MTN Group Reports Losses In Mid-Year Results For 2016

MTN Group’s warning that their interim financial results for the period ending June 30th 2016 would be unpleasant did a lot to absorb the shock when reality struck last Friday— the day the report eventually dropped.

Despite revenue for the interim period improving by ±$5.7 billion, MTN reported an after tax loss attributable to equity holders of just over $401 thousand. That translates to a headline loss per share of nearly $0.20. Compare that with 2015’s headline earnings of just under $0.48 per share, and it’s sobering to see how humbling this must be Africa’s largest mobile service provider.

As expected, the mobile telco has put forward a long list of explanations for what went wrong. One of the more interesting items on that list is what they are calling “short-term losses” they’ve sustained thanks to their significant investments in Middle East Internet Holdings and of course, the recently rebranded Africa Internet Group— which now goes by Jumia.

I wonder what’s going through the mind of MTN Group’s President and CEO-in-waiting, Rob Shuter, who will no doubt have his work cut out for him when he takes up the reins from Phuthuma Nhleko come July 2017.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, I share a chat I had with the Cape Town-based Zimbabwean digital all-rounder, Babusi Nyoni. Babusi is the Digital Creative Group Head at South Africa’s #1 ranked through-the-line agency, M&C SAATCHI Abel.

I caught up with Babusi to discuss an AI-enabled campaign he recently masterminded and executed for a global FMCG brand, and to chat about the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence in general. Tune in to hear him factor in on what the world might look and feel like when those technologies become common-place.

The Konga Conundrum: Is Nigeria’s E-Commerce Industry Stalling?

Who knew that a little quarterly update by a publicly-traded Swedish investment firm could get Nigeria’s e-commerce fraternity all worked up? Not me.

So, as Kinnevik was going about its business last week, the firm released its Second Quarter Report which detailed the performance of its subsidiaries around the world. That simple act of due diligence on Kinnevik’s part (which admittedly is something that happens every quarter without fail, but only garnered media attention in Nigeria this time round) allowed us all to get a sense of just how well Nigeria’s biggest e-commerce platform, Konga, is doing— which in turn fuelled speculation around the health of Nigeria’s e-commerce sector in general.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation contained in the report was that Konga only has 184,000 active customers— which translates to approximately 1.1% of the Nigerian population. In a word, that number is disappointing. It has lead to vigorous debate both on social media and in the blogosphere about why Nigeria’s e-commerce industry appears to be stalling, and what interventions may be required to turn the situation around.

This week’s African Tech Round-up features a chat I had with Nigerian angel investor and economics commentator, Eloho Omame, whose eloquent blog post on Medium entitled Thoughts around Kinnevik’s half year report and the e-commerce industry in Nigeria has to be one of the more balanced and constructive reviews of the current state of play in Nigeria’s e-commerce scene.

Listen in to hear Eloho unpack the insights laid out in her blog post, and explain why she believes that capital, capital and more capital might be just the thing to help Nigeria’s e-commerce industry live up to the great expectations currently placed upon it.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Uber Domination

Despite the considerable push-back Uber has experienced in certain African markets, the firm’s march towards utter and complete world domination continued last week as they launched in Tanzania’s capital city, Dar es Salaam.

Dar es Salaam is the 3rd African city Uber has taken to in as many weeks (following Luanda, Uganda and Accra, Ghana) and their 475th location worldwide. Since launching in Johannesburg in 2012, Uber has quietly gone about silencing many of the doubts that sceptics have had about the viability of their business model in African markets that typically show little regard to hype-driven startups that roll in from the West expecting an easy ride. (No pun intended.)

Basically, what might have appeared to some as being a casual African safari is gradually developing into a case study on lean, mean execution. Only time will tell if a home-grown platform like Little Cabs— the ride-hailing service Safaricom is set to launch, will be able to rain on Uber’s parade.

Be sure to listen into this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up to hear my chat with Matthew Lee— a plumber turned corporate executive who now heads up African operations at the German open source software firm, Suse.

Matthew shares insights on how well Africa is keeping up with the rest of the world in terms of producing world-class software applications, and points out key growth areas that could benefit from the increased roll-out of OSS solutions.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Mobile World Congress 2016 (feat. Craig Wilson, Talib Graves-Manns & Brien Jordan-Jack)

So, Vodacom’s plans to acquire Neotel have come to naught due to “regulatory complexities and certain conditions not being fulfilled”.  Vodacom’s CEO Shameel Joosub has admitted that he’s very disappointed by his firm’s inability to make the deal happen. While I do expect for Vodacom to bounce back fairly quickly from this let-down, the jury’s still out on whether Neotel will recover from the scandals that continue to plague it.

Meanwhile, aspirational mobile trends like virtual reality are all well and good, but as Africans we must still grapple with the practical implications of having a massive percentage of mobile users on the continent continuing to rely on feature phones.

In this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up, Stuff Magazine South Africa Editor and good friend of the show, Craig Wilson will join me to unpack some of the highlights of Mobile World Congress 2016— which wrapped in Barcelona just over a week ago.

Also, be sure to listen into this week’s show to catch snippets of a conversation I had with Talib Graves-Manns (Start-up Founder & Entrepreneur in Residence with Google for Entrepreneurs and Code 2040) and Brien Jordan-Jack (Aerospace Engineer, Commercial Pilot & Founder of Axiom Group).

Find out what Talib reckons sets Code 2040 apart from other “diversity in tech” initiatives aimed at creating access, awareness, and opportunities for top Black and Latino/a engineering talent in the US. And learn what Brien makes of the crazy valuations of Silicon Valley tech startups, many of which are yet to demonstrate any substantial revenue potential, never mind profitability.

Check out my full conversation with Talib Graves-Manns and Brien Jordan-Jack below:

Dealdey Reportedly Sacks 60% Of Its Work Force

With so few high-flying start-up successes in Africa’s tech eco-system, one has to wonder just how alarmed we should get when word of job cuts and other such cost-cutting measures start to dominate headlines. After all, this sort of thing happens in business all the time!

That said, why does it seems like Nigerian startups are having a particularly hard time at the moment?

Following signs of distress showing up at the countries startup poster children, Jumia and iROKOtv in recent weeks, Nigerian daily deals site, Dealdey, has reportedly sacked 60% of its workforce. Curiously, the news of this broke on a popular Kenyan blog, courtesy of “sources familiar with the matter”.

In our discussion on the African The Round-up this week, Tefo Mohapi and I will briefly discuss what could be fuelling this apparent season of hardship on Nigeria’s tech startup scene. Also, listen in for all the most important digital, tech and innovation news from the past week.