President Tinubu to visit China seeking economic cooperation

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a visit to China next week to discuss cooperation on the economy, agriculture and satellite technology, a Nigerian government spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Tinubu, who has set in motion deep reforms in Africa's largest economy, will be in Beijing along with other African leaders to attend the China-Africa Cooperation Summit.

"This is going to be part of a broader engagement where the two heads of state will discuss matters of mutual interest across not just the economy, but also on issues of national, regional, and international security," the spokesperson, Ajuri Ngelale, said.

Africa is a focus of China's flagship economic cooperation programme.

Tinubu's agenda in China will include site visits to two major Chinese companies: Huawei Technologies and the China Rail and Construction Corporation, as Nigeria looks to complete a high-speed rail line linking Ibadan in southwest Nigeria to the capital in Abuja. Tinubu will also meet with 10 CEOs of major Chinese companies across information and communications technology, oil and gas, aluminium production, seaport and harbour construction, financial services and satellite technology development.

Nigeria is seeking investment to boost its economy, which is battling double-digit inflation, foreign currency shortages and issues such as crude oil theft. 

By Felix Onuah, Reuters

Related story: Video - NEVs, digital economy are key areas for cooperation with China according to foreign minister of Nigeria

 

 

Black Axe Mafia of Nigeria dealt a big blow by Interpol

Police units around the world have joined forces in a series of covert operations targeting one of West Africa’s most feared criminal networks - Black Axe.

Operation Jackal III saw officers in body armour carry out raids in 21 countries between April and July 2024.

The mission, co-ordinated by global policing agency Interpol, led to the arrest of 300 people with links to Black Axe and other affiliated groups.

Interpol called the operation a “major blow” to the Nigerian crime network, but warned that its international reach and technological sophistication mean it remains a global threat.

In one notorious example, Canadian authorities said they had busted a money-laundering scheme linked to Black Axe worth more than $5bn (£3.8bn) in 2017.

“They are very organised and very structured,” Tomonobu Kaya, a senior official at Interpol’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, told the BBC.

According to a 2022 report by Interpol, “Black Axe and similar groups are responsible for the majority of the world’s cyber-enabled financial fraud as well as many other serious crimes”.

Mr Kaya said innovations in money-transfer software and cryptocurrency have played into the hands of group, which are renowned for multi-million dollar online scams.

“These criminal syndicates are early adopters of new technologies… A lot of fintech developments make it really easy to illegally move money around the world,” he said.

Operation Jackal III was years in the making and led to the seizure of $3m of illegal assets and more than 700 bank accounts being frozen.

Many Black Axe members are university educated and are recruited during their schooling.

The organisation is a secretive criminal network with trafficking, prostitution and killing operations around the world.

Cyber-crime, targeting individuals and businesses, is the organisation's largest source of revenue.

Multiple so-called “Jackal” police operations have taken place since 2022.

Dozens of Black Axe and other gang members have been arrested and their electronic devices seized during these transnational raids. This work has enabled Interpol to create a vast intelligence database, which is now shared with officers throughout its 196 member countries.

“We need to have data and to collate our findings from these countries to help build a picture of their modus operandi,” said Mr Kaya.

Despite multiple international arrests, some experts feel not enough is being done to address the root of these crime syndicates in West Africa.

“The emphasis must actually be on prevention not on outright operations against these criminal groups,” said Dr Oluwole Ojewale, West Africa Regional Co-ordinator from the Institute for Security Studies.

Nigeria, which has witnessed widespread anti-corruption protests in recent weeks, is one of Africa’s largest economies, but has as many as 87 million people living below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. It is also the main recruitment ground for Black Axe.

Interpol said it was carrying out training exercises with key Nigerian stakeholders and police officials. But corruption, and allegations of collusion between Black Axe and local authorities, remain major obstacles.

“It is the politicians who are actually arming these boys,” said Dr Ojewale. “The general failure of governance in the country has made pressures for people to be initiated [into Black Axe].”

Despite its current global reach, Interpol’s Jackal Operations have their origins in Ireland.

Following a series of police raids by the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) in 2020, a handful of Black Axe members were arrested, paving the way for the exposure of a far wider network.

“They were very under the radar, very low-key,” said Michael Cryan, detective superintendent at the GNECB, which led the operation.

“The amount of money being laundered through Ireland was astronomical,” he added.

The police subsequently identified 1,000 people with links to Black Axe in Ireland and have made hundreds of arrests for fraud and cyber-crime.

“Bank robberies are now done with laptops - they’re far more sophisticated,” said Det Supt Cryan.

He estimates €200m ($220m; £170m) have been stolen online in Ireland in the past five years, and that only accounts for the 20% of cyber-crimes that are believed to be reported.

“This is not typical or ordinary crime… People who make decisions need to know how serious this is,” he said.

Irish police operations in November 2023 revealed that cryptocurrency - which can be sent rapidly between digital wallets around the world - is becoming an integral element in Black Axe’s money-laundering operations.

