President Bola Tinubu Thursday suspended the 5% excise tax on telecom services and signed four Executive Orders aimed at addressing unfriendly fiscal policy measures and the multiplicity of taxes. Dele Alake, Special Adviser on Special Duties, Communications and Strategy, who announced this at a press briefing in the presidential villa, Abuja, on Thursday said the action aims to put Nigerians at the centre of government policies. Alake said the executive orders include the Finance Act (Effective Date Variation) Order, 2023, which has now deferred the commencement date of the changes contained in the Act from May 23, 2023, to September…
Author: DigitalTimesNG
Stephen ROSE writes that Africa’s data centre market is booming, ringing in an era of hyperscale for the continent. Industry giants such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are vying to establish new nodes across the continent. These new nodes are being built in countries ranging from South Africa to Morocco, Kenya to Nigeria, and further beyond into edge locations in other tier-two countries. Arizton Advisory predicts a staggering $5,4-billion investment in African data centres by 2027, growing at an impressive Continued Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12,73% during the period between 2022-2027. To seize the opportunities presented by this rapid…
GSMA Intelligence has released new insights in a report titled “Green is good for business: making the financial case in telecoms,” the second installment in a three-part series on sustainability. The report, produced in partnership with Huawei, shows that by investing in greener technologies, telecom operators can boost their financial bottom line. “While the net zero and environmental imperative are fundamental, green investments should be seen as good for costs and revenues,” said Tim Hatt, Head of Consulting at GSMA Intelligence. One of the main reasons companies may be reluctant to invest in sustainability is a concern that doing so…
Meta, Facebook’s parent company has announced it will launch a Twitter rival on Thursday. The new platform called Threads will be linked to Instagram, also owned by Meta, and is available for pre-order. Meta described Threads as a “text-based conversation app… where communities come together.” Threads is currently available for “pre-saving”(opens in a new tab) on the Apple App Store and is showing up for at least some users in the Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) in Europe. The screenshots in the App Store preview look a lot like a Twitter interface, showing a “thread” (post) with…
A new study released on Monday by Kaspersky shows that Ransomware was the most widespread Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) over the past seven years. This latest study is based on research conducted on 97 malware families that have been distributed on the darknet and other resources. Additionally, the researchers found that cybercriminals often lease infostealers, botnets, loaders, and backdoors to carry out their attacks. Digital TimesNG understands that Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) is an illicit model of business involving leasing software to carry out cyberattacks. Typically, clients of such services are offered a personal account through which they can control the attack and technical…
There are plans by Point of Sale (PoS) agents in Lagos State to soon begin to charge customers N500 for N10,000 cash withdrawals. The PUNCH reports that this was disclosed on Friday by Stephen Adeoye, the Public Relations Officer, Lagos Chapter of the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria (AMMBAN), during a Channels Television’s Business Morning programme. Adeoye gave a breakdown of the proposed prices which he claimed, is aimed at eradicating price discrepancies in the industry. “Let me tell you the price list, N1000–N2,400 will be N100 for withdrawal. N3500 to N4000 will be N200; N4,100…
Flutterwave, a leading African payments technology company has announced a partnership with Microsoft to build its next-generation platform on Microsoft Azure, powering payments infrastructure across the African continent and beyond. Digital TimesNG learnt that the agreement reflects Flutterwave’s commitment to give businesses and individuals access to global-grade services across all of Africa and drive digital transformation around the world. With Flutterwave and Microsoft’s plans to power payments to and fro Africa, analysts believe this collaboration is an incredible opportunity to impact growth across the continent. An insight into the agreement shows that through this engagement, Flutterwave will support the accelerated…
Nigerian Fintech saw a slow start to the year with both investment and deal activity dropping Year-on-Year despite consistent deal activity growth in the past five years, according to a report in Fintech Global. In comparison to the previous year, Fintech deal activity in Nigeria witnessed a significant decline of 55% in the first quarter of 2023, with only 14 deals recorded. During Q1 2023, investment in Nigerian Fintech experienced a significant decline of 93% compared to Q1 2022, reaching a total of $5m. Curacel, a digital insurance solutions provider, had the largest Nigerian FinTech deal in Q1 2023, raising…
By Tony OJOBO The telecommunications industry has undoubtedly witnessed tremendous growth and development in Nigeria. It is a sector that directly impacts every aspect of human life, business, education, governance, family, entertainment, etc. Growth in the industry was slow for several years after Nigerian Independence. The total telephone subscriptions from Independence in 1960 to 2001 was a paltry 400,000 connected analogue lines, translating to a teledensity of 0.04%. This number of telephone lines was considered inadequate for a population of 126.2 million in 2001, according to the World Bank, when the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) licensed the Digital Mobile Operators.…
GE Vernova’s Gas Power business and Junior Achievement Nigeria (JAN) recently hosted a ‘Girls in STEM’ event to inspire 100 secondary school girls and bridge the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers to prepare the next generation of women engineers and innovators. The event in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria, was held in commemoration of the International Day for Women in Engineering and featured educative panel discussions on leadership, exploring different STEM careers, and mentorship. The Girls in STEM programme aim to encourage girls to choose careers in STEM, expose them to a network of female…