Business/Brands & Marketing
TECH ROUNDUP! Osun Govt unveils digital policy, Apple releases new yellow colour iPhone 14, 14 Plus
The Osun State Government under Adeleke has announced a new digital drive for citizens.
Gov. Ademola Adeleke of Osun (PDP) has unveiled a digital economy policy that he said will “kickstart a technological revolution” in the state, as part of his plans to make Osun the tech hub for the South-West.
“Many talented tech innovators abound in Osun state. The policy seeks to create an enabling environment for tech innovations. Hence, we will support the establishment of tech hubs and ensure innovators secure much-needed backing,” the governor said.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed said that the 2023 population and housing census would rely heavily on technology, employing digital maps, questionnaires and cloud computing for effective and reliable counting. Already, the federal government would spend N869 billion on the project.
Ecosystem
Moniepoint has hired Capital One’s Pawel Swiatek as Chief Operating Officer, CEO Tosin Eniolorunda announced. Pawel was the Managing Vice President at Capital One for four years.
“At Moniepoint, we’re committed to ensuring that businesses across emerging markets have the tools they need to grow, and Pawel will be using his experience in financial inclusion to help us further achieve this. He’ll be driving strategy and execution by building policies, tools, measurements and culture to help us reach our goals,” Eniolorunda said.
Meanwhile, mPharma has launched Bloom POS Mobile, a mobile version of its popular Bloom web application. The POS Mobile app allows pharmacies to perform retail activities on mobile phone devices.
“We are excited to launch Bloom POS Mobile and make it easier for pharmacies to access our platform and capture sales in real-time,” said Gregory Rockson, CEO of mPharma.
Social
Nigerian telcos have introduced single shortcodes for a wide range of activities including call centres, balance information, data plan, credit recharge etc, across all networks. This means that customers will use the same codes for these activities across all networks. “We are confident this will enhance the customer experience across networks,” Gbenga Adebayo, Chairman of ALTON said.
In related news, over 200 cyber attacks were blocked and prevented during the presidential and National Assembly elections, MD of Galaxy Backbone Muhammad Abubakar said. “On the election day alone, we were able to block more than 200 attacks, and the next day, the attacks geometrically increased to about 1.2 million, and all were blocked from our own businesses,” he said.
Nigeria’s box office generated N278m in February, a significant drop from January when it made N819 million in ticket sales. Ope Ajayi, CEAN’s National Chairman blamed distraction from the general elections on a peak day like Saturday, cash scarcity and POS failures as chief reasons for the decline. “We lost a weekend of sales during the Presidential and National Assembly elections, Nigerians’ attention was focused on voting across the country. Cash crunch and POS failures, affecting trading generally is also affecting the cinemas. Many movie producers and distributors avoided releasing movies during the election period,” he said.
World
Facebook’s parent Meta could cut thousands of jobs as soon as this week. This comes after Mark Zuckerberg said in November that layoffs are part of the steps considered in becoming a leaner and more efficient company.
Apple has released new yellow colour iPhone 14 and 14 Plus. “People love their iPhone and rely on it every day for all that they do, and now there’s an exciting addition to the lineup with a new yellow iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.
