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Green Crypto Mining Looks to Launch in Africa

Boluwatife Aponmade
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Green Crypto Mining Looks to Launch in Africa

Africa is being eyed as a potential location for Green crypto mining. Knowing that crypto mining can have a serious environmental effect, East Africa has one of the highest electric rates, hence, has been looked to be taken advantage of by the company, considering the low hashtag rates of East Africa and to add sustainable crypto mining solutions.

Bitcoin is known for wasting electricity that is more than enough to add 40 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per year, hence, why Green Crypto Mining looks forward to launching in Africa, where there is a low hashtag rate and high electric rates. For all of the cryptocurrency’s purported benefits, it is an environmental disaster.

There are important cryptocurrencies like Cardano, Ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, stellar, and Algorand that use very much less energy than bitcoin or are being modified so. Ethereum, for example, is going to undergo changes from ‘proof of work’ to a system known as ‘proof of stake’. It cuts energy use by 99.95%. There is a new currency, candela, whose own method of generating energy requires solar-powered mining.

Green Crypto Mining will expand its focus in East Africa by adding sustainable cryptocurrency mining offerings rather than replacing existing energy production and computing equipment solutions with better and lasting solutions.

WaterPure International, Inc. looks into introducing a sustainable cryptocurrency mining initiative to its cards of electric utility offerings. It has updated its decade-old clean water operations and expanded into the electricity utility sector. WPUR will be adding sustainable crypto mining solutions to its focus on electricity utilities.

Microsoft Job Opening in Nigeria: Start-UPS CTO

Sopuruchukwu Elizabeth Mba
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Microsoft Job Opening in Nigeria: Start-UPS CTO

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Africa is one of the best places on the planet to bring our mission to life. It is home to people and 54 countries. The talent in Africa reflects a tremendously rich and diverse potential that can truly impact the world over the next few decades. Being the youngest continent in the world with a median age of just years, Africa is contributing to +12M youth being added to the global labor force every year. By 2040, half of the world’s young people will live in Africa.

Africa’s growth is propelled by being a mobile-first continent that is fueling connectivity, innovation, and scalability.

Our aspiration is to transform Africa into a Cloud-first, Digital-first continent enabling a thriving digital economy across Africa while reinventing Microsoft’s digital assets and capabilities to serve the young continent’s transformation needs. With that in mind was the establishment of a new team; the Africa Transformation Office (ATO), which will be established and chartered with the following:

Build strategic, unconventional partnerships with key governments, institutions, and enterprises to enable and accelerate the digital economy across the African continent.
Develop digital marketing engines to enable and accelerate Startups and SMBs.
Plan and land infrastructure enablers and game-changers in the continent.
Enable Africa as a Foreign Direct Investment destination supported by expanding our technologies for MNCs across key industries.

Manage the 4Afrika initiative and further integrate it into key company programs and engines to amplify its impact.
Foster digital skilling and job creation to maximize the economic opportunity for the African youth and workforce.

Role Summary

Microsoft aspires to help our customers achieve their own digital transformation, leveraging the power of Microsoft Cloud solutions and support offerings. To this end, Microsoft invests in a dedicated team that will help Microsoft customers successfully realize their business outcomes. Azure is the most comprehensive, innovative, and flexible cloud platform today and Microsoft is hiring professionals that will drive customer cloud adoption within the most important companies in the market.

We are always learning. Insatiably curious. We lean into uncertainty, take risks, and learn quickly from our mistakes. We build on each other’s ideas because we are better together. We stand in awe of what humans dare to achieve and are motivated every day to empower others to do more and achieve more through our technology and innovation. Together we make a difference. We are looking for a highly motivated and passionate App Innovation Architect focusing on Azure Application Innovation to join the ATO.

This customer-facing position is a hands-on technical role spanning design, build, and production with a focus on issue resolution to remove customer technical obstacles and adoption challenges.

As part of this role, you will be responsible for technical customer engagements, working with the most challenging and exciting projects within the MicrosoftAfricacustomer base. You will work with select customers to lead deep technical architecture discussions with senior customer executives, Enterprise Architects, IT Management, and Developers.

