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The President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition

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Donald Trump, U.S. President, signed an Executive Order to deepen the United States’ cybersecurity workforce. Fortune newsletter summarizes it thus:

The order laid a number of sorely needed federal initiatives. Among them: standardizing job listings to help cybersecurity workers more easily move around government, creating a rotational employment program between the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, establishing awards for elementary and secondary school educators who foster cybersecurity talent, and incentivizing people to learn and master hacking skills through new “awards and decorations.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the document called for a “president’s cup cybersecurity competition.” The goal, the directive states, “shall be to identify, challenge, and reward the United States Government’s best cybersecurity practitioners and teams across offensive and defensive cybersecurity disciplines.” The order mandates that such a contest, intended for both military and civilians, will take place before the end of the year. Winners are set to earn a minimum cash prize of $25,000.

Specifically, the section on using competition to stimulate young people is brilliant as captured in the Executive Order: “develop a plan for an annual cybersecurity competition (President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition) for Federal civilian and military employees”. Nigeria needs to pick some insights from this policy and create something in that line.

(e)  The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Director of OMB, and the heads of other appropriate agencies, shall develop a plan for an annual cybersecurity competition (President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition) for Federal civilian and military employees.  The goal of the competition shall be to identify, challenge, and reward the United States Government’s best cybersecurity practitioners and teams across offensive and defensive cybersecurity disciplines.  The plan shall be submitted to the President within 90 days of the date of this order.  The first competition shall be held no later than December 31, 2019, and annually thereafter.

I have articulated some policies Nigeria can take to build a strong cybersecurity capability.

In this piece, I had written a whitepaper for Nigeria’s “National Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare Command, NGCYBERCOM”. Yes, you imagine a future and you just write even when no one is paying attention. Provided it is written you have your peace back. Here is the video but the whitepaper is a tome of academic scholarship.

Facebook To Give Users Its Cryptocurrency for Watching Ads

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Facebook is planning to make something awesome on cryptocurrency. The company is talking to dozens of financial and e-commerce companies, including Visa and MasterCard, about the cryptocurrency-based payment system it is developing. The scheme carries the codename Project Libra and involves a dollar-pegged virtual currency that could be used for payments between WhatsApp users. Facebook is apparently considering giving users small amounts of the cryptocurrency for looking at ads, Fortune Newsletter summarizes.

Facebook Inc. is recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants to help launch a cryptocurrency-based payments system on the back of its gigantic social network.

The effort, should it succeed, threatens to upend the traditional, lucrative plumbing of e-commerce and would likely be the most mainstream application yet of cryptocurrency. It comes as the social-media giant is under intense pressure from regulators, users and shareholders to address privacy shortcomings.

What Facebook plans to do has already been done by Microsoft which hires users to use its Bing search, and then give them points which they can redeem for different brand gift cards. But Microsoft is not issuing its own “currency” which can create payment disintermediation for banking institutions. Facebook may face real backlash not just from governments but financial institutions. But those concerns may not really matter – the social media giant will navigate them perfectly.

A Facebook cryptocurrency would mobilize not just startups but banking institutions against the social media giant. If it happens, it can be a currency which will be useful, not tethered to any real-money benchmark because Facebook is a huge continent of itself. Provided everything stays within its network, it can claim that it is simply a “mileage system”, or a “loyalty system” or at best a “transferable reward system” which is uncorrelated with any real currency. Then, it would add in its terms “You cannot exchange the Facebook coin for any other currency. It has no value outside Facebook”. Of course, people would go ahead and trade the coin even if it means swapping Facebook accounts.

People, this would be interesting and could happen. Yes, crazy things have happened in the past: a Facebook crypto could be dangerous to nearly every digital business in this world. That currency could be deployed across its platforms including Instagram.

