The Fasmicro Group team just arrived in Dakar (Senegal) for the Malabo Montpellier Panel. Over the last few months, we have worked with Imperial College London as Africa’s leader in precision farming on a new document it will unveil to the world.

To give you some background, the Malabo Montpellier Panel convenes 17 leading experts in agriculture, ecology, nutrition and food security to guide policy choices by African governments to accelerate progress toward food security and improved nutrition in Africa. The Panel identifies areas of progress and positive change across the continent and assesses what successful countries have done differently. It then identifies the most important institutional innovations and policy and program interventions that can be replicated and scaled up by other countries. Since January 2017, the Malabo Montpellier Panel has published three reports: Nourished: How Africa Can Build a Future Free from Hunger and Malnutrition (September 2017); Mechanized: Transforming Africa’s agriculture value chains (July 2018); and Water-Wise: Smart Irrigation Strategies for Africa(December 2018).

Eminent strategist and business leader, Mr. Gbenga Bamiji, FCA, will deliver a vision on that promise where hunger will disappear in the community of farmers.

What Is Zenvus?

MEST Africa, the Pan-African entrepreneurial training program, seed fund and incubator, has officially announced its fourth annual MEST Africa Summit, in collaboration with Microsoft. The 3-day event will take place in Nairobi, Kenya from June 10 – 12, 2019, at the Radisson Blu Hotel as well as the home of MEST Africa’s Nairobi incubator – the Nairobi Garage.

The Pan-African tech conference, the MEST Africa Summit brings together leading entrepreneurs, investors, ecosystem players and executives from across Africa and globally to explore the latest innovations and rising stars in the African tech ecosystem. In addition to panel discussions driven by the continent’s top thought leaders, this year’s event will feature an engaging second day including interactive workshops designed for entrepreneurs, a look inside the MEST training program and incubator, and more.

The Summit will culminate with the finals of the 2019 MEST Africa Challenge, where attendees see regional winners AMPZ.TV, OZÉ, Snode Technologies, WayaWaya and Seekewa pitch for a chance at up to $50,000 in equity investment, a place in a MEST Africa incubator of their choice and full support to help their company scale.

MEST Africa has been training, supporting and investing in tech entrepreneurs on the continent for more than 10 years. Over 330 individual entrepreneurs have been trained at MEST, and nearly 60 tech companies have been launched via seed funding and mentorship.

Five companies have exited, including Amplify Payments Ltd. (Amplify) who was recently acquired by leading Nigerian fintech player, One Finance Limited (OneFi), to further develop the payments ecosystem in Nigeria.

Sharing your future income for free education or training today may not be a model many will swallow in Nigeria. The entity paying is not necessarily sure the graduate will get a job upon graduation. And the graduate may be concerned that he or she may be losing a lot of money especially if he/she can afford that education.

Yet, in specific areas like software development, the risk for either party can be bounded. Software development jobs are expected to continue to be on high demand. Lambda School, a U.S. virtual coding and software school has exploited that business model. It just raised $50 million.

Similarly, the Lambda School is an entirely virtual school focused on coding and software training that offers its courses at no upfront costs in the hopes of meritocraticizing higher education. Instead of paying tuition, students pay 17% of their income earned for the first two years after they’re employed – but only if the job pays more than $50,000 a year, and the contract is maxed at $30,000 of total income dollars paid.

Future upside agreements have not only resonated with students, but with private investors who are seeking new forms of returns through buying stakes in students. The Lambda School has just raised a fresh $50m tuition facility, and universities with ISA programs are fielding calls from large investment managers keen to understand this developing space. (Finance Collective newsletter)

Something is wrong in tech China as many of the nation’s leading technology companies embark to cut jobs. Anyone that does not believe that China’s economy is under stress cannot deny the reality that these great technology firms cannot be massively retrenching if the economy is healthy. But this is also a wakeup call for everyone: if China enters into massive recession, the world will be dragged into that pit. So, startups in Africa must begin to watch these signals and plan accordingly because everything is not right. Now is the time to keep cash that will take a startup through recession when (not if) it happens.