You will collaborate with a variety of internal and external teams to develop pilots and oversee implementation projects, ensuring technical blockers are removed on adoption. You will drive the technical intensity of developers and create communities within customers. And you will collaborate with Product engineering to share feedback on the development of Microsoft products and help develop the Azure platform.

Responsibilities

Understand customers’ overall applications portfolio, IT and business priorities, and success measures to design implementation architectures and solutions (Microsoft and 3rd party solutions) using PaaS, DevOps & Advanced Application coding.

Apply technical knowledge and customer insights to empower customers to create a modernization journey roadmap. Architect solutions to meet business and IT needs, ensuring technical viability of new projects and successful deployments, while orchestrating key resources and infusing key Infrastructure technologies including Kubernetes, Azure PaaS services App Service, Java, containers, serverless, cloud-native, etc.) and Application

Development with low code options and DevOps and GitHub technologies as appropriate.
Collaborate with other Cloud Solution Architects and MS stakeholders in developing complex end-to-end Enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Azure platform.
Ensure all solutions exhibit a “Well-Architected” framework, such as high levels of performance, security, scalability, maintainability, and appropriate reusability and reliability upon deployment.

Run Architectural Design Session to build a plan for implementing the solution –governing design in line with customer business goals and their technical environment. The outcome is consensus on solution design and next steps toward production.
Develop deep relationships with key customer IT decision-makers, who drive long-term cloud adoption within their company to enable them to be cloud advocates.
Be the Voice of the Customer; Share insights and best practices, and connect with Engineering teams to remove blockers.

Troubleshoot technical issues to prove the value of the implementation of Azure technologies.
Assess the Customers’ knowledge of the Azure platform and overall cloud readiness to support customers through a structured learning plan and ensure its delivery through partners. Collaborate with others in developing complex end-to-end Enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Azure platform.

Maintain technical skills and knowledge of market trends and competitive insights; collaborate and share with the technical community.
Be an Azure Platform evangelist with customers, partners, and external communities.
Build and grow developer communities by driving activities including OpenHacks, Workshops.

Compliance

Personally, commit to generating and protecting Microsoft’s trust by modeling integrity every day and contributing to ethical sales and sustainable growth.

Qualifications

Professional

Professional Experience. 5+ years of success in consultative/complex technical sales and deployment projects, architecture, design, implementation, and/or support of highly distributed applications.

Relationship Building. Proven track record of building deep technical relationships with senior IT executives in large or highly strategic accounts. Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solutions/projects.

Problem Solving. Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies.
Collaboration and Communication. Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts, and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills.

Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams, ensuring successful implementation of customer projects. Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences (Senior Executives, IT management, Administrators, and Developers).

Technical

Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, and technology management.

Experience and understanding of large-scale application portfolios in enterprise-wide environments (including migration of on-premise workloads to the cloud).

Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud-native app hosting through software design, development, deployment, and app refactoring/migrations.

Web application server technologies, cloud application design, software architecture, and practices; (design/development/deployment, Agile, SCRUM, ALM).

Experience with scalable architectures using Azure App Service, API management, serverless technologies, container orchestration (Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, etc.), API management, microservice frameworks, SDKs, etc.

Software development practices like DevOps and CI/CD toolchains (Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Visual Studio).

Competitive Landscape. Knowledge of cloud development platforms preferred.
Partners. Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field preferred.

Certification in one of the following technologies preferred: Cloud, web application development, cloud-native application architecture (containers, microservices, API management), modern software development techniques like DevOps and CI/CD toolchains Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure developer services, GitHub) and container orchestration systems Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Azure Kubernetes Service, GitHub).

Certification in one or more of the following programming languages preferred: C++, C#, Java, Python.

Experiences

Prior work experience in a Consulting/Architecture position within a software and/or services company such as Amazon, VMware, Google, IBM, OraclePreferred.

Location

Lagos.

How to apply?

Click to apply here.

Airtel Nigeria Job Opening: Information Technology Quality Assurance SME Specialist

Sopuruchukwu Elizabeth Mba
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Airtel Nigeria Job Opening: Information Technology Quality Assurance SME Specialist

Airtel Nigeria (Airtel Networks Limited) is a leading telecommunications services provider in Nigeria headquartered in Lagos, the commercial nerve center of Nigeria. The telco ranks amongst the top four mobile service providers in terms of subscribers with a customer base of more than 39.8 million. The company’s product offerings include 2G, 3G, and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, and enterprise services.

