Nigeria
-
Bond Investors Are Rushing to Nigeria – I wrote a bit about Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s 60 Minutes interview earlier this week. Another thing he mentioned in that conversation was that at some point, the US was going to have to deal with the rate at which its debt is growing relative to its…
-
Pittsburgh-Based Niche Secures $35M For School Search Platform After 100% ARR Growth In 2019 – niche is a platform that allows parents to search for schools ranging from kindergarten all the way up to college. what concerns me about this platform is just where we’re headed more broadly in education. A tool like this is…
-
WFP Chief warns of hunger pandemic as COVID-19 spreads – According to the head of the World Food Programme, well over 800 million people around the world are chronically hungry, dealing with starvation. He projects an additional 265 million people will face the same struggle by the end of the year. It’s hard to wrap…
-
Calibrating – “All great investments begin in discomfort.” Issa Rae on the Return of “Insecure” and her Growing Empire – “That craving to tell the stories she’s not seeing anywhere is what’s getting her through this moment of uncertainty.” A Game Plan to Help the Most Vulnerable – “We share the need to look out…
-
Nigeria’s Bonny Light, Amenam crude under force majeure as disruptions resume (S&P Global Platts) If there is a global heat map showing the frequency of force majeure declarations in countries, I want to see it. It’s awful that Nigeria is still going through this waste of its lives and resources. SoftBank Vision Fund says its…
-
Notes on AI Bias Machine learning is much better at doing certain things than people, just as a dog is much better at finding drugs than people, but you wouldn’t convict someone on a dog’s evidence. And dogs are much more intelligent than any machine learning. The problem with this statement is that we have…
-
Nigeria to Negotiate Future International Investment Agreements…. To Use New Model This is a strong quote from Yewande Sadiku, head of Nigeria’s Investment Promotion Commission, at a recent event honoring the late Professor Michael Ayo Ajomo: “it is true that Nigeria has challenges, but when we are going into a negotiation that is not the…
-
Politico: SPG Signs Kenya Trump-connected Stanton Park Group signed a $1.2M contract to represent the country’s interests in the US. I look forward to seeing what they accomplish. White House: Seventeen Nominations Sent to the Senate Today President Trump has nominated Texas real estate tycoon Ray Washburne to be President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.…
-
CcHub Pushes to Keep Yaba’s Startups Clustered Together I struggled to parse out whether there’s really cause for concern for Yaba’s future as Lagos’ tech hub, or whether this piece was a veiled branding for CcHub. Perhaps, it was some of both. All the same, it’s cool to see CcHub making plans for the long-term…
-
Nigeria’s Bank of Industry Provides Interest-Free Loans to National Youth Service Members Nigeria’s Bank of Industry has developed a Graduate Entrepreneurship Fund in partnership with the country’s National Youth Service Corps. The program provides NYSC members with loans they can use to further establish their businesses, and it seems like a nice program. Nigeria requires…
-
Black Market Naira Trading Cheaper Than Official Naira Nigeria’s currency situation has been a mess of late, and I’m blaming it on Billions (read my thoughts in Issue No. 24). Sure enough, hedge funds are sniffing around for a deal. This week has felt like something of a perfect storm for Nigeria with telecoms having…
-
Report Touts Investment Opportunity for Private Education Across Africa DC-based Caerus Capital put together a report on the investment opportunity in private education across Africa. The authors project that 25% of school age children – 66 million children – across Africa will be in private education by 2021, up from the 21% who are currently…
-
No. 142: Three AM Reads: Cars45 gets $5m | Ethos Makes a Sugar Play | Ghana’s Illegal Mining Problem
Cars45 Gets $5M to Streamline Nigerian Used Auto Sales Jake Bright reports that Cars45 raised a nice Series A round from Frontier Car Group that has backing from some serious names in the venture capital space – Balderton Capital, EchoVC, TPG Growth, and Maryland-based NEA. Seeing that Cars45 raised its round from this one group…
-
Kenya Pushes Forward on Geothermal Plans It’s fantastic seeing Kenya continue to make progress on its Vision 2030 plan to be generating 5000MW of geothermal energy by 2030. I was rooting for these projects back in 2011, so I’m glad they’re not making me look bad. The groundbreaking for the 158MW Olkaria V geothermal site…
-
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance landed a senior advisory role with the asset management firm, Lazard, in their sovereign advisory practice. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala faced a good bit of criticism the last few years of her tenure, with the perception that she was quiet on corruption issues,…
-
