The LinkedIn Summary: If you are a customer of the Nigerian aviation sector, you would have noticed that we have a new category-king in the commercial aviation sector: Air Peace. When Arik Wings got its wings clipped and Aero Contractors lost its contracts with Nigerians, Air Peace brought calm.

In this piece, I explain how Air Peace became a category-king NOT through disruption. Simply, it was doing things right at small scale and when its main competitors lost focus, it filled up the space.

The Nigerian aviation has that history. New leaders rarely emerge because of innovation. Rather, the incumbents cratered and a new one takes over. You know none would be king for more than 7-10 years before success gets into their heads or they give up. Because of that, the industry has not advanced for decades. And service remains poor because at any time, there is an asymmetry (except the brief Arik-Aero duopoly).

I am hoping that Air Peace would flourish to break that jinx. We need durable companies. When we have Air Peace, Arik, Aero etc all strong, customers win and our commerce and industry benefit. That capacity to have on-going rivalry is what drives better customer service. Our aviation has not given Nigerians that experience.

If you are a customer of the Nigerian aviation sector, you would have noticed that we have a new category-king in the commercial aviation sector: Air Peace. When Arik Wings got its wings clipped and Aero Contractors lost its contracts with Nigerians, Air Peace brought calm.

Yes, Air Peace was well positioned and it took advantages of the crises in its main competitors. But what happened in the sector was not new: Nigeria has a history of creating new kings across industrial sectors but largely because of mistakes of sector-leaders. In other words, you do not have to disrupt anyone to become a leader; you build capabilities and position yourself to fill up the space as competitors lose visions. That is a weak spot in our economy: innovation is not the core element that creates new leaders. Rather, the old leaders just quit!

That is unfortunate. Nigeria does not have a good history in succession in our elite businesses. From the empires of Nnanna Kalu to MkO Abiola, when the arrow heads depart, bad things usually happen. Or simply, when the leaders become very successful, arrogance takes over. Over time, the business goes.

It turns out that there is a framework for exploiting those opportunities. Air Peace offers that. Despite the fact that it was small in the golden days of Arik and Aero, it was doing many things right. But many ignored it because Aero was simply unbeatable. But as the leaders cratered, Air Peace emerged, demonstrating competence through accumulated capabilities. Nigerians noticed and then beautified it.

Notice that other airlines could not exploit the opportunities created by Arik and Aero. Yes, most did not demonstrate capabilities even when small. But Air Peace, from day one, showed it could be a leader. Largely, even when opportunities come through non-disruption, you must be ready. Being ready means you have the abilities to step forward and fix a massive business friction in the market.

As I had explained in the free range chicken, growth can come through non-disruption by looking at opportunities where competitors have not discovered. But note that in Nigeria, even in your sector, due to indiscipline of our business community, that chicken may be right in the clan.

In business we like to talk of disruption. Disruption is a word that is used in any strategy document. To grow, you have to disrupt the incumbents by setting a new basis of competition which will help you to take market share from them. The digital camera innovators disrupted companies like Kodak who built their businesses on thin film photography. The digital camera firms introduced new technologies which the old guys could not overcome, and they became mortally wounded. In Nigeria, we have seen the old powerful banks like First Bank and Union Bank live under the shadows of Zenith Bank and GTBank which used information technology to redesign Nigeria’s banking sector. The market capitalizations of these banks make that disruption very evident.

Yet, it is not always necessary for a company to disrupt for it to grow. To explain that disruption is not always required for growth, I will use free-range chickens, found in most African villages, to create an analogy. A free-range chicken “is a bird that is allowed constant access to the outdoors, with plenty of fresh vegetation, sunshine and room to exercise”. As a teenager, I grew some and it was a very good business.

I continue to hope we would have an economy where Arik, Aero, Air Peace and others are competing instead of new champions coming through non-market anchored disruptions. Yes, without disruptions, we would not really improve resilience and serve customers better. In other words, we are having new champions who may not have innovated themselves to the top. The aviation sector is showing that it cannot have the same leader for a decade. That is a pattern which can drive a business model, even though it is unfortunate.

Lily Kuo wrote on the Africa-China relationship on QZ newsletter today. Indeed, just as the world is examining the activities of China in Africa, Africa is also possibly influencing the world including China. Of course, this relationship is asymmetric because China is getting the better of it when compared with Africa. Yet, the point the author made is worth noting because in many cities in China, Africans are making progress, running factories which are producing goods most of them are shipping to African ports.

