In June 2020, the Indian government banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese applications from India following allegations of national security concerns.

Early last month, it was reported that the President of the United States, Donald Trump was also considering banning the application as a way to punish Chinese for their role in the outbreak and spread of the Corona virus. However, these plans did not conceptualise.

Yesterday, Friday 31 July, the president reiterated that he would be signing an executive order banning the social media company from the US for national security concerns that the owner of TikTok, ByteDance is in bed with the Chinese and is collecting data to share with the Chinese government. The order is expected to be signed on the 1st August. We are yet to see how that pans out.

Other countries seem to be considering the decision to ban the social media company from their countries.

Guru8 has also learned that Microsoft is in plans to buy the application from Byte Dance, but from the look of things, the transaction might fail as it is being jeopardized by the continued allegations of data violations and especially plans for Trump to ban the platform from the US, one of its biggest markets.

The ban could also impact Facebook positively, as Mark Zuckerberg has continuously rallied support against the company as he considers it a threat to Facebook. After failed attempts to buy the company in 2019, it developed a competing application Lasso, that has since been abandoned. Now focus is on creating a TikTok feature Reels that is being incorporated into Instagram to try and win over TikTok clientele. Reels has already been rolled out in some countries like India.

With the influence the US government sways in world politics, it might not be long before it makes demands for other countries to follow the move, as it is doing or has done with Huawei.

Facebook is happiest.

Big Tech excluding Microsoft, aka the Big Four, GAFA, the Gang of Four listed Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon with a combined valuation of USD 4.85 trillion are the subject of anti-trust and anti-competition hearings in the US Congress over their dominance and power in the technology sphere in what has been described as the “Big Tobacco Moment”.

Google is a dominant search engine, mobile operating system (Android) and Maps, Facebook in social media and photo-sharing, Apple in iPhones and the Apple Store control, and Amazon in ecommerce and cloud computing.

The virtual hearings were conducted via video conference where the CEOs Jeff Bezos for Amazon, Tim Cook for Apple, Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook and Sundar Pichai for Google/Aphabet were questioned on behalf of their companies in almost 5 hour long questioning session.

Because of their market dominance, the companies have been accused of crippling their competition. The congressional hearings and investigations are trying to ascertain the extent of their power and abuse. In internal leaked mail, for example, the true reason for the Facebook acquisition of Instagram has been exposed.

“The businesses are nascent but networks are established, the brands are already meaningful and if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us” reads one of the messages from Mark Zuckerberg. “One thing about startups though is you can often acquire them” adds another email.

Zuckerberg in an internal memo last year also revealed that TikTok was a threat to Facebook, the company then tried to acquire it, but it was not successful. Now it is developing Instragram Reels, to try and outcompete TikTok using the Instagram market base, a further attempt to cripple its competition.

Where these companies fail to acquire their competition, they are copying the apps or their features to incorporate into their own systems among other measures being adopted.

Google is accused of using its search engine to influence search results or YouTube to censor user’s videos, Facebook using power to block third party adverts on their forum, Amazon using its dominance to control what third party products are sold on their platforms, and Apple using its power over Apple Store to reject installations of its competition services among others.

We are yet to see how the Congress will respond as enforcement is anticipated.

African FinTech Startups seem to be up for grabs lately. About a month ago an African and Uganda based fintech Beyonic was acquired by MFS Africa a “pan – African payments gateway that connects wallets across different mobile money platforms through APIs…”

Guru8 has now learnt that another fintech offering similar services like MFS and Beyonic is being acquired by an outside-Africa entity.

DPO Group is being acquired by UAE’s Network International Holdings PLC (NIH) that is headquartered in the UK. NIH also listed on the London Stock Exchange describes itself as a technology that enables payment solutions to merchants and financial institutions in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), with operations in the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, South Africa and Nigeria.

DPO has a major presence in Africa and all over, globally, it is available in over 19 countries while in Africa, the major markets are Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, and boasts of over 40,000 merchants.

In a press statement released on the 29^th July 2020, NIH has revealed that there is a proposed acquisition of DPO “to accelerate our growth in Africa through online payments and mobile money” where DPO and NIH have entered into an agreement to acquire DPO group, “the leading, high growth online commerce platform in Africa”.

The acquisition is valued at approximately USD 288 million, which financing is said to be “almost funded through the proceeds from an equity placing”. Part of the funding of the total consideration will be in equity where USD 13 Million in stock from Network International will go to the founders of DPO, another 50 million will be vendor consideration shares that will be issued to APIS Growth Fund I (it has been a significant funder of DPO), and the balance to be funded via existing debt facilities.

