Congratulations Kenya’s Peter Tabichi for winning the Global Teacher Prize. There is no debate: teachers build nations and we celebrate your excellence in classroom. The unrivalled commitment of my Further Mathematics teacher, my Mathematics teacher, my Chemistry teacher, my Physics teacher, my Woodwork teacher, my Technical Drawing teacher, my Metalwork teacher, and more, in Secondary Technical School Ovim (Nigeria), are now rewarded with unpaid pensions by the Nigerian governments. It does not have to be that way that teachers strike to be paid $70 per month as salary!

Congrats for winning the $1 million award.  We treasure all of you.

Peter Tabichi, a Kenyan math and physics teacher, won the $1 million Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize at a star-studded event in Dubai Sunday (March 24).

Accompanied by his father, Tabichi said the prize showed that “teachers matter” and that “teaching is a noble profession.”

Tabichi left his job at a private school to join the Keriko Secondary School (in Pwani Village, Nakuru, Kenya), where 95% of the students are poor and almost a third are orphans. Drug abuse, teen pregnancies, drop-outs, and suicide are common, and the school has one computer, poor internet access, and a student-teacher ratio of 58:1.

In spite of those circumstances, Tabichi’s science students have won various national science competitions, and qualified to participate at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2019 in the US. In 2017, only 16 out of the school’s 59 students went on to college, while in 2018, 26 did.

By Nnamdi Odumody

The beautiful game of soccer is one which entertains fans who pay to go and see their favorite stars showcase their talents. At the 1986 FIFA World Cup, hosted by Mexico, a young Diego Armando Maradona, the Argentine captain and playmaker, took the whole world by surprise, against England, when he dribbled past several opposition players to score a goal which was acclaimed as the best goal scored in the tournament, and consequently a man of the match performance. His statue was built at the stadium where he achieved that feat as the greatest footballer in the world then.

Ronaldo Luis Nazario, the legendary Brazilian striker scored a first half hat trick against Manchester United in the UEFA Champions League at Old Trafford, United’s home ground. He was applauded by the opposition fans for an extraordinary performance. In the 2004 2005 season La Liga El Clasico (match between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid), Ronaldinho scored two goals and showcased skills which till this date hasn’t been matched by any footballer in a 3-0 victory which earned him an applause by Real Madrid fans.

Cristiano Ronaldo in the 2017|2018 UEFA Champions League quarterfinal match against Juventus, scored two goals, one an overhead kick that was adjudged the best goal of the competition, and earned an applause from the opposition fans which played a major part in his decision to move to Juventus after nine trophy laden seasons at Real Madrid. In the current Champions League season, he has also scored a hat trick against Atletico Madrid in the UEFA Champions League knockout return leg, at home, after trailing 2-0 away to make his team qualify for the quarterfinals which made Diego Maradona, the Argentine soccer legend, to call him a wizard.

Lionel Messi, considered to be the greatest footballer of all time, due to his constant showcase of magical moments in football matches over the past 10 seasons, scored a wonder-goal never done before in his La Liga hat trick against Real Betis at their homeground, earning him an applause from the opposition fans and football lovers across the globe stating that he isn’t human, and probably the best football has ever seen.

All these legends delivered extraordinary performances beyond the expectation of their fans and opposition fans in crucial matches which earned them plaudits. As an intrapreneur, always strive to deliver extraordinary products and services to your company’s clientele beyond the expectations of your bosses and the customers themselves. Steve Jobs said that Apple doesn’t need to ask its customers what would they want it to produce for them, but will always deliver products that would be beyond their expectations.  That philosophy is the secret behind the success of the game changing products from Apple’s stable: iPod, iTunes, Mac Book, iPhone, iPad, etc.

Steve Jobs, Apple Founder, was legendary for stimulating demand. He worked without surveys or focus groups. He was a genius, peerless in his generation. He saw an unborn future many years ago. He was an icon, who changed his world. He developed a good design paradigm of working at the perception of customers, beyond their needs and expectations. He found glory and Apple triumphed with iPod, iPhone, iPad and more.

When Elon Musk produced the first Tesla, he knew that due to climate change, electric vehicles were the automotive solutions for the future and worked on it till it became a success and reality. Today, all automotive manufacturers worldwide are shifting to electric vehicle production. Entrepreneurs should always deliver extraordinary and exceptional products which will surprise their customers beyond their expectations to the points of their perceptions.