China’s second-largest e-commerce company, JD. com, plans deep job cuts to staunch losses and reassure investors, according to a slew of recent media reports, highlighting the mounting challenges faced by Chinese tech firms as their nation’s economy loses steam.

The Information, citing investors, reported Tuesday that NASDAQ-listed JD.com is preparing to lay off as many as 12,000 people, or roughly 8% of its workforce. Bloomberg and Quartz also report the company is planning cuts and has rescinded some job offers.

Reports of layoffs at JD.com follow announcements of similar retrenchment at other Chinese tech companies. Tencent Holding, China’s mammoth social media and online games provider, said last month it would sack or demote up to 10% of senior and middle management. In February, ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing said it would slash its workforce by 15%. (Fortune newsletter)

Yet, Alibaba continues to wax stronger. So, in the midst of the paralysis, there are exceptions. Looking at the stock performance over the last six months does show solid confidence on the company and the Chinese economy.

All Together

The big Chinese tech companies are experiencing massive layoffs. If you run a startup in Africa, it may be smart to start planning: keep some cash war chests in case recession arrives, and capital dries up.  Sure, some say the challenges are localized. Yet, I do not think there is anything about China that is local to China!

By Nnamdi Odumody

According to the State of Plastics Report, only 9% of the nine billion tons of plastic in the world ever produced are recycled. More than 480 billion plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300 billion a decade ago. By 2021, this figure will increase to 583.3 billion, according to Euromonitor International’s global packaging trends report.

An estimated 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced since the 1950s. About 91% of plastic waste isn’t recycled.  According to National Geographic Channel, 73% of all beach litter is plastic. 10 rivers across Asia and Africa carry 90% of the plastic which ends up in the oceans while it takes 10-1000 years for all types of plastic waste to decompose. Victor Igonoh, an Environmentalist, states that by 2050 plastic bottles will be more than fishes in the ocean.

Nela Duke, CEO of Obudu Conservation Centre, pegged the production of plastic bottles in Nigeria to about fifteen thousand tons per day (around 5.4 million annually) while Greenpeace stated that Coca Cola produces more than 100 billion PET bottles every year. It also said that the top six beverage companies in the world use a combined average of 6.6% of recycled PET bottles in their products.

The average person uses 70,000 microplastics every year while about 500 billion – 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually. Ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine animals each year and by 2050 there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills.

Being non-biodegradable, plastics remain where they are, without decomposing, for a long time and causes serious damage to its environment. Plastic leaches harmful chemicals like carcinogens, endocrine disruptions, phthalates, heavy metals, and more when kept for a long time.

Considering the harmful effects of plastic to the environment, a few countries have taken strict measure to ban or tax plastic bags. In August 2017, Kenya introduced penalties on plastic bags which range from a four year prison sentence, or a fine of $40,000 on anyone caught using polythene bags while neighboring Tanzania in April 2019 has announced a plan to ban, the importation, production, sale and consumption of all single use plastic bags by July 2019.

Kenya introduced one of the world’s toughest laws against plastic bags in 2017. Now, Kenyans who are caught producing, selling, or even using plastic bags will risk imprisonment of up to four years or fines of $40,000 (£31,000).

Other countries that have banned, partially banned, or taxed single-use plastic bags include China, France, Rwanda, and Italy.

To curb this menace in Nigeria, a nongovernmental organization, Developmental Association For Renewable Energy, and its technical partners in Kaduna State engaged youths on recycling disused plastic into interlocking tiles, roofing titles, blocks and other industrial purposes. This technology called Ecobricks was developed by a U.K based NGO Waste Aid to turn plastic wealth into eco-friendly products.

An ecobrick is a plastic bottle packed with plastic to a set density to create a reusable building block. Ecobricks are used to make modular furniture, garden spaces and full-scale buildings such as schools and houses.

The Federal Ministry of Environment and State Chapters should collaborate with the private sector in developing technology to track plastic used and discarded across the country, and come up with stiff penalties on producers and consumers of plastics in Nigeria while research and development to produce environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic should be done.