Airtel Nigeria is recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Information Technology Quality Assurance SME Specialist.

Location: Lagos.

Duration: Full time.

What Will You Do?

SME, Quality Assurance, and Testing is responsible for testing of all products and applications, coordinating the test strategy and plan with project managers – considering the context and understanding the test objectives and risks – including selecting test approaches, estimating the time, effort, and cost of testing, acquiring resources, defining test levels, cycles, and planning incident management.

Key Accountabilities

E2E Coordination IT Testing:

  • Understand the testing effort by analyzing the requirements of the project.
  • Test execution, planning, and management. Progress monitoring and corrections to the plan necessary to achieve project goals. Communicate the status of the test activities for the project-to-project teams and management.
  • Estimate and obtain management support for the time, resources, and budget required to perform the testing.
  • Coordinate with other managers (Project Manager, Development Manager, etc.) to ensure the highest level of software quality.
  • Initiate the specification, preparation, implementation, and execution of tests, monitor the test results and check the exit criteria.
  • Responsible for writing and review of test strategy for the project, and test policy for the organization.
  • Develop the test plan for the tasks, dependencies, and participants required to mitigate the risks to system quality and obtain stakeholder support for this plan.
  • Ensure content and structure of all Testing documents/artifacts are documented and maintained.
  • Keep track of the new requirements/change in requirements of the Project.
  • Escalate the issues about project requirements (Software, Hardware, Resources) to PMO Head.
  • Act as the SME and SPOC between Implementers and Testers.
  • Track and prepare the report of testing activities like test testing results, test case coverage, required resources, defects discovered and their status, performance baselines, etc.
  • Ensure the timely delivery of different testing milestones.

Ensure capability development of the team and improved engagement:

  • Build a testing team of professionals with appropriate skills, attitudes, and motivation.
  • Identify Training requirements and forward it to the Project Manager (Technical and Soft skills).
  • Estimate and obtain management support for the time, resources, and budget required to perform the testing.
  • Assign tasks to all Testing Team members and ensure that all of them have sufficient work in the project.
  • Review various reports prepared by Test engineers.
  • Manage software testing resources (Recruit, train, allocate and monitor).

Maintain IT delivery quality standard and Built-2-Operate:

  • Document, implement, monitor, and enforce all processes for testing as per standards defined by the organization.
  • Formulate/review software testing strategies and policy for the IT.
  • Generate SOPs for processes in the QA department, train QA staffs on SOPs, daily evaluation of activities in the QA lab to ensure compliance with SOPs.
  • Oversee review of processes and documents of the organization and ensure they are adequate in line with requirements of necessary standards.
  • Liaise with HODs to ensure understanding and compliance with requirements of standards.
  • Strong leadership skills. Superior strategic planning and successful tactical implementation skills.

Requirements

What will make you successful?

  • Graduate Degree: BSc in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent)
  • Certification and knowledge of at least one of the Quality standards
  • Relevant certification would be an advantage, ISTQB/ISEB
  • 6+ years of relevant work experience
  • Knowledge of at least one programming/scripting language.
  • Knowledge of at least one database management system
  • Proficiency in written and spoken English.
  • Experience working for a Telecommunications company, Enterprise company or Billing/ CRM vendor in a Business Analysis role.
  • Direct team management experience.
  • Experience with telecommunication products, processes, and markets.

Application Closing Date

Not Specified.

How to Apply

Interested and qualified candidates for the Airtel job opening should:

Click here to apply

 

 

Interest in Bitcoin Drops in Nigeria After CBN’s Clampdown

Boluwatife Aponmade
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Interest in Bitcoin Drops in Nigeria After CBN’s Clampdown

Nigeria’s interest in Bitcoin has waned as a result of the CBN’s actions and as thus, is no longer at the top of the list of countries with the highest interest in Bitcoin. Ranking top on the list now is El Salvador. Africa’s most powerful economy, Nigeria has fallen to the second position by a score of 61 while El Salvador took charge with a score of 100.

The drop in the interest of Bitcoin has to do with Nigeria’s central bank’s resolve in banning the grip Bitcoin has on Nigerians. A circular was issued by the bank’s Director of Banking Supervision, J.Y. Mamman, on the 3rd of November, 2021 which instructed banks to close down accounts of designated bank customers and suspend their funds in suspense accounts.

