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This founder has some words of advice for other African founders:
“After @BigeriaExchange $200,000 raise first week of January, we “invested” $130k in $Nano and #Bitcoin. We’re since up over $650,000 in profits and won’t be “needing” another raise anytime soon.”
Smart move or not?
In today’s edition:
- Centre Stage
- Meet Cellulant’s new CEO
- Sony’s P5 issues
- Vaccination in South Africa enters Phase 2
Blessing Abeng on dreaming in French, learning on the job, and overcoming career failures
My dad wanted me to be a doctor. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Back in the day, my mother used to get teased about having two daughters. Her co-workers would tell her, “you don’t have a child yet because you don’t have a son.”
So you didn’t go down the medicine path. How did you find your way to branding?
A friend of mine recommended that I go to branding school and turn my creativity into a professional career path. I told my dad I was leaving Abuja and moving to Lagos to learn brand management and work in an agency. Even though he wasn’t fully comfortable with it, he still supported me. We signed an agreement: if my chosen path didn’t work out after two years, I had to come back home.
Well, it’s been over two years since Blessing Abeng signed the pact with her father and she hasn’t gone back home.
In this week’s edition of Centre Stage, Koromone talks to Blessing Abeng, Director of Communications at Ingressive for Good.
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Cellulant hires an acting CEO
Kenyan based payment firm Cellulant has hired Akshay Grover as the Acting-CEO effective from May as Ken Njoroge, the co-founder and CEO transitions from his position to take up new roles at the board level.
About Grover: He has over 15 years of experience focused on TMT (Tech, Media, Telecom) across the EMEA and Asia region and hopes to disrupt more mainstream businesses on the continent at Cellulant. Before Cellulant, he worked at ISON which covered Asia, ME, Africa. He worked closely with the founders of the ISON tech investment portfolio to grow their business until they profitably exited. ISON has approximately $600m in capital commitments.
Backstory: In January, Ken Njoroge, attributed his decision to step to the desire to spend more time with his family, and the fallout of “a major internal crisis” that rocked the company in August 2020.
Cellulant is often recognized as an early leader of the fintech wave that now blows across Africa. It was founded in Kenya around the same time as Nigerian payment companies Interswitch and eTranzact. These three have played a pivotal role in accelerating digital payments on two of the continent’s most tech-driven markets.
Read Alex’s piece on why Cellulant CEO Ken Njoroge is choosing to step down in June 2021
Remember the good ol’ days when the ancestors dug holes to save their money?
What a time it must have been to save without returns.
Thanks to Branch, you can now earn 20% per annum on your investments. How cool is that?!
Even better, your investment is not locked, so you can withdraw your money at any time. Do not sleep on this! Get the app here!
United Nations launches global competition for food startups and SMEs
The United Nations Food Systems Summit has announced the launch of an innovative competition for food startups and SMEs. Titled “Best Small Business: Good Food for All”, the competition will select 50 of the best SMEs.
Interested? Apply here.
Applications for the competition started on 29 April and will close on 4 June 2021
Sony’s PS5 supply issues continue
Japanese conglomerate Sony is in a situation most companies dream of. It has more demand than supply for its products, especially its latest gaming console, the PS5. This will continue until 2022
The cause: The pandemic. Unlike other industries that experienced a decline in sales, gaming consoles were in high demand due to stay at home restrictions. Playing games is one of the ways to stay entertained when you’re with your kids at home for months or just can’t go out to see your friends.
Performance so far?
Sony reported a profit of $4.4 billion in July-September 2020, up from $1.8 billion the same period in the previous year.
In its most recent final report, Sony said it had sold 7.8 million units of the PS5 console through March 31, and it is aiming to sell at least 14.8 million units in the current fiscal year. That would keep it on pace to match the trajectory of the popular PlayStation 4, which has sold in excess of 115.9 million units to date.
The way forward: It’s one of two options for Sony: the demand for PS5 drops or it increases production. It’s unlikely that Sony would bother incurring significant costs to expand its production as the company’s latest earnings report suggests that stay-at-home demand is leveling off. Monthly active users on PlayStation Network fell to 109 million at the end of the January-March period from 114 million a quarter earlier and sales of full games also declined in the period from a year earlier.
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Vaccination in South Africa enters Phase 2
In late February, the South African Government started the phase 1 of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout which included the vaccination of frontline and healthcare workers. Yesterday it began phase 2.
Who is eligible? Citizens eligible to register in the country’s phased vaccination rollout include persons aged 60 and older and healthcare workers who were not vaccinated in the first phase. Eligible persons can register via WhatsApp, USSD, and SMS.
Zoom out: To date, more than 380,000 South Africans have received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. In total, South Africa has secured 31 million from Johnsons & Johnson and a further 20 million from Pfizer and BioNTech.
Read more: Register for a COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa via WhatsApp or SMS
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