In African countries, increasingly you find Chinese people who never meant to stay as long as they have. But now, they say they can’t go home, because being in Africa has changed them. And that leads to another point. Africa has become a platform that we often use to analyze and understand China’s expanding influence in the developing world. But what about how Africa is influencing China, or the rest of the world?

China is finding opportunity in Africa even when Africans are running out of Africa: the Chinese have better positioning than most of the locals. People migrate but the African rate in unbalanced. That takes me to a book I read as an entry level banker in Lagos: Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell. Today, there may not be the real diamond but the lesson from that classic stands. The man that founded Temple University is not saying that you must be in your village before you can have a breakthrough in life. He was simply explaining that opportunities can come in different ways, and you must be aware to take advantages of them. The “diamonds” may be right beneath your house, or in some cases far away. There are acres of opportunities everywhere. You do not have to sojourn unaware that you are passing them daily.

That said, China has some “diamonds”: the 21st century diamonds mined by huge consumer base that is exploding. Yes, according to Fortune, “over the past decade, China has emerged as the world’s No. 1 consumer in a slew of important product categories: autos, mobile phones, semiconductors, elevators, luxury goods, beer, soy beans, pork, online games and men’s skin care.”

But that was the old China; the new China has even bigger plans. The country wants to build a massive $2.1 billion AI research park.

China is planning to build a 13.8 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) technology park dedicated to developing artificial intelligence (AI), state-backed news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday.

The campus will be constructed within five years and situated in the suburban Mentougou district in western Beijing. It will cover 54.87 hectares, Xinhua said.

The technology park will be home to around 400 businesses and is expected to create an annual output value of about 50 billion yuan.

As the country plots the future to ensure the country competes, its companies are redesigning industries. DJI has simply won the civilian drone sector as most of its competitors are struggling. Alibaba, Tencent and JD continue to redesign ecommerce. JD is making $150 million sales daily on a new offline supermarket! That is the scale of China because except China, there is no other country where a shop will generate such an amount.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com on Thursday officially debuted its first offline fresh food supermarket in Beijing, following its archrival Alibaba Group Holding in entering the physical retail market.

The 4,000-square-meter supermarket in southern Beijing, named 7Fresh, has been in a trial run since Dec. 29, receiving an average of more than 10,000 daily customers and a total of more than 1 million yuan [billion] ($150 million) in daily sales, according to JD.com.

The question is this: where is the road to China, and can we go to China? I think we need to learn (factory) production systems even as we restructure our African economies for services. It is only when the citizens have jobs that most of the services would grow. I think even if we cannot compete in the most advanced manufacturing phase, there are opportunities to improve productivity gains in pockets of industries in Nigeria. If we do that, living standards would improve. Governors should take note because scaling production seems to be the only path to improve wellbeing. Let’s Go to China and learn from China because their systems are working right now.

From the Nebuchadnezzar Babylon to the Caesar’s Rome, from the Industrial Revolution Britain to the America unipolar world, no nation has achieved what China accomplished within 25 years. If Africa ignores that, it means we are racist to understand who has better ideas at this time. Let’s go to China because the best developmental ideas are not necessarily European or American anymore. Yet, we need to learn and adapt.

Note: “Let’s Go China” is not a physical movement to China but thinking the Chinese ways which have produced great results.

Good people, with my team, we would be in Accra, Lagos, Abuja and Abidjan starting next week.  Even as we serve/expand engagements with current clients, we would be looking to meet new ones.  Let us work together to fix your business frictions. We focus on technology and business models through special reports, speeches/workshops and advisory services. Specifically, we have cores and enablers to help you get ahead with blockchain and cryptocurrency-based platforms, and we would build. All would comply with Nigerian laws including CBN and SEC [yes, no currency involved]. Usually, we give a one-hour discovery innovation talk tailored to your industry. Contact my team to schedule; fees apply.

Gain clarity on your strategy with an impactful one-hour talk or on-site workshop, expertly driven by me

Our Advisory Services solutions are structured as follows:

• The State of the Industry: This is a two-hour presentation (including Q/A) where I will present what is happening in your market, customized for your company, and then offer insights on how you can plot your strategies to win.
• Discovery Innovation Workshop: This could take up to a day, but minimum of four hours is required. Besides the two-hour State of the Industry presentation, we work with clients to discover unique ways they can look at their businesses.
• Advisory Services: Most times, after our presentations and workshops, clients usually engage us for Advisory Services.

