Between two days at Mobile Web West Africa and a quick working trip to Abuja, this week was a blur…I didn’t get to read much until today, I must confess. But there’s still a few hours to go before the week is officially up, so at least it isn’t yet “Lordbanks, Last Week”.
1. Jason and Co lit up the blogosphere with news of their SPARK incubator. Hot stuff. It smacks of Rocket strategy, but iROKO Partners’ good cop, Bastian Gotter says it isn’t.
2. But SPARK isn’t the only one with seed money to splash around. Only that unlike Jason, all the Lagos Angel Network has shown so far is intent. We’ll see if any of it translates into cheques.
While I’m not taken with all the hot air around Jason’s accelerator, it might actually be just the thing that sparks some Nigerian startup investorama. I mean, it’d be surprising if some of the local investors will sit back and watch Jason and Co get first dibs on all the interesting startup going on with mere $15-75k cheques. Startups, ready your pitchdecks — I foresee serious FOMO causing a windfall of cash.
3. Over 30,000 .ng domains registered, according to CP-Africa – growth led by international demand.
I told y’all foreigners would eat em up, didn’t I?
4. If you’re going to sell tons of phones in Africa, Nigeria is still the hottest place to go. That’s why Lenovo is coming before 2013 is up, and Tecno plans to start assembling their devices right here in the country.
5. The easiest, most reliable way to connect to the internet, anywhere in the world, even when you don’t have electricity? That’s the BRCK, a backup generator for the internet. Ushahidi is raising money to make them for the mass market, via KickStarter.
6. You can’t have too many innovation centres. That’s why IBM is opening one in Nairobi.
7. Another reason for Interswitch to worry? The Nigerian National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and MasterCard are about to churn out 13 million MasterCard-branded national identity smart cards…that you’ll also be able to use to make online payments and withdraw cash at ATMs.
8. Your phone line will get turned off, if you haven’t registered it by now or before the 1st of July, by NCC mandate.
9. Don’t miss the great, great stuff from our good members of the Cabal over the course of the week. Check out —
What makes hackathons work, by Francis.
It is not enough to be proudly Nigerian, by Iyinoluwa.
In collaboration we trust?, by Ajibola.
Best wishes for a slammin’ next week. Coming up Monday morning – Jason and Lordbanks uncensored.
