| Oluniyi David Ajao

Movie Review: The Perfect Picture

By Oluniyi David Ajao on April 19, 2009

I had the privilege of watching the latest & hottest Ghanaian movie in town yesterday afternoon at Silverbird Cinema in Accra. Several hours later, I am still catching my breath. The first time I read about this movie via a friend on Facebook, I wondered to myself: “What audacity? How could anyone risk titling a movie THE PERFECT PICTURE?” The producers of the movie by using a title like that are opening their work to a thorough scrutiny from the public and would receive heavy criticism should the movie contain the slightest shade of mediocrity.

A snapshot of The Perfect Picture website

I had high expectations before watching the movie. Why? There was a special website for the movie: http://theperfectpicturemovie.com Now, this is uncommon in Africa, and very rare in Ghana. What’s more? The website theperfectpicturemovie.com was just perfect for a movie. Well designed. I later monitored the trailer on GTV and some promo video at KSM’s Thank God It’s Friday on Metro TV.

Just last Friday, KSM (aka Kweku Sitim-Misa ) featured the Director/Producer of the movie, Shirley Frimpong-Manso. They chatted heartily about the very positive feedback they had received by then. I knew the movie had to be very good. It became a must-see for me and I was not disappointed.

The opening montage was just very nice. It featured a lady on her wedding day, surrounded by friends and family. This leads the viewer into what the entire movie is about: the love life of 3 beautiful, privileged, working-class young ladies. The movie delves into love, sex, romance, deceit, pain, anxiety, addiction and many other related facets of human existence. It is relatively full of suspense (though I could predict a few scenes) and obviously, every scene was well thought through.

I found some scenes especially captivating:

two lovers expressing affection verbally, and kissing with the glowing moon in the back ground
an ex-husband professing love to his ex-wife at a beach side. 3 canoes are seen drifting gently beside them
the fast-paced scenes featuring various parts of Accra
the various dance steps in the scenes featuring Ghanaian music
enough…!

The movie does well in the “audio department” as well. Crystal clear sound, very good selection of background music, and good humour here and there.

THE PERFECT PICTURE features Jackie Appiah, Lydia Forson, Naa Ashorkor Mensah-Doku, Chris Attoh (my main man), Adjetey Annang, Nana Kwame, Osei-Sarpong and the King of comedy in Ghana, KSM! (KSM played the role of a dirty doctor who…)

Overall, I would dare to rate the movie 9/10. Why? I won’t explain now without divulging too much. You should see the movie yourself. It would soon be screened in other parts of Ghana, and probably in Nigeria, the UK, USA etc. It is coming to a cinema near you and when it does, don’t miss the chance to enjoy it. It was worth every pesewa I paid for the ticket. More so, I believe it would be released on DVD soon enough. In the meantime, enjoy the official trailer.

Good work Shirley Frimpong-Manso and your team at Sparrow Productions. Keep the Ghanaian flag flying. I hope you become very rich from producing this movie and release even better flicks in future.

Posted in Ghana, Personal Diary, Showbiz | Tagged accra, Adjetey Annang, Chris Attoh, Ghana, ghanaian, ghanaian movie, Jackie Appiah, ksm, Lydia Forson, Naa Ashorkor Mensah-Doku, Nana Kwame, Osei-Sarpong, the perfect picture | 12 Responses

Media War: Mainstream versus Social

By Oluniyi David Ajao on April 17, 2009

A snapshot of Kutcher's Twitter account on 17th April 2009.

The jury is out on who is the media leader in our contemporary world. On one side of the divide is the mainstream media, represented by CNN a leading international TV broadcaster and on the other side is social media, represented by Ashton Kutcher an American actor and former fashion model.

I first got wind of this shameless war on CNN. I monitored a video clip with CNN’s Larry King responding to Ashton Kutcher about a challenge. Apparently, the clash had started before that. Ashton Kutcher had challenged the media giant to having the most followers on Twitter.com

Kutcher challenged CNN to the race with a Web video posted on Tuesday. If he wins, Kutcher says he will “ding-dong ditch” CNN founder Ted Turner’s house.

