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Hello.

I’m starting to grow fond of – and adopt – Bankole’s desire to move to Kenya. If not for anything else (they have electricity, but let’s not get into that), then for the ceaseless antics of Atheists in Kenya (AIK). So, if you decide to adopt him, you should also consider me. I eat small rations, and I don’t make trouble – most of the time. ??

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Enter, today’s digest.

1. According to this report by the Nigerian Communications Week, Nigeria lost ~N2.19bn to cyber criminals in 2016. Digital payment fraud went up by 82% from the previous year and 1200% compared to 2014. A further breakdown of the report shows that mobile banking saw N235.1 million lost to fraud; eCommerce, N132.2 million; web, N190.9 million; kiosk, N10.1 million; cheque, N4.5 million; and N190.9 million through uncategorized platforms.

+ Speaking of large sums and discreet thieves, Mark Essien proposed the idea of a site where the assets and incomes of Nigerian government officials are crowdsourced and compared for discrepancies. Link

2. This Nigerian fintech startup, KiaKia, believes that it has found the solution to Nigeria’s consumer loan industry by using predictive analytics, big data, machine learning and digital forensics in its credit scoring and assessment process. (That’s essentially the same thing other players like Paylater and Aella Credit are doing).

+ Nigeria has ~60 million bank account owners, with only ~15 million having some form of credit history or information that can be used to assess whether or not they are eligible for a loan. This puts the remaining 45 million in KiaKia’s area of interest, where those tools will be applied to assess and score them for credit.

3. It’s raining monkeys at Wema Bank. A few days ago, Ford Models Inc model, Nneoma Anosike, sued the bank before a Federal High Court Division in Lagos for using one of her photos without permission from her agency. And then yesterday, New York-based designer + art director, Leta Sobierajski, accused Wema of plagiarizing her work in these promotional images for ALAT.

Osarumen: wait, Francis, let’s not jump to conclusions here. It’s entirely possible that the same spirits appeared to Leta, and whoever is about to get fired at Wema’s Digital Marketing Agency, and inspired

them to do the same thing. g(G?)od works in mysterious ways. *wiggles fingers* ?

Boooga boooga boooga! *disappears in a cloud of smoke*

+ Everyone now claims to know someone who’s been exploited by Wema Bank. Tsk. Tsk. ??‍♂️?


Afrobytes is an annual international Tech Conference connecting businesses and technology leaders, founders, investors, and policy experts with the fastest-growing African tech startups. The inaugural conference will take place in Paris on June 8-9, 2017, at Le Medef. Find out more and register here.


What else?

+ These African men are using self-driving car technology to reimagine the future of music. Link

+ If you run into Atheists in Kenya’s missing treasurer, tell him that the association wants its money back. Link

+ Nigeria wants to start teaching kids STEM subjects in indigenous languages (lol). ? Link

+ These guys bought the new Nokia 3310 and they absolutely hate it. Link

+ The Internet made us experts…on Obaranda.

+ Ethiopia’s ZayRide is adapting its platform to slow internet by compressing the application x5 so that it works seamlessly even on 2G. Link

+ “Netflix killer”, iflix, is launching in Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya.  Link

+ Paystack’s new feature lets Paystack merchants bill and send invoices to customers directly. Link


That’s all.

Have a great weekend.

Francis Bulus Author

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