How to survive the last week of January on a budget - ITREALMS

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January is renowned for being a month of extremely slow days, mounting bills and a long, grinding wait for pay-day. This is often the case for folks in paid employment.

However, the difficulties that traditionally accompany the month of January impact entrepreneurs or those in business as well. Usually, discretionary or disposable income is often limited and tightly guarded, with many potential customers trying to wade through to the end of the month after the customary lavish spending that trailed the previous year-end festivities.

Prof. Stevenson: Techpreneurs must avoid Jumia, Konga strategies to survive - ITREALMS

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E-commerce in Nigeria has often been touted as a difficult terrain and not for the faint-hearted.

This position is backed up by concrete facts and verifiable evidence, especially when one considers the well-documented struggles of several players in the sector. Despite the allure and glitter that the segment holds, one requires deep pockets and a strong dose of guts and bloody-mindedness to survive in e-commerce, especially in a very challenging market such as Nigeria.

Blockchain is facing a backlash. Can it survive?

Analysis@ITREALMS: 

Not so long ago, the internet was hailed as the solution to humanity’s ills. It would shine a light on all corners of the globe, bringing new knowledge and exchange. But growing concerns about fake news, surveillance, cybercrime, social media addiction and monopolised power have tarnished that shine. Without ignoring the internet’s positive impact over the past few decades, these difficulties remind us that a technology-driven utopia – or technotopia – is a fiction. People and governance always shape the use and impact of a technology.

Today’s advocates of blockchain and digital currencies describe the potential for more privacy, transparency, accountability, efficiency and competition in all forms of commerce, finance and bureaucracy. Some see blockchain as providing technologies for democracy itself, from elections to budgeting. While some claims seem overblown or premature, there are already some fascinating applications in the fields of logistics, inventory and supply chain management.

Despite these advances, there has been a growing backlash from opinion leaders as the technology’s drawbacks become better known. Perhaps you’ve heard that Bitcoin alone uses 0.25% of the world’s electricity? Other blockchain systems, such as Ethereum, use similar approaches that require computers to burn electricity unnecessarily. Perhaps you are concerned about the number of accidents, hacks and scams possible in this new space, where the law has not yet found its feet? Or you may have heard that crime and terror networks could use these technologies to transfer funds. Blockchains and digital currencies pose important questions to both their advocates and regulators.

Pioneers in the industry are alert to such concerns and have attempted collective self-regulation. The Brooklyn Project, an industry-wide initiative to support investor and consumer protection, was launched in November 2017.

“By acting responsibly today, we can help make sure we are collectively able to reap the benefits of this powerful technology tomorrow,” explained co-founder of Ethereum Joseph Lubin. The following month, a coalition of cryptocurrency organizations and investors representing $650m in market capitalization established Project Transparency. It seeks to protect investors by enabling more disclosure within the digital currency sector.

These initiatives are welcome, but neither address how the technology affects wider society and the environment. If this sector is going to disrupt incumbent organisations (management-speak for people losing their jobs) then the general public will soon ask what the upsides really are.

In recent months, many blockchain projects explicit about their social mission have launched. Bflow.io offers a system for reporting corporate sustainability. Alice.si strives for greater accountability from charities. Provenance.org tracks tuna from shore to plate, giving consumers confidence in sustainability. BitLandGlobal is seeking a step change in land registration by the rural poor. Specialist think-tank Blockchain for Good has been established to promote blockchain’s benefits for worthy causes. Nevertheless, on closer analysis, many of these ‘4good’ projects miss a crucial factor – the impact of their code itself.

Is it appropriate for people apparently seeking economic justice and equal opportunity to use a blockchain in which only heavily invested actors receive new tokens? Is it appropriate for those seeking to put a new medium of exchange in the hands of the masses to use a blockchain whose tokens are mostly hoarded by speculators? Is it appropriate for a carbon emissions reduction project to use a blockchain which emits as much CO2 as a small country?