“I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,” Kutcher says in a video, which was shot from inside a car and was posted on Qik.com.

“So I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner — because I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

Before now, no single Twitter account had up to a million followers. CNN maintains 45 official Twitter accounts, with a total of more than 1.3 million followers. Kutcher was racing the network’s breaking-news feed specifically.

According to twitterholic.com, the 5 most popular Twitter users are:

Ashton Kutcher (aplusk)
CNN Breaking News (cnnbrk)
Britney Spears (britneyspears)
The Ellen Show (TheEllenShow)
Twitter (twitter)
Barack Obama (BarackObama)*

* I really need to add the 6th, because of its significance.

Ashton Kutcher eventually won the popularity contest by being the first to garner 1,000,000 Twitter followers. I was not surprised by the result. I expected Kutcher to win. If there had been more publicity before the whimsical challenge, I am sure Kutcher would have won with a wider margin. The web has given power to the people and no single entity (government, corporation, organization, media house) can beat the collective force generated by a huge number of people.

Interestingly, the mainstream media relies on social media to reach out to even more people in today’s world. CNN International is one global TV channel that has put social media and Web 2.0 applications to very good use through Facebook, Twitter, and their own iReport.com (relies on stories generated by users).

What is Twitter?

According to Wikipedia, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, Twitterfon, TweetDeck and feedalizr. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Posted in Personal Diary, Technology | Tagged ashton kutcher, cnn, larry king, sms, ted turner, twitter | 2 Responses

Nigeria: Why do you use Liberty Reserve?

By Oluniyi David Ajao on April 6, 2009

Ecommerce Journal is a well-respected online news website about e-commerce and is one of the few websites I visit regularly. They have been predicting doom for Liberty Reserve in recent times and have done the same with one of their recent articles. The thrust of my blog post however is to react to a paragraph in one of their recent articles titled: “If people bring an action against Liberty Reserve what will be in future?”

The author, posting under the alias ayny attempted to analyse the traffic to libertyreserve.com from Nigeria and wrote the following:

As for the users coming from Nigeria, here we may say that they do not credit the traffic of LR. Nigerian fraudsters are famous around the world for their scaled operations throughout the Internet including the ones involving Liberty Reserve as a payment system. Thus if Liberty Reserve does not disappear in the nearest time, the percentage of the Nigerian traffic will continue to grow.

Ayny failed to suggest specific ways in which Nigerians cheat using Liberty Reserve and I therefore conclude that the author’s assertion is baseless and malicious. I will therefore proceed to paint what I believe to be the true picture of this situation.

A lot of Nigerians are involved in online forex trading and only few of them have access to the popular online means of payments like credit cards, moneybookers, paypal etc. Several online forex brokers accept Liberty Reserve. Liberty Reserve on the other hand, does not require any documentation before one can open an account and use to send & receive money online. Of course this lack of proper KYC (Know-Your-Customer) offers Liberty Reserve as an invaluable tool for scammers as they can simply hide behind fake profiles to perpetrate their evil.

Aside the keen interest in forex, many Nigerians also use Liberty Reserve to pay for services like web hosting, sms vouchers, virtual credit cards etc. See an analysis I did in September 2007 about why e-gold was popular in Nigeria. The main motivation to use Liberty Reserve for the average people is the lack of credit card facilities. That is changing gradually however as more banks are now issung Mastercards & Visas that can be used online. To link every activity involving Nigerians to scam is very myopic.

Are you a Nigerian using Liberty Reserve? Why do you use it? Share your thoughts here and now.

Posted in Business, Nigeria | Tagged credit card, forex, liberty reserve, moneybookers, Nigeria, nigerian, paypal, virtual credit card, web hosting | 16 Responses

10 Most Technology-savvy African countries

By Oluniyi David Ajao on March 30, 2009

The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009

I am extrapolating a list of 10 most IT-ready African countries from The Global Technology Report 2008-2009 (a PDF document). The Report stresses the importance of ICT as a catalyst for growth in the current global turmoil and it underlines that good education fundamentals and high levels of technological readiness and innovation are essential engines of growth needed to overcome the current economic crisis. Under the theme “Mobility in a Networked World”, this year’s Report places a particular focus on the relationship and interrelations between mobility and ICT.