More than €1m in crypto-assets were seized during one operation.

Interpol has deployed its own new technology in an attempt to tackle these innovations, launching the Global Rapid Intervention of Payments system (I-GRIP).

The mechanism, which enables the authorities in member countries to freeze bank accounts around the world with unprecedented speed, was used to halt a $40m scam targeting a Singaporean business last month.

Interpol's Mr Kaya said technology like this would make it harder for criminals to move money across borders with impunity.

A major effort is under way to gather and share intelligence on Black Axe and other West African syndicates by police around the world.

“If we can gather this data we can take action,” he said.

By Charlie Northcott, BBC

Related story: Video - Italy’s Hunt for a Mysterious Nigerian Mafia

 

First Olympic Medalist of Nigeria, Nojim Maiyegun, Dies At 83

Nojim Maiyegun, a former Nigerian boxer, has died at 83.

The death of the legendary boxer was confirmed on Monday in a Facebook post by Rudolfine F Soultan, a confidante.

“My Jimmy died. I can’t say more about this right now because it’s just horrible. The day after tomorrow, we would have been together for 17 years,” the post reads.

A source close to the family of the deceased also told TheCable that Maiyegun breathed his last on Monday morning at his base in Vienna, Austria.

Maiyegun, who became visually impaired a few years ago, was reportedly battling an unnamed illness for a couple of months.

He was the first Nigerian to win an Olympic medal.

Maiyegun was 23 when he won a bronze medal in the light-heavyweight boxing category at Tokyo 1964.

In the second round of the competition, he defeated Great Britain’s William Robinson in just one minute and 59 seconds — a remarkable feat in amateur boxing.

He defeated Tom Bogs of Denmark in the quarter-final before losing to France’s Joseph Gonzalez in the semi-final.

Maiyegun and Poland’s Józef Grzesiak settled for the bronze.

Two years later, in 1966, he won another bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.

Maiyegun left Nigeria in 1971 to begin a professional boxing career.

He fought 16 times and won 12 — 10 of them by knockouts.

By Ololade, Information Nigeria

Nigeria appoint former Stuttgart boss Labbadia

Nigeria have appointed former Stuttgart boss Bruno Labbadia as their new men's head coach ahead of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign.

The 58-year-old German was interviewed by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) on Thursday after talks with Swede Janne Andersson and Frenchman Herve Renard collapsed.

BBC Sport Africa can confirm that a contract with the German has not as yet been signed.

Labbadia’s first game in charge is scheduled to be the Nations Cup qualifier against Benin in Uyo on 7 September before the three-time African champions travel to Rwanda three days later.

Gustavo Poyet, Aitor Karanka and Fabio Cannavaro were the other contenders interviewed late in the day by the NFF.
A desperate choice

Former Sweden coach Andersson, 61, had been in talks with the NFF and looked the frontrunner to take charge with compatriot Peter Wettergren as his assistant.

But the Swede was only available in November due to "personal commitments".

Despite accepting a lucrative offer, two-time Nations Cup winner Renard, 55, failed to make plans for signing his contract, forcing the NFF to look elsewhere as they searched for Finidi George’s successor.

Former Super Eagles forward George stepped down earlier this year only two matches into a two-year contract following a poor start to World Cup qualification.

The failure to land Renard or Andersson came as a huge blow to NFF president Ibrahim Gusau, who had been negotiating intensely with both camps.

In a race against time, the NFF opened talks with Labbadia, former Sunderland, Brighton and Greece manager Poyet, Karanka, who had spells in charge of Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough, and former Italy captain Cannavaro.

But Labbadia, who holds a UEFA Pro License and previously managed Hertha Berlin, Wolfsburg, Hamburg and Bayer Leverkusen in his homeland, was the preferred choice.

In a statement, NFF general secretary Mohammed Sanusi said: “The NFF Executive Committee has approved the recommendation of its Technical and Development Sub-Committee to appoint Mr Bruno Labbadia as the head coach of the Super Eagles. The appointment is with immediate effect."
Nigeria turn to Germany again

Labbadia is the sixth German to take charge of the Super Eagles, following Karl-Heinz Marotzke (who had two stints between 1970 and 1974), Gottlieb Goller (1981), Manfred Honer (1988-1989), Berti Vogts (2007-2008) and Gernot Rohr (2016-2021).

But he will have his work cut out to manage expectations.

What seemed to many like a comfortable World Cup qualifying draw has proven to be more difficult than expected, with unfancied Rwanda leading the way in Group C and only Zimbabwe boasting a worse record than Nigeria after four rounds of the 10-game campaign.

He will also need to immediately get the media and a jaded fanbase onside.

There is currently no permanent home ground for men's and women's national teams, with recent fixtures mostly hosted in Uyo by default as the Godswill Akpabio Stadium is the only ground that satisfies the Confederation of African Football's requirements for international football.