This latest circular reiterated an older one that was issued in 2017, warning banks not to deal in cryptocurrency and to ensure that their virtual currency exchange customers had anti-terrorist financing controls and effective anti-money laundering. These were to enable such customers to comply with KYC and transaction monitoring regulations.

Crypto experts have argued that Nigerian crypto traders to greater risks by pushing them out of the banking system and removing them from the global market that offers unequivocal returns and relative currency stability. It has become quite hard for a number of her citizens to trade crypto, as P2P sellers and buyers are now really difficult to locate. People will now try to conduct the transaction unofficially through other P2P methods.

Many informal P2P traders reportedly charge exorbitant rates, leaving a number of young Nigerians discouraged. Local lenders are no longer allowed to work with digital asset companies since the Nigerian central bank has banned cryptocurrency assets in Nigeria.

According to Chainalysis estimates, between July 2020 and June 2021, African countries received about $105.6 billion in cryptocurrency. In terms of volume, Nigeria played a big role to an extent. Nigeria still remains Africa’s largest cryptocurrency market.

One major reason Nigerians are attracted to Bitcoin is that, unlike traditional payment methods, there are no borders, this makes it effortless and really low in transaction fees.

Nigeria is one of the world’s youngest populations and the largest economy in Africa, as well as Africa’s most populous country. Nigeria is now Africa’s largest bitcoin trading market, by volume, this is all thanks to a thriving tech sector.

Airtel Nigeria Job Opening: Lead In-House Applications Support

Sopuruchukwu Elizabeth Mba
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Airtel Nigeria Job Opening: Lead In-House Applications Support

Airtel Nigeria (Airtel Networks Limited) is a leading telecommunications services provider in Nigeria headquartered in Lagos, the commercial nerve center of Nigeria. The telco ranks amongst the top four mobile service providers in terms of subscribers with a customer base of more than 39.8 million. The company’s product offerings include 2G, 3G, and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, and enterprise services.

Airtel Nigeria is recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Lead In-house Applications Support.

Location: Lagos, Nigeria.

Duration: Full time.

What Will You Do?

  • The Lead, In-house applications Support will be responsible for maintaining and supporting all in-house built applications, tools, and utilities to support Airtel Nigeria IT business.
  • The role requires strong hands-on in supporting applications written in python, dot net, and Java. The lead, in-house applications will be fully responsible for keeping these applications available.
  • The Lead, in-house applications will work closely with the Airtel business team and related partners in this domain, performing the necessary leadership, keeping the applications in this domain available, and supporting daily operations.

Key Accountabilities

The lead, in-house applications Application Support is responsible for

  • Ensuring the stability and availability of all the in-house built applications.
  • Identifying and supporting the implementation of innovative technologies applicable to this domain.
  • Leading the automation of extant manual operational processes.
  • Managing application configuration and upgrades, and problem analysis and resolution for complex application problems.
  • Proactive monitoring of all applications in this domain.
  • Managing the performance of all applications in this domain.
  • Managing the data quality of applications in this domain, you will also be required to drive any revenue assurance reconciliations that may arise in this domain.
  • Ensuring data security as it applies to all applications in this domain.
  • Setting, articulating and overseeing the achievement of Airtel Nigeria IT goals and objectives on relevant IT Applications.
  • Engaging in standard Incident, Problem, Change, and Risk Management of the IT applications in this domain.
  • Ensuring there are robust procedures and processes within the application support function.

What Will Make You Successful?

  • University degree (Engineering or Computer Science).
  • Evidence of continuous professional and personal learning and development.
  • Minimum 8-10 years relevant experience in telecommunication/other relevant industries.
  • At least 8 years experience in experience in all aspects of providing applications support to users in a very fast-paced environment.
  • At least 5 years experience in supporting python.
  • At least 8 years experience in supporting. Net and Java-based applications.
  • At least 8 years experience in administering Linux and Windows server environments.
  • At least 8 years experience in database support especially Oracle, MS SQL, and MongoDB.

Application Closing Date

Not specified.

How to Apply

Interested and qualified candidates for the Airtel Nigeria job opening should:

Click here to apply.

