Samsung is having a real challenge in Africa as Tecno has overtaken it as the leading smartphone brand in the continent. Yet, Samsung has one solid technology it can deploy to provide it a good competitive positioning: Bixby, the voice assistant technology.

In 2018, Samsung is expected to lose up to 6% (from 27%) of market share in Africa. Transsion will hit 35% (from 28%), and is projected to hit excess of 50% by 2021 because it delivers many things at once: affordable pricing, regional marketing, good product and innovation in local necessities like multi-SIM cards.

Tecno inspires me on how to build and run a hardware business in Africa: fashionista pricing does not work! This is one company you must study; it has proven that Africans do not care on brands when pricing makes no sense

As I have noted, Africans have enjoyed voice communication for ages, and bringing Bixby at scale and biased for our language flavors, will give the company an opportunity to win markets and territories in the continent. But in this case, Bixby will not just be for communication but as a vehicle to stimulate financial inclusion, trade and commerce where it becomes an operating system for banks to make loans, traders to transact businesses, consumer payment, etc, via voice.

What Walmart, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are all doing is setting up the stage for the next battle in computing: voice operating system. Anyone that builds the best will triumph.  Think of Google Search supremacy over Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search, and how Google has come to dominate search. The voice business will not just be for London and New York, the developing world has massive opportunities in the voice space since that is where the highest level of illiteracy exists at the moment. Computing delivered through voice will be more appealing there over the present text-based format. For entrepreneurs with capacity to do voice, this will be highly rewarding in places like Africa.

To do that, Samsung has to partner with local microfinance institutions, banks, and startups, offering the technology through its smartphones and supporting everything with initial $1 billion to seed Bixby Finance Africa. If it does that, it will become a dominant platform, far ahead of Tecno, as many will move into the ecosystem to enjoy business via voice in the continent. Samsung Pay, exclusively available on Samsung phones, should power this Bixby Finance.

But where it focuses on competing purely on hardware, I am not sure Samsung has any chance because Tecno does that simply better as its manufacturing is more local and it seems to have better local insights on the smartphone business. Tecno has accumulated a lot of capabilities in Africa and cannot be overtaken by making pure hardware.

PDP Presidential election flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar, has made it into America and can now claim to have completed a critical requirement to become a Nigerian president! Yes, to rule Nigeria, you must have been qualified by visiting America to enjoy McDonald’s. Welcome Mr. Abubakar to America, may the force of decency, honor, value and service be with you.

Now to the main news: Atiku has promised to create NNPC Plc. Yes, Atiku would privatize NNPC, the nation’s oil corporation, if he has the opportunity to become the president of Nigeria: “I am committed to privatising NNPC…“Even if they are going to kill me, I’ll do it.”

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, on Wednesday reiterated his plan to privatise the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) if elected on February 16.

Mr Abubakar also promised to double the size of the Nigerian economy.

Reuters reported Wednesday that Mr Abubakar, a businessman who served as vice president to former president Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 and 2007, said he would double the size of Nigeria’s economy to $900 billion by 2025.

The former vice president said this at a meeting with business leaders in Lagos.

“I am committed to privatising NNPC,” Mr Abubakar was quoted as saying. “Even if they are going to kill me, I’ll do it.”

That statement aligns with a 2017 article where I noted that Nigeria could raise about $350 billion for privatizing NNPC but warned that it would not happen! Yes, ” A listed NNPC will be massively (globally) oversubscribed and will drive huge capital accumulation in Nigeria. It will be a moment of glory. But yet, more money has never improved Nigeria. So “selling” NNPC to the market may not change anything in the long-term”.

NNPC is not Transcorp which killed the dreams of many investors when it tanked in the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Transcorp, unlike NNPC, did not have any asset when it started. It was a business people invested based on promises and expectations. But NNPC has one of the best assets in continental Africa. NNPC is Nigeria and it generates products which are exported around the world. It is a rainmaker, generating more than 80% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange. A listed NNPC will be massively (globally) oversubscribed and will drive huge capital accumulation in Nigeria. It will be a moment of glory. But yet, more money has never improved Nigeria. So “selling” NNPC to the market may not change anything in the long-term. That is the most unfortunate thing about Nigeria, and the reason why NNPC Staff, the Labour Union and students will say “HELL NO, DO NOT DO IT”.

