“I want to put a ding in the universe. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking”.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs’ Perception Demand Construct, for Africa

Do not be overly worried about failure but be concerned about what leads to failure. If you do the best you can, and still fail, society will offer other opportunities. But where your processes are sub-optimal, leading to poor outcomes, then those processes are the real failures. Unless you fix them, the failures will repeat unbounded.

The Biggest Failure is NOT Fixing Things that Lead to Failures

The Africa Innovation Fellowship which is powered by WomEng, and the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize For Engineering Innovation, is a nine month leadership and business development opportunity, for African female innovators, running early stage engineering innovations or startups. The fellowship aims to develop talent for future recipients of the Africa Prize For Engineering Innovation.

The Africa Innovation Fellowship kicks off with an in-person training week in Kampala, Uganda from the 2^nd-5^th June 2019, focusing on ideation, leadership development, networking and pitching skills. This will be followed by nine months of personalized virtual support with regular check-ins and milestones ending in March 2020.

The winning idea will get an all-expense paid trip to London to attend the Global Grand Challenges Summit in September 2019. Candidates who apply for the fellowship and are subsequently shortlisted for the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation will additionally receive individual coaching and mentorship to get them pitch-ready.

 Criteria For Eligibility

• Applicants must be female individuals or small groups with a female lead applicant
• Individual and team applicants must be citizens of a Sub-Saharan African country.
• The Innovation must be based in a Sub-Saharan African country
• Applicants must have an Engineering Innovation
• Industrial Researchers and Organizations are not eligible to apply
• The applicant’s innovation should encompass the following fields; agritech, biotech, chemical engineering, civil engineering, computer science, design engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, ICT, materials science, mechanical and medical engineering
• The innovation must bring social or environmental benefits to a country in or countries of Sub-Saharan Africa
• Is accompanied by an ambitious but realistic business plan which is near ready or has been tested for commercial viability
• Has strong potential to be replicated and scaled up.

Applications will close on Monday April 1^st 2019. For further information visit www.womeng.org and www.raeng.org.uk.

The Minister of agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, complains of Nigerians who order pizzas from London and get them delivered by British Airways the next morning.

Unfortunately for me, I am yet to taste the London pizza!

Have you used BA as UberEats for pizza from London to Lagos? Hahah.

Citibank is launching a payment unit in the likes of Paypal, Stripe and Worldpay to better compete with these native digital companies. Yet, Citibank will need to rely on MasterCard to make this happen, and that can be a source of friction on customer experiences. Yet, the fact is this: the way customers relate with banks is evolving and Citibank understands that redesign. It is taking action to secure its future.

Citigroup is launching a new payments unit that will offer merchants consumer payment options such as credit cards, digital wallets, and direct bank account transfers.

Citigroup is reportedly partnering with payments firms including Mastercard for the new offering. Mastercard will provide some of the back-end connections and processing for merchants, The Wall Street Journal reports.

In this Tekedia Daily, I explain the implications on why we will see drastic changes in the payment ecosystem over the next few years especially now that Apple has introduced the next big thing: number-less, CCV-less, and non-expiry credit cards.

As always, why should my debit card expire when my bank account has no expiration date? I am happy Apple is providing a new thinking into this, by making it clear, that the plastic which derives its life from the bank account has no reason to have any expiration date. Yes, even though we now use the date for security authentication, that is not enough justification to have expiring debit cards – the CCV is just good enough for security if that is the motivation.

I do hope the new adjustment, triggered by Apple, will become the industry standard in coming years. And as that happens, I expect many fintech entities to redesign their technologies and architectures.