What’s on my radar this week? Trophies, tablets, and other interesting things.
More accolades to stuff in the trophy sacks. At this year’s All Africa Business Leaders Awards – West Africa (AABLA – WA), Konga CEO, Sim Shagaya bagged the CNBC West Africa Entrepreneur of the year award, while iROKO Partners’ Jason Njoku was named the CNBC Young Business Leader of the Year 2013 for West Africa.
Congrats @simdul for winning the CNBC West Africa Entrepreneur of the year award! Well done!
— Tayo Oviosu (@oviosu) August 28, 2013
And while we’re talking about Jason, you should check out his latest thesis, the first installment of his promised iROKOtv trilogy. One line summary, iROKOtv is not dead, Nollywood Love wannabes and YouTube are irrelevant.
A trilogy is coming… ‘iROKO is dead. Long Live iROKOtv’
— JasonNjoku (@JasonNjoku) August 27, 2013
Information Nigeria is one of Nigeria’s most visited online destinations. They just beat the rest of their competition to the 1 million fan mark on Facebook. I don’t know who their closest contender is, but I’m fairly certain there’ll be a steep margin between them. Hitting a million Facebook fans seems to be such big deal to them that they are giving out BlackBerry Q10s…but hey, whatever floats their boat.
Interswitch is actually innovating. Hard to say if this has something to do with threats of disruption, but everyone’s favourite payments company recently decided to make our lives easier by introducing a remember card feature. That way, you shouldn’t have to enter your full card details the next time you make a transaction on a particular site. For Verve card holders only, from what I can see though.
Self published authors rejoice? I’m yet to check it out up close, but it seems that Okadabooks might be an interesting way for authors and publishers to make more money off their work. The platform allows them convert their writing into electronic formats that can be sold via SMS. Revenue share and things. On the consumer side, Okadabooks is just a cool book reading app that offers local reading content. Thanks, Mark.
Yet another African tablet — The 7 inch Bamboo D700 running Android at just above $300. The product’s Twitter account declares it to be “the first tablet computer developed to tackle issues in emerging markets”, and that the device will be available in September. That’s in a few days. Between the inauspicous fates of its eager predecessors, the oxygen-sucking craziness of Google and Amazon’s no margin hardware strategy, and N35k/$220 Tecno tablets, all there is to say is — goodluck.
The Tobacco control campaign has created a browser-based game called Tobacco Dodge. The plan is to use the interactive experience to stimulate public awareness of the dangers of tobacco use. It’s backers say a mobile version is imminent.