It is expected that completion of the transition will be done in Q4 2020, “subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory and anti – trust.”

The choice to acquire is to consolidate and accelerate the NIH “presence in Africa, the most underpenetrated and fast – growing payments market in the world”.

While commenting about the transaction, the Chief Executive Officer of NIH, Simon Haslam, commented that at NIH, they are “excited by the proposed acquisition of DPO, the leading high-growth online commerce platform operating at scale across Africa.” He describes Africa as a “vast and diverse continent, representing the world’s most underpenetrated, nascent and fast – growing payments markets, where we have seen recent signs of an acceleration in those trends”.

He adds that DPO will further consolidate the presence of NIH in Africa, strengthen their “position across the entire payments value chain and accelerate our growth”. The acquisition he says “will widen our capabilities across online, mobile and alternative payments; bring an extensive and diverse range of direct merchant relationships to our business; and provide a wider range of solutions for our existing customers”.

“We look forward to bringing our two businesses together and welcoming DPO’s colleagues into our group. Together, we have a powerful combination to accelerate digital payments across our regions and deliver significant shareholder value” concludes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the birth of a future.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (a.k.a 4IR) assures among others the possibilities of 3D printing, but stretching the innovation to consumables might not have been anticipated by many. (3D printing is also looked at by many others as an impossibility, but alas here we are, eating computerised chicken and “meating” the future).

In a press statement published by KFC Global on their website the company has revealed that 3D Printed Chicken, that they have styled the “meat of the future” for the “restaurant of the future” is in the works.

According to the statement, “KFC is taking the next step in its innovative concept of creating a “restaurant of the future” by launching the development of innovative 3D bioprinting technology… The idea of crafting the ‘meat of the future’…” reads the statement in part, in what the Company believes would be able to promote a “healthy lifestyle and nutrition”.

The decision for the printed meat has also been due to an increase in the popular “demand for alternatives to traditional meat and the need to develop more environmentally friendly methods of food production” also in effect creating the “world’s first laboratory produced chicken nuggets”, which the company estimates will be “as close as possible in both taste and appearance to the original KFC product”.

KFC says that using 3D Bioprinting Solutions (the partner KFC is using to achieve the product), the company will be able to use chicken cells, and plant material to allow it to reproduce the taste and texture of chicken meat “almost without involving animals in the process”, while the company provides its partner with the necessary ingredients such as the breading and the spices to “achieve the signature KFC taste”.

The company in promoting this new future product says that there are several advantages attached to it including containing the same microelements as the original product, creating a cleaner final product, and that it is more ethical as it does not cause harm to animals (read chicken).

“Crafter meat products are the next step in the development of our ‘restaurant of the future’ concept”, reads a comment from the General Manager of KFC Russia and CIS, Raisa Polyakova.

The first meat of the future product will be out in the future around September – December 2020

While people were facing lockdowns in their homes or wherever the lockdown found them, as a result of the Corona Virus pandemic. They were not making money. However, they were also bored and spending savings especially in entertainment related expenditure.

Netflix late this week released its second quarterly reports for the months of April, May and June, and observed a surge in subscriber numbers from the expected estimates of 7.5 million to over 10.1 million new users increasing the total number to over 193 million signed up members on the platform.

This is compared to the 2.7 million new subscribers in the same period the year before. It also made a record USD 6.15 billion in profit which also exceeded the firms estimates of 6.08.

The company is so much ahead of its competition Apple, Amazon, and HBO Max among other related media companies.

It is however worried about the numbers after the pandemic ends, as the subscriber rate might slow down as this could be the only time people are so bored to need that much entertainment at the same time.

Instagram is widely rolling out a new feature branded Instagram Reels, in their app, that will see the application compete for users with TikTok as the services offered are identical. However, so far, the service is geographically limited and only available in a few countries.

So far, Reels has only been rolled out in India, Germany and France. In the next few weeks (early August), Instagram will see the feature in the United States market, and then 50 other countries. In that period, the feature will still not be available worldwide. Instagram Reels launched in India, just after the country banned the App and several other Chinese Apps.

With the growing popularity of the Chinese app, known for creating and shot clips, Zuckerberg months ago tried to buy TikTok, but it was not selling. He them embarked on damaging the Apps fame, accusing the company of being in bed with the Chinese Government, and sharing user data.

After the failed attempt to buy TikTok, Facebook would later be seen replicating the App, leading to the birth of Lasso. Lasso failed to compete with TikTok that was already billions of downloads away. A few weeks ago, Facebook abandoned Lasso, and made the decision to focus of Instagram Reels.

