I discussed the Cloud business in Nigeria last year. I noted the positions of MainOne, MTN Cloud, Rack Centre and Vodacom.

There are four main cloud providers in Nigeria –  MainOne, MTN Cloud, Rack Centre and Vodacom. Two of these companies, MainOne and Rack Centre, have cloud services as one of the key components of their businesses. Sure, MainOne sells bandwidth, delivering connectivity services, but cloud service is a key business. MTN is known for its voice telephony and the broadband services, across Nigeria and beyond. Vodacom Nigeria is largely there to serve enterprise customers, since it is not operating any voice telephony service, yet.

In that piece, I dropped these lines: “Amazon is coming. It is never a good thing when Amazon comes into town or in any sector, globally and locally. They have this ruthless business efficiency model that makes everyone look lost”. Interestingly, instead of Amazon arriving first, it is Microsoft Azure that won the race into Africa on datacenters. Yes, Microsoft has opened first datacenters in Africa with general availability of Microsoft Azure.

Simply, the challenges of latency will disappear and many companies will have options now that hosting is in Africa. This is a game-changer in a market where most startups and non-regulated companies prefer Amazon, Google and Microsoft, over their local competitors. Also, with the datacenters in Africa, Azure will help many firms overcome compliance issues which require data to be stored locally; local cloud firms have used that compliance provision to keep some businesses. With that localization advantage gone, expect price war to heat up, in the sector, as local players will have to reduce price to compete.

Today, Microsoft announced the opening of its first datacentres in Africa, with the general availability of Azure from the new cloud regions in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. This makes Microsoft the first global provider to deliver cloud services from datacentres on the continent, which will help companies securely and reliably move their businesses to the cloud while meeting compliance needs.

“Microsoft Azure is now available from our new cloud regions in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The combination of Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure with the new regions in Africa will create greater economic opportunity for organisations in Africa, accelerate new global investment, and improve access to cloud and internet services,” says Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president, Azure Networking, Microsoft.

The Challenge before MainOne and Rack Centre

Those days in Baltimore, I used to visit where riders “take off’ for an “American tradition” enjoyed by many in the nation. Harley-Davidson is a great American brand which has legions of fans across the nation. Typically, men come together, with elegantly designed motorcycles, and then take off on a journey, around town, to immerse in the wonders of riding-entertainment. The men do enjoy the show.

But for the company, there was a problem: younger people were not getting into the game. And if the firm cannot attract new and younger riders, its future is largely imperiled. So, when I read that Harley-Davidson was buying an electric-powered, two-wheeler toy company, I knew it was in for something futuristic.

Yes, let the kids ride bikes with Harley-Davidson logo, and possibly when they want the real thing, they will buy Harley-Davidson motorcycle. That is a very smart way for future-proofing a business: recruit them early and make them believers. As Coke will remind us thus: do not worry that you keep seeing our adverts (thinking they are wasteful), we are merely reaching infants and toddlers, and not necessarily you. Your generation has been won for Coke, but we need to recruit the next one fast!

As Harley-Davidson noted in the press statement announcing the deal, the toy riders are expected to be long-term riders: “our mission [is] to create the next generation of riders is exciting”.

Harley-Davidson, Inc. (NYSE: HOG) announces today that it has acquired StaCyc, Inc., producer of the 12 and 16 EDRIVE, electric-powered two-wheelers specifically designed for kids.

[…]

As a subsidiary, a Harley-Davidson branded version of StaCyc’s 12-inch and 16-inch models will be sold through select Harley-Davidson dealers. The branded products will be available in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2019.

[…]

“After a few conversations with Harley-Davidson, we realized that the ethos of our brands and our commitment to bringing more riders to motorcycling were incredibly aligned,” said Ryan Ragland, Founder of StaCyc. “The opportunity to work with the team at Harley-Davidson and have the support to carry out our mission to create the next generation of riders is exciting. Together we’re building a plan that fast-tracks our ability to help the industry create as many riders as possible.”

[…]

The StaCyc acquisition is the latest example of how Harley-Davidson is investing in opportunities that inspire increased ridership in the near-term and deliver sustainable growth for the future as part of its More Roads to Harley-Davidson plan

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A great lesson on how to take care for the present, while future-proofing. Great brands don’t get tired of creating impressions on people, sinking them deeper into their hearts and souls; ensuring also that their veins and arteries are in sync with the brand.

You do not run a six weeks campaigns and then go to sleep, or start beating your chest that you have done something terrific, that your brand is now on everyone’s lips! People have so much in their heads, for them to keep thinking about what you do, so you must continually ‘show up’ wherever they are; even the kids need to start calling a class of products your brand name, still to your advantage.