These are not hypothetical examples. Most blockchain projects bolt a purpose onto code and governance systems that were designed without such public interests in mind. Just as it would not be acceptable to clear the ancient Borneo jungle to raise money for homeless orangutans, it should not be acceptable for a project to deploy socially regressive or climate-toxic code.

Fortunately, there is a new wave of mission-driven blockchain projects conscious about their total social impact. Initiatives like Holochain, Faircoin, Yetta and LocalPay explicitly connect their code base to their social cause. Faircoin uses a codebase that requires little electricity and allows the distribution of coins to socially useful projects. Providing the same smart contract functionality as Ethereum, the new Yetta blockchain is intended to be sustainable by design, with the low energy requirements of its codebase being moderated further by automated rewards for those nodes using renewable energy. It will also enable automated philanthropy to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Two of the most integral technology projects in this field take a post-blockchain approach. By sharing data and not using a single blockchain, Holochain reduces the energy and time involved, while avoiding being dependent on the decisions of unaccountable groups of computing “miners”, as so many blockchain projects are. Shunning digital tokens entirely, LocalPay runs on code that means its users in more than 300 local communities do not need to purchase or mine a currency to begin transacting. For them, currency is simply a unit that comes into being, for free, when they wish to trade.

These projects aren’t just putting lipstick on clones of existing projects. Their founders went back to the drawing board and created mission-driven roles for coders, entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, regulators and policymakers. They designed a technology to fit into an ecosystem, rather than to dominate it. They set up incentive structures for fair contributions and rewards. This generation of “integral blockchain” and digital currency initiatives aligns its codebase and internal governance with positive social and environmental outcomes. These projects strive to be an integral part of a healthy society, rather than ends-in-themselves.

Will blockchain technologies be killed in their infancy by regulators? Will they grow into monsters that consume energy while enabling tax evasion, crime and capital flight? Or could they provide meaningful services to humanity? Greater cross-sectoral dialogue and guidance is needed to help this last scenario emerge.

*By Jem Bendell, Founding Director, The Institute for Leadership and Sustainability … The original version of this article first appeared in the World Economic Forum.

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PHED explains why MDAs must pay debt to avoid disconnection

ITRealms:

The Port-Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) has explained that payment of outstanding debt by government’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) is of paramount importance if the electricity supply industry is to survive in Nigeria, reports ITRealms.

The Chief Executive Officer, PHED, Mr. Jay McCoskey, in a press statement made available to ITRealms by Manager, Corporate Communications, Mr. Jonah Iboma, said the country’s electricity industry has remained in dire straits due to huge unpaid debt, which informed the decision to publish disconnection notices to all MDAs indebted to it.

He also said that the refusal of MDAs to pay their long-standing debts represented the biggest worry of the distribution companies in the country today, maintaining that distribution companies were already grappling with too many issues such that adding MDAs would constitute a burden too big for the industry to bear.

“As a distribution company, PHED inherited a weak network, a relatively small customer base compared to the population, massive electricity theft and several other social ills related to electricity supply. For MDAs therefore to join these barrages of problems by continuously refusing bills payment is like a death sentence to the industry,” he said.

Also, McCoskey said that given the huge revenue shortfall that PHED like other distribution companies were experiencing, mass disconnection would have to be done to force a change in the payment habits of consumers.

“We have issued disconnection notices to all MDAs while at the same time engaging all other indebted customers to ensure that they paid their bills. The industry no longer runs on government subvention,” he noted.

Further, McCoskey said that there would be marked improvement in service delivery once there is better revenue collection from customers, especially MDAs, stressing that PHED had already demonstrated this by recent initiatives that it has embarked upon.

“Our goal is to provide our customers reliable service in terms of power supply and overall customer experience. That is why we recently launched a 24x7 call centre and invested heavily in several building commercial lines that provide dedicated power to commercial users.

“We believe that by giving power to companies, factories and industrial outfits, such organisations will be able to continue to produce their goods and offer services competitively and keep people employed. We hope that we will get government support through prompt payment of bills and historical debts by MDAs,” McCoskey submitted.

Uboshe Uboshe/GEE

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