The African Development Bank (AfDB) will be receiving the swagger Dr. Akinwumi Adesina brought to Nigeria’s agriculture sector, as he begins his term as president today. He takes the helm in times that are significantly different from when his predecessor, Dr. Donald Kaberuka got his start, and present their own set of challenges and opportunities,…
-
Andreessen Horowitz just posted a short interview with four high school girls who recently competed in Technovation 2015. (If you’re opening this in your email, click on the title so that you can see the podcast linked below.) The winner of the competition was a team from Nigeria! All of the teams are really impressive.…
-
Atlanta is a top-10 exporter amongst US cities to Nigeria. I hope the city puts more energy behind its connection to the country. The city recently completed its Metropolitan Export Plan with support from JP Morgan and the Brookings Institution. Currently, the only African countries an exporter in Atlanta can get information about exporting to…
-
Be sure to subscribe to David D.’s The Freedom Ring. He’s calling up sung and unsung players in the Civil Rights movement and documenting their stories. His first conversation was with his dad, David Dennis, Sr. Amazing stories about how he got his start in the movement, people he met along the way, and some…
-
For us, today, Africa is more important than the U.S. In five to 10 years, Africa can become the new frontier for luxury. – Ermenegildo Zegna While reading this Quartz piece on Africa’s fashion opportunity, I came across this Global Retail Development Index put together by A.T Kearney. The Index ranks the top 30 developing…
-
Andreessen Horowitz just wrapped up a series on the current cyber security landscape. It got me thinking about what the cybersecurity landscape looks like in African countries. In particular, I’m interested in cybersecurity work going on at the intersection of telecommunications and banking. Nigeria has a policy of reducing the circulation of cash in the…
-
So, personal well-being in Nigeria is trending upward, according to data compiled by NOIPolls. December produced the highest results for the year – a month when the naira stumbled significantly, the Nigerian Stock Exchange went for a wild ride, and Boko Haram deadliness persisted.More than anything, I think this displays the resiliency of this country’s…
-
President Zuma Skips Monday’s innovaBRICS & Beyond Conference – link South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma cancelled his scheduled Monday appearance in London at the innovaBRICS conference, hosted by Deloitte. South African publication City Press reported that President Zuma cancelled his appearance due to not being able to secure a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron,…
-
Here’s the rundown on last week’s episode of New Rules Africa. Check out the video for our deep dive into Africa’s stock exchanges: Link Marriott Plans to Build 50 Hotels in Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt by 2020 – Link Marriott is putting both feet in Africa, where it projects to have its highest revenue growth through…
-
Nigeria has tremendous growth potential and risks. My friends and I hopped on a Google Hangout to discuss.
-
Key Points 1. The saga around the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria governor continues; 2. The Central Bank governor is handily backing up his reputation; 3. President Jonathan could get a black eye from this fight; and 4. The independence of the Central Bank of Nigeria is in the balance. The Saga The February 20…
-
Davidson profiled Muna Musiitwa on her work in Africa. Great nuggets on key questions for mapping the way forward on the continent – [http://buff.ly/1ojta8X] Jason Njoku does some nice analysis on property values in Lagos in parallel with tech investments – [http://buff.ly/1ojtfsY] Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has paid a good bit of attention…
-
No. 26: As a Third Grader, I Broke Up a Fight Between Two Fifth Graders
ABN Digital, AMCON, Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, Ben Bernanke, Business Insider, Central Bank, East Africa, EM, emerging market, Emerging markets, Federal Reserve System, Financial Market, Foreign-exchange reserves, Jendayi Frazier, Jim O’Neill, Lex Luthor, Mark Mobius, Nigeria, North-South, Richard Koo, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, South-South, Tony ElumeluAnd thankfully, Mark Mobius aka Lex Luthor is breaking up the fight going on between emerging and developed markets on US Federal Reserve Bank guidance rumors. The dance has gone something like this: Emerging Markets: Sigh, the Fed is being pretty tight with it’s currency. Come on coach, let emerging markets spin! Ben Bernanke: Policy…
-
While receiving an award for Excellence in Commercial Diplomacy at Howard University’s Africa Business Conference, Florizelle Liser, Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa expressed her desire to see entrepreneurs in the African-American community and in African countries seek out partnerships with each other. The city of Atlanta, Georgia has a mix of key ingredients to…
Kwame Som-Pimpong 