I like political polling because unlike most polling types, there is a result at the end. Yes, at the end, there will be an election and quickly, we will know who has the best technique to have gauged the sentiments of the people through polls. Your economic polls, your happiness polls, and your everything polls are all nice. But they cannot be validated like the ways we can use elections to validate political polls. Without elections, Hillary Clinton would be somewhere right now as the President of the United States as you read. But that is not the case as the elections invalidated the polls.

Now, how many digital customers do you have in Nigeria? How many online customers do you have there? We like big numbers and I know someone will begin with 3 million because the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) drops those numbers on the number of Nigerians with internet access. Last year, a report from the biggest investor in Konga showed that the ecommerce operator has less than 200,000 active customers, not millions, as many had expected. It was surprising after all the advertising and efforts the company had invested in the ecosystem.

According to Kinnevik’s report, its 34% stake in Konga is worth SEK 101 million. That’s about US$12 million at the current exchange rate. The report goes further to state that Konga has 184,000 active customers – that is customers who have bought from them in the last six months.

I can tell you that if you see hard numbers, Nigeria has less than 400,000 digital customers who are shopping and buying things online today.  The 190 million citizens miss the whole point and that is why when you see some projections on market opportunities in the digital space, in some business plans, you marvel at the disconnection. Some of our entrepreneurs will tell you how they can on-board millions of paying users within two years because Facebook has excess of 20 million Nigerians. They need to read what drives scalable advantage (SA) and how Facebook enjoys SA of “1”.

Today, we have one of those “election data” and it is coming from Uber. Despite spending huge amount of money and advertising across Nigeria, it has 267,000 active riders in Nigeria.

The statistics by the San-Fransisco-based firm show South Africa as Uber’s biggest market in Africa with 969,000 active riders, while Kenya is second. The data, released Thursday, also showed that 5,000 and 12,000 Uber drivers are signed up in Kenya and South Africa, respectively.

Kenya remains Uber’s most vibrant market in the region as Uganda and Tanzania have 48,000 and 53,000 active riders, with each country signing-up 1,000 drivers.

Google has a very nice Environmental Report. If you read it, you will like many things. They are using AI, solar and indeed technologies to reduce their carbon footprints. The search giant has signed agreements that total excess of 2.6 GW of renewable energy. That is impressive.

We tackle these projects because they reduce our company’s environmental impact, and also because they improve our bottom line. But mostly we do this stuff because it needs to be done and it’s the right thing to do. Google has been carbon neutral since 2007, and in 2017 we’ll reach 100% renewable energy for our operations, including our data centers and offices. But our ambitions don’t end at our own door. Climate change is real. We’re a global company, and our goal is to give everyone everywhere the tools and opportunities they need to play their own part in protecting the planet

But beyond all these exciting numbers, you will not see one indicator I really care about: how communities and jobs are performing owing to the disruption from Google. There is nothing wrong with disruption. That is part of commerce. My point is that we need to know besides the environmental sustainability, community sustainability. That one is from me. And there is nothing that says that I cannot bring that conscience in the technology nexus.

Amazon may have its own environmental report with all the usual efforts to reduce carbon footprints. But ask any Mayor in some American suburbs, they will explain how Amazon has ravaged their malls and shopping centers through the disruptive impacts of its ecommerce operations. How do you capture that impact? Possibly, when those malls fail, they are returned back to weeds and then they become environmentally sustaining! Of course, that is not the vision of Amazon. But it is something we need to care about in these reports. How are we fairing in this age of disruptive innovation? Can we capture them as they impact lives and communities in some of these reports? I know that we care about carbon footprints. I also think we need to see the positive and negative impacts on our communities documented.

It is time we examine how technology disruption affects jobs, and companies should be required to model those in their reports. That does not mean that the companies are going to be victimized, but it needs to be clear if there are efforts to manage such changes. As we welcome AI and blockchain, we can see massive dislocations in the labor force. If companies do not track such impacts, but rather focusing on mundane things like renewable energy installed capacity, and total gallons of water reused, we will not get the full picture. For example, the Google report should include besides designing efficient data centers, advancing renewable energy, creating sustainable workplaces, and empowering users with technology, the efforts to assist communities (and possibly people) which are being disrupted. In Amazon’s report, the community sustainability should be a requirement.

The following data summarize key highlights of our environmental initiatives discussed in our environmental report published in December 2016. They provide a snapshot of our performance and together demonstrate how we’re strengthening our business by reducing the environmental impact of our operations and working to empower people everywhere to live more sustainably.