Reels is an Instagram feature, only available in a few countries in the world. With Reels, Facebook sees potential for its growth to wider users as all that would be needed is just an update, and the millions of users with Instagram will automatically be having Reels enabling the wide spread access that Lasso failed to achieve.

The feature allows users to share 15 second long clips from their Instagram Stories feature. One can set background music to their videos, or make their own audios to add to the videos. It also has a countdown timer to enable a user adjust video speed.

The videos can be shared directly on Instagram Stories, sent directly to a specific user in their DMs or added to a new Reels tab on a user’s profile. It also comes with an Instagram Explore tab where the most viral videos are shared.

It is not yet certain when Instagram Reels will be launching world wide, but according to the growing country roll outs, it might not be long before the whole world receives the feature. It is also not certain whether the App will actually outcompeting TikTok, or it will always be

Twitter has this week been awash with news about hacks of accounts of many prominent users including former president Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Must, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg and the company Apple. The hacks originated from creators who were promoting a bitcoin scam that saw them (the scammers) earn nearly USD. 120,000.

Guru8 has learned that in retaliation for the attacks, the social media giant on Thursday made the decision to lock Twitter accounts of all users that had changed or even attempted to change their passwords in the last 30 days, and delivered on that decision.

According to Twitter, a total of 130 accounts were targeted in the scam where the scammers were able to gain access to these accounts and send out tweets.

“Out of an abundance of caution, and as part of our incident response yesterday to protect people’s security, we took the step to lock any accounts that had attempted to change the account’s password during the past 30 days”, read the statement released by the Twitter Support account on Thursday.

“Other than the accounts that are still locked, people should be able to reset their password now”, adds the statement revealing that the users that have not been locked out of their accounts, can successfully reset their passwords if they need to.

The company has not yet revealed when or how the affected accounts will be recovered, however, the statement provides that the company is working on helping the affected persons regain their accounts again if they were “proactively locked”, which process may take a while due to the “extra steps” being taken to grant “access to the rightful owner”.

The other measures being implemented include disabling the downloading of twitter data for all accounts while the investigations are ongoing,

MTN Uganda has entered into a partnership with SIMPLY Africa, another subsidiary of the MTN Group and they have today launched what they call a “SuperApp” Ayoba to “enable customers to access more affordable communication”. These revelations were made in a press statement that MTN released today.

A SuperApp is an app that provides a lot of services, like the way Safe Boda allows one to order a ride, food and shop, buy airtime, and deliver a package. Ayoba as a SuperApp allows to send messages, make voice calls, access several channels including music and a yet to be launched “money transfer” feature.

The application, described as “a Pan African messaging platform, built by Africans for Africans”, at the time of launch is only available for Android users, as a iOS version is still in the works. As an African app, it is available in some of the African languages including Swahili, Luganda, Hausa, isiXhosa and Yoruba, and comes with end to end encryption to protect chats from prying eyes. It has channels on sports, fashion, cooking, health, and games.

MTN sells that the app is unlike any other messageing app in that is allows one to chat app to SMS and SMS to app “with anyone regardless of whether they have the ayoba app or not.” Among the features of the service is that it allows to send and receive text messages, voice messages, videos, images, audio and other files with any of your contacts while using a mobile internet connection.

However, as a promotion for the product, MTN customers will not need to have internet to use the App as they can use it free of charge up to 1GB of data every month. The other feature in the app, is the possibility to initiate voice calls with contacts, however, these will be charged basing on the standard voice calls using airtime or minutes.

While announcing the partnership, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN, Wim Vanhellepute was quoted as saying

 “We are keen to see Africa actively participate in the global digital revolution that is now being further accelerated by the Covid-19 situation. Innovation and the connectivity that goes with it, are particularly key to our digital proposition. They are both crucial in our contribution to the social and economic transformation of our country”, he said.

On the side of Ayoba, while speaking about this partnership, David Gilarranz CEO of SIMFY AFRICA said,

“We are delighted to partner with MTN in Uganda and to offer its customers the ability to use the app with no data costs. In the coming weeks, our app will surely become a super app as we will be adding more features, like mobile money and music, as well as allowing other apps to co-exist in Ayoba. We would like to take this opportunity to thank MTN Uganda for trusting our journey”.

How to get ayoba:

Step 1: Visit MyMTN app www.mtn.co.ug/mymtn open the app and select Ayoba

Step 2: Select your preferred download option and click on “Download Now”

Step 3: When prompted to, select “allow from this source” and install app.

Step 4: Open the app and sign up to start chatting for FREE