Lagos To Host Biannual Africa Fintech Summit for the First Time in November

PRESS RELEASE

Lagos To Host Biannual Africa Fintech Summit for the First Time in November

The Summit, organized by Dedalus Global, gathers innovators, investors, policy makers and other key stakeholders in the Fintech sector to discuss technologies transforming finance on the continent, debate regulatory policies, compare best practices, and forge new ventures

LAGOS, Nigeria, September 17, 2018/ -- Africa’s premier fintech event, the Africa Fintech Summit, (www.AfricaFintechSummit.com) will be held for the first time in Lagos, Nigeria, on November 8-9, 2018. This event comes on the heels of the earlier edition in Washington D.C. which featured leading policy makers, c-suite business executives, start-ups, and investors.

Scene from AFTS Washington, at the National Press Club (Source: Dedalus Global.)

Olanrewaju Osibona, Senior Special Advisor to the President of Nigeria on ICT, speaking at the AFTS Washington (Source: Dedalus Global.)

The Summit, organized by Dedalus Global, gathers innovators, investors, policy makers and other key stakeholders in the Fintech sector to discuss technologies transforming finance on the continent, debate regulatory policies, compare best practices, and forge new ventures.

Full Text of Kemi Adeosun's Letter of Resignation

The following is the full text of the letter of resignation of Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, the former Minister of Finance of Nigeria and former Chairman of the Board of African Export–Import Bank (AfreximBank).

His Excellency
Muhammadu Buhari
President, Federal Republic of Nigeria
State House
Aso Villa
Abuja

Dear Excellency,

Let me commence by thanking you profusely for the honour and privilege of serving under your inspirational leadership. It has been a truly rewarding experience to learn from you and to observe at close quarters your integrity and sense of duty.

I have, today, become privy to the findings of the investigation into the allegation made in an online medium that the Certificate of Exemption from National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) that I had presented was not genuine. This has come as a shock to me and I believe that in line with this administration’s focus on integrity, I must do the honourable thing and resign.

Nigeria Must Step Up Efforts To Prevent Trafficking and Reintegrate Victims - UN Expert

Nigeria Must Step Up Efforts To Prevent Trafficking and Reintegrate Victims - UN Expert

GENEVA, 10 September 2018 / PRN Africa / -- Nigeria must step up efforts to eradicate human trafficking and ensure that existing legal and institutional measures to protect individuals from human trafficking are adequately implemented, says a UN human rights expert.

No Country is Immune from Corruption - Ambassador Karen Pierce

Corruption and Conflict: An Insidious Plague

LONDON, 10 September 2018 / PRN Africa / -- Statement by Ambassador Karen Pierce, UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations at Security Council briefing on corruption and conflict

Thank you very much indeed Madam President and thank you for putting this very important issue on the Council's agenda today.

Thank you to the Secretary-General for those insightful words and also to Mr Prendergast. I was very interested in what you had to say about the three things that primarily need tackling and about sanctions having to be extended to networks and about system change. I hope that we will, as the Council considers some of the issues before it, I hope that we will be able to follow some of your prescriptions and debate how more productively we can actually tackle corruption.

Exceptional South African Women Win Top Prizes in Pan-African Absa L’Atelier Art Awards

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Exceptional South African Women Win Top Prizes in Pan-African Absa L’Atelier Art Awards

The Absa L’Atelier awards has become a touchstone for the concerns consuming young people on the continent

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, September 13, 2018/ -- Marguerite Kirsten, a fine artist from Cape Town, fought off stiff competition from visual artists from across Africa to take top honours in the 2018 Absa L’Atelier awards (www.Absa.africa). Her compatriot, Philiswa Lila, a fine artist and scholar from the Eastern Cape (based in Gauteng) walked away with this year’s Gerard Sekoto Award.

Winner and work

(Source: Absa Group Limited.)

Winner work

(Source: Absa Group Limited.)

Henry Obeng (Ghana), Absa L’Atelier Second Merit Award Winner

(Source: Absa Group Limited.)