 

 

Denny Marandure Is Named CEO of Raha Tanzania by Liquid

Abdulquadri Ayilara
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Denny Marandure Is Named CEO of Raha Tanzania by Liquid

Denny Marandure has been named Chief Executive Officer of Raha Limited in Tanzania, according to Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a Cassava Technologies firm.

His track record with Liquid illustrates not only his passion and work but also his superior management abilities. Denny is a seasoned senior leader with over 27 years of experience in finance, analytics, business development, and management.

Denny Marandure joined Liquid in 2014 as CEO of ZOL Zimbabwe and remained there until 2019 when he transferred to Liquid South Africa as Group Executive Cloud and Digital Sales and later Group Executive Enterprise Sales.

“Denny is an experienced senior executive who has the vision, strategic thinking, leadership, and energy to successfully take our Tanzania operations to newer heights of excellence,” stated Adil El Youssefi, Regional CEO for Liquid Intelligent Technologies, East Africa.

“On behalf of the entire organization, I’d like to wish Denny the best of success on his new position in Tanzania.”

Adil added that “his track record with Liquid illustrates not only his passion and efforts, but also his great managerial ability in navigating through Africa’s complex economic eco-systems.”

“This is a really exciting time to be joining Raha, and I am honoured to be taking on this leadership role where I can leverage my wealth of experience, expertise, and knowledge that I have gained from working in dynamic markets like the United States of America, South Africa, and Zimbabwe,” Marandure said of his appointment.

Tanzania’s business scene is constantly evolving, with significant digitization potential on the horizon, making this an ideal moment to focus on the country’s overall growth and development. I am honored that the baton has been passed to me and I look forward to being a part of the team here.

Raha Limited has been at the forefront of bringing breakthrough technological innovations and solutions to the people of Tanzania; I am honored that the baton has been passed to me and I look forward to being a part of the team here.

Raha Limited now provides a variety of connectivity solutions to over 1,500 enterprises and a rising number of retail consumers across Tanzania, including fiber, satellite, WiMAX, and Wi-Fi.

Phenom Ecosystem to Host Wall Street Guru in South Africa

Hassan Barakat
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Phenom Ecosystem to Host Wall Street Guru in South Africa

Phenom Ecosystem to host Wall Street Guru in South Africa by December. The man whose true story was adapted into the mega-hit film, The Wolf of Wall Street by Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio will visit South Africa. “The Real Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort, will attend the intense Phenom Sunrise, a technical forum in Cape Town.

Transdisciplinary Agora for Future Discussion(TAFFDs), a global nongovernmental organization registered in the United States as a nonprofit corporation that serves as a futuristic Think Tank endeavored to the education and engagement urgency to help people understand the benefits and challenges of technology application, is helping to organize the conference, which aims to unleash the “business beast” in 200 entrepreneurs from over 20 countries.

Phenom Ecosystem, a high-tech digital arena where services, goods, and solutions are structured around the demands of consumers, will host the event. Jordan Belfort has been invited to share his knowledge and experience with the trailblazer participants, push them to reach their goals, and explain his approach to life, business, and finance, according to the forum organizers. At the conference, Belfort’s main goal will be to demystify difficult money technologies like Blockchain and digital currencies.

“The main task that is required of Belfort is to interpret all that digital language that today’s generation of entrepreneurs needs to decode in order to expand their portfolios in technology-based firms,” said Yaroslav Gordeev, the workshop’s organizer and CEO of Phenom Platform Ltd. “Not only will participants learn from the guy who inspired Martin Scorsese’s big-screen drama, but they will also have the opportunity to meet and speak with him.”

“It must be a genuine experience. We want our attendees to not only take the fintech teachings home with them but also to be able to look back on their photos with the real Wolf of Wall Street and be inspired to continue their entrepreneurial endeavors. Other ex-employees will also speak to the participants.”

“Seasoned entrepreneurs and IT experts will speak to the participants about the future of the African and global markets. They’ll get the opportunity to learn about the most cutting-edge digital items and increase their passive income options.” CEO of Phenom Platform Ltd added.

All of the participants, according to Belfort, should be prepared for a life-changing experience. “After all these years, I’m finally coming to Cape Town. Prepare to be blown away; this will be a spectacular event. I’ll talk about entrepreneurship, sales, and how to advance in your life and career “Belfort stated.