Similarly, there is no bespoke training facility in the vein of England's St George’s Park, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI training complex or France's Clairefontaine, and arrangements are typically made on an ad-hoc basis.

There is also the issue of players being owed allowances and match bonuses, something that persists within the current squad.

Labbadia is now faced with two important qualification campaigns for the 2025 Nations Cup and 2026 World Cup.

He will have little time to get to know his players but immediate results will still be expected.

By Oluwashina Okeleji, BBC

Chowdeck hopes to prove food delivery in Nigeria doubters wrong

A Nigerian company backed by Silicon Valley’s top startup incubator hopes to prove food delivery apps can take off in an underserved market littered with failures.

African e-commerce firm Jumia stopped delivering food in seven countries last December, as did Estonian ride-hailing platform Bolt in Nigeria and South Africa.

But business is booming for Chowdeck, a food delivery app created three years ago that operates in Nigeria. It has doubled its daily deliveries to 40,000 in the three months since it raised $2.5 million from investors that included Y Combinator, Chowdeck’s chief executive Femi Aluko told Semafor Africa. It was Nigeria’s most downloaded food delivery app in the last month, according to tracking platform Similarweb.

Chowdeck’s new partnership strategy may partly explain the surge and offer a model for success. Earlier this month it reached a deal to exclusively deliver orders from Chicken Republic — one of Nigeria’s largest fast food chains — in the southern cities of Lagos and Ibadan. Aluko said deals with other chains are in the pipeline.

Other delivery services are competing in Nigeria. After two years operating a grocery delivery service in Nigeria, Angolan company Mano began delivering food in Lagos and Abuja this month. Glovo, a Spanish outfit that launched in Nigeria in 2021, reported a 166% increase in jollof rice orders on its app last month.

The International Market Analysis Research and Consulting estimates that the Nigerian food delivery sector was worth $936 million as of last year. The sector is poised to shoot past $2 billion by 2032, the research group said.
Know More

Chowdeck’s motorcycle delivery riders operate in eight Nigerian cities, although Lagos accounts for seven in 10 orders. An average order is about 4,000 naira ($2.50) in the Yaba area of Lagos regarded as home to Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem, but up to twice that amount in some interior parts, Aluko said.

Using software to understand customer demand trends and predict the routing of riders, who deliver 12 orders per day on average, to pick up locations is key for efficiency, Aluko told Semafor Africa. He also said the startup has developed a more precise digital map in-house, using the open source service OpenStreetMap, because Google Maps has not fully served the company’s needs for accurate directions.

On expansion, Chowdeck wants its operations in existing cities to be profitable before new ones are started. “It takes three to four months for us to become profitable in a new city,” Aluko told Semafor Africa.

Alexander's view

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bursts of growth like that experienced by Chowdeck in recent weeks illustrate the expanding reach of locally developed digital technology services in Africa. Mobile money and cashless payments attract the most attention and investment in the continent’s tech scene, but changes in how people buy food online offer opportunities for growth.

The tricky part is identifying the best business model.

Chowdeck started off focusing on street food vendors that offered local delicacies. But while that class of vendors remain dominant on the app, much of its recent growth could be attributed to preferential or exclusive deliveries from popular fast food chains as well as discount offers to customers. For the young student or worker who “understands the value of time” — as Aluko describes Chowdeck’s typical user — the majority of orders arrive within 30 minutes.

Beyond tech and marketing strategies, however, Chowdeck and other current food delivery players also owe their performance to a Nigerian market more prepared for the service, says Osarumen Osamuyi, founder of African tech analysis platform The Subtext.

“My hunch is that the market has been caused to mature by the activities” of earlier players, Osamuyi said. Where Jumia Food started by offering payment on delivery ostensibly to build customer trust, Chowdeck can now take for granted that there is enough confidence in Nigeria’s online payments system to pay before delivery, he said.

Nigeria’s inflation rate of 33.4% is at one of its highest levels in three decades, though it slowed in July. As fuel prices rise in the country, restaurants can be expected to push production costs to consumers, leaving food apps vulnerable to price sensitive users. The inflation pressure will reveal a good deal about the resilience of the country’s food delivery sector, Osamuyi said.
 

Room for Disagreement

Tech-driven food delivery is at an early stage in Africa. It doesn’t boast the multimillion dollar fundraising hauls of startups in fintech and e-commerce.

Last year, Jumia said it scrapped its food delivery business because it had “not achieved profitability since its inception” and could not bear Nigeria’s macroeconomic conditions of soaring inflation and currency devaluation.

Two years ago in Kenya, Kune crashed after barely a year of aiming to fix a street food problem Kenyans said did not exist.
 

Notable

Explaining Jumia’s decision to quit its food delivery operation, CEO Francis Dufay said the sector’s low barrier to entry made it “a very unattractive business” for e-commerce companies in Africa whose major focus is to deliver physical goods.

By Alexander Onukwue, SEMAFOR

Related story: Jumia to shutdown food delivery service in Nigeria