Indomie has conquered that space here, because the unofficial name for all noodles is INDOMIE, and yet they are still running adverts. Omo and Maclean once enjoyed such ‘status’, but they have fizzled out; you have to continually shout in order to be heard.

Maybe smartphone makers, laptop manufacturers and those who are into products kids cannot enjoy at the moment, will now have something to learn from what Harley-Davidson did. You have to catch them young, and indoctrinate them as well. It’s no longer enough to have customers, you now need fans, crusaders, loyalists, etc.

Yesterday, at Radisson Blu, delivering my talk – Abundance in the Data of Nations.

From feedback, it was well received. I am expecting to post the video once the organizers make same available. Like Hamlet answered Lord Polonius “Words, Words, Words”, in Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, at this moment, it is “Data, Data, Data”. But take it further – can you refine the data?

I take you to the “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge when he muttered “Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink”. It is not just about the availability of data, but making sure that it is useful.

Like Chinua Achebe would write “An adult does not sit and watch while the she-goat suffers the pain of childbirth tied to a post”, great people, the future is Abundance if we take action.

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“Data, Data, Data”, the newest buzzword in town, but knowing what to do with it or how to use it, or even the willingness to reference it, is a different thing altogether.

We still struggle with counting numbers accurately here, but always in love with making bogus claims about our size and potentials; we also need to see the DATA that supports them. It’s a good place to start.

Our planning is always poor, the execution – even poorer. But we are equally legendary in creating abundance and scarcity within a shortest possible time, another anomaly that needs to be addressed!

If we have mastered how to spend or waste money, we need to equally master how to measure impact and progress, to be able to ascertain what works and what needs to be discarded.

If our data collection, harnessing and application becomes anything like our crude oil, then we are readying for another disaster. We need to do better this time.

There is a promise in this nation, and that promise is coming from the young people. Across states and industrial sectors, I am meeting young people doing amazing things in technology. They have visions and are clearly unbounded by our structural paralysis, doing their things, to rise with the rest of their peers around the globe.

Meet Vtion.ai, a Nigerian startup that develops AI powered visual search technology for fashion brands, art, ecommerce platforms and offline retailers. This young company is making visual search accessible to e-commerce sites across Africa. They have done, for African fashion, what big ICT utilities like Google and Microsoft are doing for largely Western fashion.

Yes the Aso Oke, Babariga, “the Senator”, Uwe Agu and all those African traditions that make Africa tick can come into fusion with technology. Simply, fashion AI understands Aso Oke, and that is amazing.

Their technology can be integrated with retail websites or mobile apps within 24 hours and lets shoppers upload photos saved on their mobile phones, screenshots from Instagram, to find similar products for sale. This is based on the same technology with which the team behind it was named as part of the winners of AWS AI Hackathon 2018.

For the competition, the team built a project that allowed users search for similar African attires with photos. They also added a feature where you could like and dislike pictures and the platform would display more outfits similar to what users liked and less of what was disliked. The project indexed thousands of images, 3,500 user in one month and about 17,000 likes and dislikes altogether.

Connecting with the team, Emmanuel Adigun, Vtion.ai co-founder and designer, notes that once it indexes a retailer’s product feed, Visual Search can be added to a site’s search bar via it’s JavaScript SDK in a single line of HTML. Customers pay a monthly access fee based on the number of product matches likely to be used.  This does better when compared with other visual search tools which can take weeks or months to implement. They have elevated the level of competition by simplifying the process even as they make it easier for Africa digital retail ecosystems to have the technology to deepen the sector.

This is artificial intelligence in action. Vtion.ai’s visual search platform strives to ensure a seamless/plug-n-play model for its target customers, including smaller retailers that sell to millenials and teenagers. Emmanuel reiterates that the goal of Vtion.ai is to help every retailer leverage the power of visual search to drive customer engagement. With firms like vTion, our technological trajectory is very promising.

Vtion.ai recently integrated with a top bridal outfit in Nigeria, Hadassah Bridals. This allows soon-to-be brides to search for wedding gowns and accessories with photos of gowns they have seen before, and see results of similar gowns from Hadassah Bridals catalog.

Now, you can experience this technology which Emmanuel and his team have unveiled for the world. Visit vTion Demo and follow the instructions. The team is also working on a Telegram chat bot where users can also try out the technology by sending images to its chat bot, Vtion Sense.

Very brilliant young people, holding the banner for Nigeria and Africa, in this emerging AI era.