The conference will hold in Cape Town, at the Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel, on December 8-12, 2021.

The ultimate training session with Jordan Belfort will take place on December 9, 2021.

To attend, book a ticket HERE

Nigerian Fintech Startup Abeg Faces Its Biggest Test After Blitzscaling to Millions of Users

Abidemi Ogunyemi-Aderibigbe
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Nigerian Fintech Startup Abeg Faces Its Biggest Test After Blitzscaling to Millions of Users

Nigerian Fintech startup, Abeg, a wordplay popular Nigerian slang which means to ask or beg for something was launched in September 2020. The platform was founded by Dare Adekoya, Muheez Akanni, Patricia Adoga, and Eniola Ajayi-Bembe.

The Nigerian fintech Abeg was launched with a Cash App-Esque play and leveraged on a wallet-based system. Abeg gives room with the use of tags for users to request and send money to each other.

After the rapid growth of about 5,000 users in its first few weeks of launch with zero marketing, what emerged as a couple of Gen Zs trying out something cool outside Nigeria’s traditional payments space quickly turned into a company looking to scale. And for weeks to come, the number of users was on the rise.

However, in the early month of the year 2021, the much-gained fame garnered by the app especially on Twitter started taking a downslope. It was obvious it was dying as fast as it emerged.

Surprisingly in April 2021, Multichoice announced the startup as the Big Brother Naija show’s headline sponsor before the commencement of the show months later.

A lot of theories started flying around about how the six-month-old startup Nigerian Fintech Abeg could have managed to sponsor a show that cost $2 million without prior announcement or disclosure of any fundraising and seemed to be struggling at that time? This and more were questions on the lips of a lot of observers.

However, there are reports that the CEO Adekoya the startup’s founder confirmed to have raised a pre-seed round from local investors, and a portion of the undisclosed pre-seed fund was used to sponsor the show by the team.

Big Brother Naija

Big Brother Naija is a reality show that features a group of people who live together in a huge house, away and detached from the outside world but are being watched via CCTV.

The name “Big Brother” is a franchise that started in the Netherlands and has since been duplicated worldwide including Nigeria. The pay-TV company MultiChoice Nigeria is known to be the official organizer.

The recent season which gave in to the blitzscaling of the Abeg platform was the sixth since its launch in 2006. The show being the most popular and most-watched reality show in Africa is said to rake in impressive numbers in terms of cash and viewership.

The 5th edition before the last was said by the show organizers to have a whopping 900 million votes cast by viewers. With such a magnitude of viewers who are glued to the screen daily, it is only fitting that companies who need publicity have to pay a premium that costs about $2 million.

How Big Brother Impacted the Nigerian Fintech Abeg

The Nigerian fintech Abeg happens to be a product of leading financial technology company Piggytech Global Limited as revealed in the fine prints of MultiChoice announcement about Abeg in April about being the BBN show’s headline sponsor.

Piggytech the parent company of Piggyvest is Nigeria’s most popular savings app as well as one of the most valued fintech startups in the country. Piggytech is said to have acquired Abeg in late 2020 and from hearsay, it is said to have made the payment for the sponsorship on behalf of Abeg. Although, Abeg’s CEO dismissed this report and insist the funds were from the pre-seed round.

It is just logical to assert the funds came from piggytech as it is rare for a startup such as the Nigerian fintech Abeg in the pre-seed stage with a few thousand followers to raise such funds and use $2million as a marketing budget.

Even though the acquisition of Abeg by Piggytech is been shrouded, Piggytech and its subsidiaries have neither refuted nor affirmed their relationship till the moment. Akanni, CTO of Abeg, is said to have disclosed in a call that “We [Abeg and PiggyVest] are more or less under the same parent company; so, like sister companies and subsidiaries of Piggytech,”.

Of course, Abeg isn’t the first tech startup to sponsor the BBN reality TV show as other tech companies have taken such steps in the past. They include the now-defunct e-commerce company PayPorte, betting companies such as Betway and Bet9ja, and fintech the likes of  Kuda, Patricia, and unicorn Flutterwave.

Each one of these startups has reported astronomical growth following the season finale and it was a perfect blueprint Abeg had to go through for which it did perfectly.