A Tour of Soulmate Industries – Sub-Saharan Africa’s Largest Indigenous Hair Beauty Brand

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I spent the day with Soulmate Industries Limited. Soulmate is the largest wholly indigenous hair beauty brand in sub-Saharan Africa. The Founder and CEO, Chief Sir Ndukwe Osogho-Ajala, is our big fellow FUTOite who took his university project in FUTO to build a multi-billion naira empire. To all of us from FUTO, he remains a legend, offering support. When I set up a shop in Nigeria while a student in the Engineering Lab of the Johns Hopkins University, Soulmate was the first client that prepaid for our services.  Today, Soulmate remains a client – and we are very thankful.  I must confess that I have never seen a better industrial microbiology lab in Nigeria to what I saw today – very brilliant young people building this nation. #BelieveInNigeria

Soulmate Industries Limited (RC 204468), commenced production of hair care products on January 8, 1992.  The company, since its inception a little over two decades ago, has diligently pursued technical excellence and produced high quality products that competes favourably with any brand across the globe.  Over the years, Soulmate has invested heavily in research and this investment has assisted us in gaining public recognition as producer of high quality products.

MPESA to Generate more than 50% of Safaricom Revenue by 2022

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The redesign is here – Kenya’s mobile network provider, Safaricom, is predicting that revenue from MPESA, its mobile money unit, will generate more than 50% of its revenue by 2022. In other words, MPESA will be bigger than selling airtime and broadband services for the telecom company. That would be a massive inflection point as it does imply that Safaricom has completed a double play strategy: build solid customer base in one area but make money in something else which is tangential.

Driven by a 19 per cent increase in revenues at Mpesa, the company reported annual service revenue of Ks240.3bn ($2.4bn) for the financial year to the end of March, an increase of 7 per cent. The mobile payments platform, which is used by two out of every five Kenyans to send money and pay for goods and services, generated almost a third of total revenues and will surpass 50 per cent in three years, said Mr Collymore.

Telecom services will remain the heart of Safaricom because the promise of MPESA will only ride on the telecom service users. Yes, MPESA derives its life from the users of the telecom services. As I have noted in the One Oasis Strategy, MPESA was engineered to make the telco service better by providing incentives for users to choose Safaricom network. But soon, MPESA is emerging as a great product that will anchor the company into the deep future.

Do you know the company that is making Samsung greater? Apple. Yes, that arch-rival is also the company that is feeding into the profitability of Samsung. As I explained in the One Oasis Strategy, there are just few firms in the world that can meet the quality and scale Apple needs. One of those firms is also the main competitor in Apple’s core business of mobile devices. The rivalry between iPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy is just for the newspapers: many things hold them together. The mobile devices are born from the same semiconductor factories.

Simply, Safaricom has executed One Oasis Strategy and Double Play Strategy at the same time. That is why it is one of the most respected brands in Kenya: it is fixing frictions at deep level in the lives of Kenyans.

The Importance of 2022 as EV Vehicles hit Cost Parity with Fossil Fuel Cars

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It is very close now – yes, electric vehicles hitting parity with fossil fuel cars on cost. The date is now 2022 when the cost of electric vehicles will be at parity with internal combustion vehicles. As this happens very fast, Nigeria needs to improve its game plan as the post-petroleum era is coming faster than most think.

Every year, BloombergNEF’s advanced transport team builds a bottom-up analysis of the cost of purchasing an electric vehicle and compares it to the cost of a combustion-engine vehicle of the same size. The crossover point — when electric vehicles become cheaper than their combustion-engine equivalents — will be a crucial moment for the EV market. All things being equal, upfront price parity makes a buyer’s decision to buy an EV a matter of taste, style or preference — but not, for much longer, a matter of cost.

Every year, that crossover point gets closer. In 2017, a BloombergNEF analysis forecast that the crossover point was in 2026, nine years out. In 2018, the crossover point was in 2024 — six years (or, as I described it then, two lease cycles) out.

The crossover point, per the latest analysis, is now 2022 for large vehicles in the European Union. For that, we can thank the incredible shrinking electric vehicle battery, which isn’t so much shrinking in size as it is shrinking — dramatically — in cost.

We need to get to work as a nation as quickly as possible.

The nation still has lots of opportunities to prepare for the post-petroleum era. First, it has to invest in education. This is important as education remains one of the best ways to sustain any economy. It is an organic engine for national, political and economic succession and catalyst for national prosperity. Because every nation has got a limit to its wealth creation without science and technology, Nigeria must invest in technology creation on agriculture, nanotechnology, biotechnology, manufacturing and Internet. We must position our nation to transmute from petroleum-driven economy to technology-driven one. Nigeria has to allow market driven-industrialization work by improving the necessary frameworks to make it possible. Government must boost scholarships for technical education.

The Nigeria’s Post-Petroleum Era