Good morning.
1. More than sixty thousand Nigerians, in Nigeria and in diaspora, have been singing and shouting hallelujah every night since the 1st of June, on Nathaniel Bassey’s Instagram Live (see above). And while I don’t care for these things, I’m actually considering staying up tonight to observe this behaviour. There’s a decent story about it on CNN, ICYMI. Link
+ In a country where data costs are not insignificant, getting 60k people to participate in a one hour live video session is nothing to sniff at. I am convinced those numbers would be way higher if internet access were more affordable.
2. MTN is getting sued over the award of its Iranian operating licence. Turkcell, the plaintiff, is going after not just the South African telco, but some influential telco heavyweights in their personal capacities, even though they no longer work at MTN. I wouldn’t order the popcorn just yet, though. The real proceedings probably won’t begin until 2019. Link
3. Cash remittances have been an obvious battleground in the fintech revolution. And now that it has come out that the average cost of cash to cash remittances to Africa is 9.8 percent of the amount sent (sign of the cross) fintech startups are really beginning to smell blood. The question the article doesn’t quite get to however is how long will the regulatory moat that props up the margins of Western Union and their ilk in Africa last? Link
5. Kenya’s film and classification board has banned gay TV show episodes. These are the same geniuses that tried to ban Netflix for immoral content. Link
6. Someone created a performance index for Nigeria’s 36 states. 37, if you include the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. Statescore is in beta, and the endgame of its creators isn’t entirely clear at the moment, but it is interesting. The rankings are crowdsourced, based on reviews from people who signup. Link
7. If you do fintech stuff, you should check out KPMG’s global fintech hackcelerator challenge (wait, who names these things?) Link
Other interesting stuff
+ What is Afrofuturism? Seriously… Link
+ Your fada: Our son, Elon’s father’s day t-shirt is the winner. Link
+ Andela founding team member, Nadayar Enegesi shares why he is still all in, three years in. Link
+ Climate change (don’t click if you don’t like silly and borderline insensitive 140 character jokes about serious matters). Link
Upcoming events
1. True Talk, with Ezra Olubi, CTO and co-founder of Paystack, which TechCabal is bringing to you with help from our friends, Cafe Neo and Wifi.com.ng. Link
2. TechCabal Office hours, with Olumide Olusanya, the founder and CEO of gloo.ng. This is a small event for 15 people only who get to receive unvarnished e-commerce advice from a veteran who’s been there, done that, and is still doing it. We’re doing this with help from our partners, V8 Ventures. Link
That’s all.
For now. As always, my best wishes for a productive week ahead.