Coming into the show with a new design, a relaunched application, and over 20,000 users, Abeg now claims to have almost 2 million followers using the app.

“Big Brother is like a large billboard in Africa where brands can … advertise and promote their products. And as Abeg, we are trying to infuse culture, lifestyle into the app, because payments are part of people’s lives,” COO Adoga said.
“So it’s pretty much worked for us because we’re trying to … promote and introduce the brand to the market and [tell] people what we’re about and what Abeg is supposed to be.”

When Abeg was launched in 2020, its best use case for social payments was to let users run giveaway campaigns. These giveaways on the app became more prominent during the Big Brother Naija show as celebrities and influencers (sponsored by Abeg) used the Abeg app to send out money to their fans.

“We went the giveaway route basically to attract a lot of signups, which worked, and for people to reserve their usernames and get around with the app,” Adekoya said. “Moving forward, Abeg will be your go-to payment app for anything you want to pay for.”

The Abeg team knows relying on such a model is unsustainable. Users enjoyed using the app for giveaways on version 1.0, but it wasn’t enough for user retention. Now that Abeg has acquired more users and grown 100x, retention will become more critical than ever in version 2.0 and they are exploring more specific use cases with Piggytech’s backing.

That is the reason for Patronize, also known as “Abeg for businesses” was launched. The platform, another Piggytech subsidiary is a Square-Esque product for Nigerian small and medium businesses to receive payments from customers using the Abeg app.

Just like Square, Patronize provides tools to enhance business growth, manage and also reward their customers. However, unlike Square, Patronize is void of cards. With its smart point-of-sale (POS) devices, Abeg is trying to disrupt POS machines in retail shops, stores as well as bank transfers.

For real, these are two tough propositions by Abeg, but Abeg is right to think there is an opportunity. Just as fund transfers in Nigeria are meant to be instant with the help of the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) as the infrastructure behind it, failed transactions and downtimes are still common occurrences.

Abeg, with its wallet system, is providing a unique channel to make payments which, according to the company, has a 99.9% uptime. Abeg is counting on the fact that customers will see it as an alternative when they feel dissatisfied with traditional payments and they will become the go-to platform to pay for movies, food, event, or drugs from pharmacies.

Will all these strategies be enough to retain users?

It isn’t entirely certain as one would still be required to use bank transfers to fund an Abeg wallet. Some users don’t see the need to make transfers into their Abeg wallets each time they’re required to make payments when they could easily transfer money to the recipient’s bank from their respective banks.

These are issues that Abeg needs to look into to retain its millions of users. One of the ways it has plans to get this done is via direct integration with PiggyVest so users from the savings app can fund their Abeg wallets.

How is this going to be? So PiggyVest reportedly paid out ₦250 billion (~$500 million) into its users’ bank accounts at their last email to users this month. That’s a whole lot of money. So, since an Abeg wallet can perform some of the functions of a traditional bank such as transfers, bill payments, buying tickets, PiggyVest is asking its users, “why don’t we use your Abeg wallets as your default withdrawal vault instead of your bank accounts.”

Trust me, some users will likely find this not too convenient but Abeg is planning to allow users to earn interest on money left in their wallets in a bid to cajole them.

These strategies will help Abeg to leverage the pull and success of its “sister company” to achieve retention of users and, at the same time, it will bring into fruition the financial ecosystem Piggytech is building to retain float.

Aside from all of these, Abeg is going big on social gatherings, sponsoring entertainment events, musical shows of Grammy-award-winning artists such as Wizkid and Burna Boy to acquire more users this upcoming holiday season.

Despite the influx of venture capital into the Nigerian fintech space, the market is saturated with platforms having comparable features like airtime purchases, utility bills payment, savings, and making transfers.

Abeg claims to be different as its users won’t experience slow payments and high transaction costs existing on other platforms.

Although this pitch remains lost to some users, Piggytech believes Patronize will do the trick in changing users’ opinions. The business-focused platform is as well on a user acquisition spree, onboarding tens of hundreds of merchants with smart POS devices to cater to the needs of millions of users acquired by Abeg.