With record coverage of 134 economies worldwide, the Report remains the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative international assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations.

The Report is produced by the World Economic Forum in cooperation with INSEAD, the leading international business school, and is sponsored by Cisco Systems.

Africa	2008-2009 rank	Country/Economy	Score
1.	38	Tunisia	4.34
2.	51	Mauritius	4.07
3.	52	South Africa	4.07
4.	76	Egypt	3.76
5.	77	Botswana	3.72
6.	80	Senegal	3.67
7.	86	Morocco	3.59
8.	90	Nigeria	3.45
9.	91	Gambia, The	3.44
10.	92	Namibia	3.44

Posted in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Technology | Tagged africa, ict, information technology, Nigeria | 1 Response

The Customer is NOT always Right

By Oluniyi David Ajao on March 29, 2009

A customer care affirmation poster. Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons.

This is to comment on a popular misconception and start a debate about the issue as well. I grew up hearing a ” the customer is always right” cliche. It never made sense to me and still doesn’t. Why?

Simple logic tells me that a customer cannot be right all the time. A customer is human. A human being is never always right. Never. Not the Pope in the Vatican nor the President of the United States. A customer is human with flesh and blood and has emotions. Human action/judgement are often clouded by emotion and prejudice. It is only natural that a customer makes wrong choices but corrective action should always be taken by the service provider irrespective of who is at fault.

I understand this cliche started as part of training for customer service representatives for them to put out their best but for how long can people parrot this absolutely illogical nonsense? To say the customer is always right is to assume that the customer would be reasonable, polite, rational, honest at all times. Is this possible?

Alexander Kjerulf, the author of the book Happy Hour is 9 to 5, has this to say about the customer is always right.

It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage

Using the slogan “The customer is always right” abusive customers can demand just about anything – they’re right by definition, aren’t they? This makes the employees’ job that much harder, when trying to rein them in.

Also, it means that abusive people get better treatment and conditions than nice people. That always seemed wrong to me, and it makes much more sense to be nice to the nice customers to keep them coming back.

Do not misunderstand me. I fully understand the need to offer the best customer service but that is only to the extent of how the customer handles him/herself. Is the customer KING? By all means. The customer is the reason why a business exists. Is the customer always right? A loud NO.

I am deliberately keeping out specific experiences handling customers but feel free to garnish your contribution to this debate, with specific examples.

Posted in Business, Ghana, Nigeria | Tagged Business, customer care | 12 Responses

eTranzact ready for Ghana

By Oluniyi David Ajao on March 24, 2009

e-village. An Etranzact Ghana event in Accra. Photo by Oluniyi David Ajao.

After over 18 months of “testing the waters”, it appears eTranzact is finally warming-up for a mega launch in Ghana. They had a pre-launch activity last week tagged “e-village” where some of the technological giants in Ghana showcased their products/services. Aviation Social Centre in Accra was the venue and they also had a similar event in Kumasi.

The tech companies that exhibited included: Etranzact Ghana, UBA Ghana, iBurst Africa, Combert Impressions, SMSGH, Intercontinental Bank Ghana, busyinternet, etoys&more, AMADEUS.

eTranzact is an online real-time payment system that allows account holders to pay for goods and services purchased from merchants, transfer funds to any bank account, cell phone, any card, pay bills, order products e.t.c. This is possible because etranzact allows cardholders to use any of the following channels to transact: web (using any internet browser in a secured transaction), mobile phones, POS terminals (Point of Sale), ATMs, or bank branches.

eTranzact Ghana is a subsidiary of eTranzact Global Limited. Their parent company has similar operations in Nigeria, United Kingdom, United States, Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire.

I was there and captured a few shots on my new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for your viewing pleasure.

Some of the attendants. Photo by Oluniyi David Ajao.

A lady explains the Etranzact platform to a group of students @ the e-village. An Etranzact Ghana event in Accra. Photo by Oluniyi David Ajao.

