Nigeria’s Afrinolly won Google Android Developer Challenge, and will receive about US $25,000. Afrinolly is an application that enables users to view and share movies and videos, and entertainment news on mobile phones. The app was launched by FansConnectOnline earlier this month.
While Afrinolly won in the Entertainment/Media/Games category, two Kenyans, David Lemayian of Capefield Ltd and Gerald Kibugi of Elan Telemedia , won the prize for Social/Communication and Productivity categories.
The Financial Times did a multipart, multimedia, bitter-sweet, mega rendition of home country.
From the challenges of the emerging (pseudo?) middle class (watch video), to the failing national eduction infrastructure, and a snapshot of a dangerous, but necessary, save-the-forest putsch along the coastal creeks, the FT piece is a compelling read.
This is new to me…Ethan, on a conference-visit to the lovely Nigerian capital city, Abuja, writes about the six-lane bowling alley at the Dome.
Since the government-forced consolidation and reforms that prescribed a minimum shareholders’ funds of N25 billion on Nigerian banks, none of the existing ‘mega-banks’ have reported returns fewer that multiples of million of dollars.
I just returned from a visit to Nigeria I have a question; it might come across naïve to some:
Where is the real “trickle-down effect” of the declared several $$ billion-profits of Nigerian financial institutions?
It appears there is none!
All it takes is spend a fewer hours in Nigeria – particularly Lagos – to realize there is something not right with those numbers. Not that are those bank declarations are false, but who knows, they might very well be – those numbers seem to exist in a vacuum, lifeless!
When a bank declares a profit, my limited economic sense tells me the money doesn’t just sit in the vault; it is put to work. Where are Nigerian banks putting their money to work?
There are street whispers that some complex arithmetic manipulations occur on the back-desks of the banks. True?