CBN Partners Payment System Providers, Fintechs to Deepen eNaira Adoption

Hassan Barakat
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CBN Partners Payment System Providers, Fintechs to Deepen eNaira Adoption

CBN partners Payment System Providers, Fintechs to deepen eNaira adoption. They emerged from a one-day engagement session in Lagos with a commitment to collaborate to increase acceptance of the eNaira, the recently launched Central Bank Digital Currency(CBDC).

Mrs. Rakiya Mohammed, CBN director of the information technology department, stated at the licensed PSPs engagement session held at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Lagos yesterday that the CBN was not in competition with the Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) or other actors in the Nigerian payment system ecosystem.

Mrs. Mohammed stated that the interaction was part of the CBN’s objective to get all stakeholders on board, what she called a “journey,” stressing that the CBN was open to recommendations and innovation aimed at improving the user experience and adding value to the eNaira.

She urged payment service providers (including the large community of Fintech groups) to come up with more innovative ways to assist members of the public in the onboarding process and use of eNaira, as well as develop solutions for offline eNaira functions such as cards, wearables, and USSD, among other things.

Mohammed also charged licensed PSPs to build additional products and services across the full spectrum of the financial system utilizing eNaira.

She further revealed that the full implementation of the eNaira, which began with bank onboarding, will be completed in four phases, concluding in offline eNaira payment solutions, cross-border payment, and eNaira interoperability with other Central Banks.

Representatives from many stakeholder groups praised the eNaira’s introduction and voiced enthusiasm for its adoption and use. They also presented value-added ideas for the market and integration process in order to promote financial inclusion by bridging the gap between banked and unbanked people.

According to a statement released on Monday, the CBN team and several stakeholder groups have committed to meet on a regular basis to discuss progress made in enabling more Nigerians to utilize eNaira.

The CBN team included Samuel Okojere, director, banking services department; Musa Jimoh, director, payment system management department; Dr. Blaise Ijebor, director, risk management; Mr. Chibuzor Efobi, director, financial policy and regulations department; and Mary Fasheitan, special adviser to the CBN Governor on payment systems.

The different groups present at the engagement were from Payment Service Banks, Switching and Processing companies; Mobile Money Operators; payment solution service providers; payment terminal service providers; and super agents.

Representatives of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the shared agent network expansion facilities (SANEF), and the committee of eBanking industry were also in attendance.

CBN Partners Payment System Providers, Fintechs to Deepen eNaira Adoption
CBN Partners Payment System Providers, Fintechs to Deepen eNaira Adoption

 

Appzone Group, a Fintech Software Company, To Unveil Blockchain Payment Platform

Hassan Barakat
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Appzone Group, a Fintech Software Company, To Unveil Blockchain Payment Platform

Appzone Group, a fintech software company, is preparing to unveil its blockchain payment processing platform.

Appzone Group will unveil the first blockchain platform for payment processing in Africa on Friday, December 10, 2021, in Lagos. The company stated that it would host industry leaders to launch its new innovation.

Appzone Switch, a subsidiary of Appzone Group, created the blockchain payment platform, called “Zone”.

“We are happy to officially unveil Zone as a decentralized blockchain-based payment infrastructure that enables real-time settlement of fiat transactions, both in-country and out-of-country while enabling the retail distribution of stable digital currencies including Central Bank Digital Currencies in Africa,” said Mr. Uche Elendu, Chief Executive Officer of Appzone Switch.

“We’re bringing together industry experts from the payment, technology, and finance industries to experience firsthand how the Zone platform is positioned to create a completely cashless future,” the CEO added.

Appzone Group, a fintech software company, is preparing to unveil its blockchain payment processing platform.
Appzone Group, a fintech software company, is preparing to unveil its blockchain payment processing platform.

 

Apart from essential features like payments authorization and real-time settlement, the Appzone Switch team is working to develop the platform’s digital token into a stable Pan-African digital currency that is completely compliant, approved by central banks, and backed by a basket of African fiat currencies.

Zone’s objective is to use the same distributed ledger that currently supports payment authorization and settlement to administer stable coin wallets for average people.

Zone provides financial services providers with simple APIs for many types of transactions, including account-to-account transfers, merchant payments, and cash transactions at ATMs or agent locations. It has ten commercial banks in Nigeria now connected to its network.

The platform’s architecture allows for high throughput and record transaction success rates while also removing common reconciliation concerns that cause refunds to customers to be delayed.

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