niche products like the Chefman pressure cooker and, more recently, to well-known household brands from Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Display ads, paid search results, and instructive videos are just some of the available inventory.

The Amazon ad was engineered to serve the Amazon oasis, the ecommerce. Like the One Oasis Strategy, that business has grown after making the ecommerce better through better discovery for premium merchants. Yes, the ad unit has evolved to become a business itself. The Amazon ad business will redesign the industry, affecting Google and Facebook. But do not weep for the latter duo – they will be fine: “By 2023, the global digital advertising market will hit $520 billion, up from $294 billion this year. At that point, the top three digital advertising platforms—Google (at $230 billion), Facebook ($110 billion) and Amazon ($40 billion)—will comprise roughly three-quarters of the market, according to Juniper Research”. Yes, they will continue to run the show for a long time but Amazon ad will take most of the merchant advertising within a decade.