I have been tracking acquisitions by Ant Financial, an affiliate company of Alibaba Group. The Chinese company which is already bigger than Goldman Sachs is on spending spree, buying the world. London-based FT reported , few weeks ago, that it was in talks to buy WorldFirst, the UK-based international payments group, for about $700 million. The U.S. government had blocked its love-songs to MoneyGram, rejecting the proposed acquisition.

Ant Financial Services Group, formerly known as Alipay, is an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group. Ant Financial is the highest valued fintech company in the world, and the world’s most valuable unicorn company, with a valuation of US$150 billion

Interestingly, since that minor slowdown from U.S., Ant Financial has moved on, picking other properties. In the spirit of the game, I predict that Ant Financial will likely acquire Interswitch in Nigeria this year. Flutterwave and Paystack do not have the assets which Ant Financial needs to compete in the West African market against Visa and MasterCard.

Interswitch Verve is a solid product and can be scaled all over Africa; Interswitch missed the opportunity as I explained in the monopoly hangover piece. No other sub-Saharan African company has that type of product. So, it is natural that Ant Financial will come for it. Another company to watch is WorldRemit which does remittance; Ant Financial may also decide to pick it if the WorldFirst deal fails.

Of course, everything will depend on the valuation. Interswitch investors will surely like to exit with all the delays on rumored IPOs not materializing. So, if the Chinese come, they can dance to the tone. It would certainly be the best dance move since payment will, at the end, be a game of scale up or die.

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The Interswitch Electronic Funds Transfer application supports major networks including UnionPay, a Chinese corporation. You see, there is already a relationship with China.

Also, with its investments in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and other African countries, coupled with their physical infrastructure (11,000 ATM machines) on the ground, Interswitch has made itself the giant of fintech in Nigeria and Africa at large.

Applying your theory, they can be seen as a category king in their domain. As they gradually spread their web across Africa, they have become an appetizing and sumptuous meal that can attract and satisfy the appetite of bigger giants like Alibaba with money to spend.

In a nutshell, if you acquire the owner of Verve, you automatically control over 70% of card users in Nigeria which is more than 18 million ready-made customers.

Africa’s early stage and technology companies for the year 2018 raised a total of  $1.19 billion in total deal value even though 103 deals  – representing 22.7% of the total 454 deals recorded – never disclosed their amount, reports Digest Africa Index. Fintech won the race and Naspers was dominant as a funder. Also, Digiest Africa team picked some deals missed by WeeTracker which had reported $726 million as total raise.

Last year recorded a whopping $1.19 billion in total deal value even though 103 deals – representing 22.7% of the total 454 deals recorded – never disclosed their amount. However, we also believe that the figure could have been higher than $1.19 billion had the values of certain deals been disclosed. Jumia and M-Kopa are among the companies that never disclosed their deal amounts.

Technology companies across Africa raised a total of $686.4 million in funding across 336 disclosed funding deals of the 415 recorded. The East African region, with $303.9 million which translated into 44.2% of the total funding raised, registered the highest amount. Amongst countries, Kenya, with 22.8% ($156.5M) of the total funding raised, recorded the highest while the financial services sector recorded the highest amount of funding raised on the continent with 92 deals representing $276.7 million.

The financial services sector contributed 40.3% to the total funding raised across the continent in 2018. There were 39 M&A deals recorded in Africa’s technology space though only seven (7) of these were disclosed. South Africa registered the highest number of deals with twenty-four (24) and six (6) of the deals whose amounts were disclosed also came from the country. Compuscan, which Experian acquired for $263 million, and WeBuyCars that was acquired by Naspers for $94 million – through OLX Group – recorded the highest M&A deal values.

Lastly, a total of sixteen (16) technology-focused funds were raised adding up to $1.094 billion in value. 69.8% of the funds raised were early stage focused and 47.7% of them were sector agnostic. Naspers’ $314 million South Africa-focused fund was the largest fundraising/commitment recorded in 2018. European Investment Bank (EIB) was the most active investor on the continent participating in investments into five (5) funds: Partech Africa Fund managed by Partech Ventures ($70M), Novastar II managed by Novastar Ventures ($72.5M), Tide Africa Fund managed by TLcom Capital ($40M), Sawari Ventures North Africa Fund I managed by Sawari Ventures ($35M) and Africa Tech Ventures ($10M).