Kirsten won the overall Absa L’Atelier Award for her installation Embodiment. Having grown up, and continuing to live, with various medical conditions, Kirsten feels her body has become an instrument of the medical fraternity. This work, comprising various fluids that represent the ephemeral nature of her body, sought to strengthen and dignify the artist’s physical body in the face of this perceived objectification.

44% of Millennials Have Deleted the Facebook App from Their Mobile Devices

Millennials and Small Biz Exiting Facebook in Droves.

Two separate articles here, same phenomenon: Facebook is facing headwinds. Maybe it started with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or maybe people are just realizing independently that it’s an asymmetric relationship. A PEW research poll showed that a staggering 44% of millennials, people under the age of 30, have deleted the Facebook app from their mobile device, something we recommended everybody do several weeks ago. For millennials the effect must be compounded because for people under 30, mobile is mostly it. Desktops are in the same bucket as rotary telephones for those guys.

The other demographic that is turning away from Facebook are small businesses, who find themselves at the mercy of Facebook’s arbitrary changes to feeds impacting their reach, and it's costing them real money. Why spend the time building up a Facebook following when Zuck can take it away on a whim? (Or Jack over at Twitter for that matter). That’s why it’s best to have all roads lead back to your own website on your own domain.

Read: https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/facebook-social-media-pew-research-center-survey/2018/09/05/id/880442/
And: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/goodbye-facebook-why-some-small-businesses-are-quitting-social-network-n905171.

New UK-Funded Agricultural Initiative To Tackle Food Security and Rural Poverty in the Niger Delta

Tackling food security and farmer poverty in Nigeria. New pilot project is explained by Cletus Ilugo of the UK government-backed Stakeholder Democracy Network and Alluvial Agriculture's Managing Director Von Kemedi.

In a new initiative, SDN is focusing on the Niger Delta in partnership with Alluvial Agriculture, a collective farming business that targets including as many as 100,000 smallholders on farms spanning 463 square miles. Alluvial is tackling systemic problems that leave most African smallholders in poverty and threaten food security across the developing world by aggregating farmers to create a nucleus of minimum efficient scale and the necessary education, mechanization, inputs and market access. Tata Group is helping Alluvial provide up to 300 tractors that, for 20 minutes per plot, will save farmers many days or weeks of toiling by hand.

Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know

Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know

As the "Giant of Africa" Nigeria is home to about twenty percent of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa, serves as Africa's largest producer of oil and natural gas, comprises Africa's largest economy, and represents the cultural center of African literature, film, and music. Yet the country is plagued by problems that keep it from realizing its potential as a world power. Boko Haram, a radical Islamist insurrection centered in the northeast of the country, is an ongoing security challenge, as is the continuous unrest in the Niger Delta, the heartland of Nigeria's petroleum wealth. There is also persistent violence associated with land and water use, ethnicity, and religion.

Ecobank Announce Winners of 2018 Fintech Challenge

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Ecobank Announce Winners of 2018 Fintech Challenge

This year’s Fintech Challenge was keenly contested with applications from over 412 innovative fintech entrepreneurs from across Africa, Europe, North America and Asia

LOME, Togo, September 7, 2018/ -- Nala, Virtual Identity and Wallet.ng dazzle judging panel to be the three winners of the competition; All 11 finalists were officially inducted into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship programme to explore commercial partnerships with the pan-African banking giant.

MIT Announces 2018 MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge Africa Winners

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MIT Announces 2018 MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge Africa Winners

The Four Regional Winners Now Proceed to the Global Tournament at MIT on November 8 to vie for $1,000,000 USD

CAMBRIDGE, United States of America, September 7, 2018/ -- The MIT Initiative (www.MITInclusiveInnovation.com) on the Digital Economy has announced the four regional winners for their 2018 global economic prize, the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC) (www.MITInclusiveInnovation.com) in Africa. The winning organizations were selected from 9 IIC finalists (www.MITInclusiveInnovation.com/regions/africa/) and from 10 Zambezi Prize for Innovation in Financial Inclusion finalists (http://Zambezi.MIT.edu/) at a summit and celebration in Nairobi, Kenya on August 29. The celebration was held in conjunction with the MIT IIC Africa collaborator, the MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship (www.Legatum.com), who organizes the Zambezi Prize in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation (https://MastercardFdn.org/).