Expand your team’s capabilities and invent the future of your business with our unparalleled expertise

Hope we can do business together and make this a great 2018. Please contact tekedia@fasmicro.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn. For security purposes, I do not know where I would be and all goes through my local team that manages this.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

Chairman, Fasmicro Group

NOTE: Would like to meet owners of clinics and hospitals for a new product we would also be launching.

Nigeria has closed a $20 billion agreement with Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company, Rosatom. Representing Nigeria, Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission signed the deal with the Russian nuclear energy firm and the latter will build four plants for total capacity of 4,800 MW, Premium Times reports.

At a meeting in Abu Dhabi in October, 2017, Russia signed an agreement with Nigeria to build and operate a nuclear power plant, the first of its kind on the continent, as well as a research centre that would house a nuclear research reactor.

The agreement was a furtherance of a memorandum of understanding signed last year between the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission, NAEC, and Rosatom for the construction of four nuclear power plants at the cost $20 billion (more than N6 trillion). The four plants will have a total capacity of 4,800 megawatts by 2035.

Anton Moskvin, Vice President for Marketing and Business Development, Rosatom Overseas (a subsidiary of Rosatom), and Simon Mallam, Chairman of NAEC, signed the agreement on behalf of Rosatom and Nigeria respectively.

I know nothing of the use of nuclear energy in electricity. I mean, I know nothing except what they taught me in Physics in secondary school. But I am concerned because Nigeria cannot even manage a simple goat farm. Now you want to manage reactors. What if budget is delayed for critical maintenance? I mean, our experience with Ogoni disqualifies Nigeria for going into this venture: for all the photo ops for years, government after government, Nigeria continues to neglect the Ogoni people. Who wants its people to suffer the same fate with nuclear if bad things happen?

This is my opinion as a private citizen who can only shout. It does not matter; it is democracy. But if you have access, tell government that if it has $10 billion for electricity, nuclear power is a wrong strategy. Here are simple reasons:

• Cost and Value: If it commits to solar energy with $10 billion, it would get 10,000 MW over 4,800 MW nuclear would bring (I assume 1MW for $1 million which is pessimistic but reasonable).
• Jobs: Solar energy is distributed and would create at least 100x jobs than nuclear. In other words, if nuclear could create 3,000 jobs, going through solar will give Nigeria 300,000 jobs in the process.
• Safety: Solar energy is safer for Nigerian citizens. I think everyone would want it over nuclear energy.
• Transmission: Nuclear power will not fix our transmission line problem. Technically, Nigerian electricity problem is not exclusively power generation to need nuclear energy. There are many gas power plants that can double capacities in Nigeria but the discos cannot receive the power to distribute to consumers because our transmission system is broken. A nuclear power deal does not fix that problem. We can have these four nuclear power stations producing and yet consumers will not have power. Solar, to a large extent through distributed design, would make the need of transmission system minimal since there could be many pockets of solar plants spread across Nigeria.

Please do not attack President Buhari and his party on this, this plan started in 2009. So, he is simply following the Nigerian business. Nevertheless, we do hope he helps us to stop it.

But its nuclear relationship with Russia did not begin until 2009 when both countries signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the field of the peaceful usage of nuclear technologies. Shortly after, another agreement was signed on cooperation in design, construction, operation and decommissioning of the Nuclear Power Plant and the Nuclear Research Centre housing a multi-purpose nuclear research reactor.

In 2013, Nigeria signed its Country Programme Framework (CPF), a five-year medium-term planning of technical cooperation between a member state and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that identifies priority areas where the transfer of nuclear technology and technical cooperation resources will be directed to support national development goals

[…]

In May 2016, the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission signed an agreement with the Russian government for cooperation in the construction of a centre for nuclear science and technology in the country.

They have not mentioned the nuclear sites but I can assure you that this may turn out to be a campaign issue in 2019 election at both the gubernatorial and presidential levels. No Nigerian would want nuclear facility in his or her community. If you think we would not care, you have not visited Federal Secretariat Abuja where most of the toilets have no running water. For nuclear reactors, not having that water can wipe a community. And that is why this deal is not good. This is perhaps the only type of electricity I do not want to use in Nigeria.