In other words, I want these technology companies to report the impacts on the lives of people disrupted. If AI has caused the loss of 10% of jobs in an industry, you can take a percentage of your market share to explain if there are efforts you are making to provide opportunities to the equivalent number of people. While we like our trees and nature, humans are part of it. And if we continue to innovate, displacements will continue to happen.

This point may not be obvious. I will explain with employment in the Nigerian banking sector. The rate of customer growth is faster than the rate of staff growth. We have more than 70 million bank accounts today from 40 million above 6 years ago. Total staff strength stands at about 78,000 today. Simply, over six years, we have added more than 30 million bank accounts with only extra 18,000 staff. But note that between 2007 and 2010, the banking sector shrank. Technically, Nigeria has not returned employment to pre-great recession when we had excess of 80,000 staff. So, if you move the analysis few years before, you will note that we have added tens of millions of new accounts while shrinking the total manpower.

Nigeria’s 14 quoted banks with total staff strength of 59,807 incurred a wage bill of N265 billion in 2009. This is about N4 million per staff. This is based on an analysis of the staff cost disclosure by the 14 banks in their 2009 annual reports

Technology has brought productivity gains and banks do not need many staff. The same is happening in insurance, oil and gas and across the industrial sectors. Suddenly, we have many young people unemployed. A graduate that finished 30 years ago was sure of something. Today, a student entering a university today is not certain of job because the jobs opportunities are shrinking.

If you check all these elements well, technology is at the heart of it. And I do think there is a need to capture the impacts as they affect nature and most importantly how a company’s activities have affected jobs, communities and humans. I agree, when one industry loses jobs, opportunities emerge in other industries. Unfortunately, since banks stopped using big halls to hire as they did in the 2000s, and telcos have cut back, I am yet to see new industries that have taken over in the short term. That may come, of course, but at the moment, we have issues at hand.

Reporting how technologies affect labor, just as they affect our environments, makes sense in environmental reports. So, Google next time you publish your environmental report, I want to see community sustainability report inside it.

It is big news. Goldman Sachs is possibly joining the list of believers in the cryptocurrency called Bitcoin and others like it. This may be the moment the adherents of Bitcoin are waiting for. This also suggests that regulators may be reading the signs poorly.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is weighing a new trading operation dedicated to bitcoin and other digital currencies, the first blue-chip Wall Street firm preparing to deal directly in this burgeoning yet controversial market, according to people familiar with the matter.

Goldman’s effort is in its early stages and may not proceed, the people said. The firm’s interest, though, could boost bitcoin’s standing among investors and fuel the debate around digital currencies, which were initially viewed as havens for illicit activity…

The mere thought that the best of the breeds can have this type of conversations with its clients is an indication on the durability of cryptocurrency. I do believe that digital currency is here to stay. It will not disappear because there has never been a technology on earth which emerges, becomes a household name and then disappears without an impact. Sure, the impact could be bankruptcies and ravaging of lives, but I do not think so.

Even if Bitcoin should fail, it will lead to another flavor of digital currency. Before Facebook, we had MySpace. And before Apple, we had Nokia. So, evolving technologies do not necessarily disappear when they actually deliver value to some people in the society, at scale. All the competitors will joggle until we reach maturity phase. Then the utilities-like category kings will emerge. When that happens, the surviving one becomes part of the society. Facebook is now part of all aspects of our lives including the political spheres. There is no government that does not think of Facebook.

Oh yes, that transmutation and evolution before maturity is the risk on cryptocurrency: you do not know if it will be Bitcoin or one from Japan or China or Nigeria that will survive. That uncertainty is why this is severely risky. But when Goldman Sachs sees alpha, I know the world will follow. Just like that, they have beatified Bitcoin and its cousins in this Gregorian Year of 2017.

Coming Home – Nigeria

My position remains that we do not need Bitcoin but Nigeria needs a digital currency tied to the Naira that will enable the efficient functioning of the blockchain infrastructure which I expect to evolve in coming years in the nation. If the Central Bank blesses such a plan, we will experience a virtuoso innovation system in redesigning the architecture of some of our industrial sectors and make them more efficient even while being cost-efficient. As I noted in my entry on Blockchain Africa, blockchain has a promise for Africa. Nigeria just have to find a way to lead in that promise at least in West Africa where its impact is huge. As Goldman Sachs goes closer to Bitcoin and digital currency, we may be too slow that very soon, it becomes an entirely foreign imports to Nigeria.