Steve Jobs’ Perception Demand Construct, for Africa

Among leading Nigerian cloud players like MTN Cloud, RackCentre, Vodacom, and MainOne, the first to offer cloud gaming at scale will have the most important killer app in the industry. That app will seed profitable activity, pump bandwidth and accelerate value for the capital intensive business. Think of Netflix of African gaming! Previously, I made the case that cloud providers in Nigeria should invest in building amalgam of primitives, flavored for the Nigerian economy, for developers. The primitives must capture cloud gaming if they hope to thrive. Largely, the typical business processes from finance and back-office processing cannot deliver activity volume to make cloud business profitable in Nigeria as global players like Google, Microsoft and Amazon arrive. I described many of the challenges here, and those remain.

MainOne, MTN Cloud and RackCenter should invest efforts to build critical building blocks of computing elements, the primitives, in their data center businesses with specific focus on Nigeria and Africa. This will help them attract developers/partners to expand their operations. The promise is economies of scale through higher adoption of their platforms. As this adoption happens, these companies can enjoy massive “tax” which is simply collection of fees imposed on companies that depend on their platforms. Africa-themed primitives like procurement primitives, anti-corruption primitives, etc will be enablers for this differentiation in the market.

LinkedIn Comment on Feed

I think the cloud businesses here are largely IaaS and for keeping your platform connected to the internet, nothing much in terms of resources, which is actually where the global giants differentiate themselves. What exactly is the difference between RackCentre and MainOne cloud services for a developer? All of them look the same, other than different names with minor services to clients, but for developers, not much.

It is not every kind of business you copy, without improving on it, and somehow believe that everyone will be queuing up for your services.

The Challenge before MainOne and Rack Centre

It is evidently clear – the future of entertainment is online. Typically, technology-fueled behavioral trajectories begin in developed economies [they are always invented therein], and then ripple to developing ones. The penetration latency is always less than half a dozen years for most consumer categories. So, the report from Deloitte that for the first time, more people pay for online streaming service than subscribe to traditional pay TV, in U.S., is a big deal. From the report, 69% of consumers pay for Internet video versus 65% for cable or satellite TV. In total, 43% of all U.S. consumers do the combo – subscribe to both pay TV and Internet video. People who pay for online video typically subscribe to three streaming services, based on Fortune summary.

Cord cutting, or people dropping their cable or satellite TV in favor of online video alternatives like Netflix, has reached a critical milestone. For the first time, more people pay for a streaming service than subscribe to traditional pay TV, a new survey has found.

Sixty-nine percent of consumers pay for Internet video versus 65% for cable or satellite television, according to consulting firm Deloitte, which published the report on Tuesday. The proportion of people paying for Internet video has skyrocketed while the proportion on traditional pay TV has dipped in recent years. Just 10% of consumers streamed in 2009, rising to 55% last year. Pay TV subscriptions hovered above 75% for years, but Deloitte said they changed how the question was asked since last year’s survey.

As this inflection point arrives in key DStv African markets, it will have to do real battle to thrive. Do not expect it to be easy because the winner in this game will be a company that delivers the best product at the lowest possible cost. Yes, scale matters and winner-takes-all applies here. So, Netflix is a major threat in the horizon and that is why DStv is making noise and weeping when necessary for help from regulators in Africa. Of course, DStv is also transitioning online because it knows that when broadband price drops, most will receive their entertainment needs via the web.

The problem MultiChoice is facing today with the loss of subscribers is not really about Netflix. Simply, MultiChoice knew that the trajectory of entertainment was moving online and will continue to do so. Online is going to become the equilibrium state of “view entertainment”. Yet, MultiChoice did nothing. It is typical; I called it the monopoly hangover when I wrote about Interswitch. These entities are making so much money in the present model to creatively destroy it. Typically, someone else has to do it for them as that is the only way they can wake up.

LinkedIn Comment on Feed

For the incumbents like DSTv, the major challenge at the beginning of potential disruption of their business usually hovers between ignorance and defiance, especially when the current model is bringing huge revenue.

The old mantra of “when isn’t broke, don’t fix” has remained engrained in their mentalities, so the inertia is real. It has now become clear that in the era of knowledge economy you can actually begin fixing, before it breaks; because these days business models don’t just break, they collapse!

DSTv has big advantage over Netflix in terms of winning markets across Africa on streaming services, just by leveraging on its customer base and transitioning them ‘seamlessly’, but it requires a lot of spending and willingness to fix what may not be technically broken at the moment.

What brought you success in the past may not be enough to guarantee your relevance going forward, herein lies the real hangover.

When Naspers’ MutiChoice (DStv, GOtv) Weeps Over Netflix