Posted in Business, Ghana, Personal Diary, Technology | Tagged busyinternet, e-commerce, etranzact, Ghana, uba | 3 Responses

Securing your PC, the right way

By Oluniyi David Ajao on March 20, 2009

A bank security guard fast asleep. In this state, he is offering no security. A cracked security suite software is even worse.

A friend who had been overwhelmed by Internet worms and virus on his laptop brought his iPod to me so I could scan it. He had already formatted his laptop’s hard drive and had re-installed the Windows operating system but since he used his 30GB iPod as an external hard drive, he wanted me to scan it and be sure the threats were neutralized before he copied his files back to the PC from the iPod.

Out of the over 30,000 files on the iPod, over 2,700 of them were computer viruses, computer worms, trojan horses and other rogue files. I asked what security software he had on his laptop and was told ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. I knew this was one of the best on the web and wondered why his laptop had fallen a victim. Then I examined the setup file and was shocked to see the following written boldly: “warez to the core”. Apparently, this ZoneAlarm setup file was a cracked version and since my friend did not know the meaning of the word “warez”, he did not know that the fake security software installation was the genesis of his problem. I will illustrate.

Can you imagine hiring a security guard who stands at your gate always wearing a t-shirt with the text “robber to the core” boldly printed on it? Well, such a guard will leave your gate ajar to fellow robbers who would have a field day streaming in and out of your property. I do not need to tell you the amount of havoc they would perpetrate?

The right thing is to download whatever security software you choose to use, directly from the website of the software publisher. Downloading from warez websites constitutes a big security risk for your PC.

My next post about this issue will offer recommended security software for your PC. Stay safe.

Posted in Personal Diary, Technology | Tagged ipod, pc security, security, zonealarm | 4 Responses

BarCamp Nigeria 2009

By Oluniyi David Ajao on March 18, 2009

BarCamp Nigeria

BarCamp Nigeria is around the corner. I might be there.

Event Details

Who? Anyone who is interested in technology including but not limited to telecommunications, software/hardware, web 2.0, opensource/enterprise solution, – and all things in between.
What? A good opportunity to share ideas, start conversations and build connections with people and organizations making a positive impact in Africa
When? Saturday, April 25th, 2009
Where? Tom Associates Training Center and Conference Hall, 5/7, Alade Lawal Street, Opposite Anthony Police Station, Lagos, Nigeria

Justin Hartman, MD and co-founder of Afrigator, is scheduled as one of the keynote speakers.

Posted in Mobile, Nigeria, South Africa, Technology | Tagged barcamp, barcampnigeria | 3 Responses

Killing Me Softly, African style

By Oluniyi David Ajao on February 26, 2009

I recently shared a video of a white guy singing and playing a guitar to a Nigerian song: . Here is another video – this time of a black South African, singing (and dancing) to a Western Soul music her own way. This girl must be Zulu. Try hard not to laugh, if you can.

Thanks Sena, for sharing this video with me.

Posted in Showbiz, South Africa, Video | Tagged humuor, music | 4 Responses

Is it really possible to make a living online?

By Oluniyi David Ajao on February 21, 2009

Yes indeed. It is very possible. As a matter of fact, I am a living example and so are hundreds of thousands of people spread across the globe: bloggers, web designers/developers, graphic designers, server administrators, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts, web hosting resellers, domain name resellers, VoIP call credit retailers, e-currency exchangers etc. The list is virtually endless.

Apart from the regular jobs listed above, its also theoretically possible to make money online, by investing, and not doing much work apart from promoting the investment scheme (if you want to earn from referrals). You can trade stocks, bonds, join affiliate programs, and even earn interests from just saving into an online bank account.

I hope I can make enough moolah some day to go holidaying in the Caribbean on a cruise ship. Nothing is impossible.

However, I am not about to ask you to leave your current job. Your decision to make a living online would be based on several factors: un-employment, under-employment, or even that you are fully employed but want an additional stream of income, so you could finance that dream of a holiday to Hawaii on a cruise ship, or indulge yourself with some luxury.

Why work online?

Working online is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end and that means you must be doing something really productive to be able to make money. Indeed, working online is not necessarily a magical wand that will command millions of US Dollars to your disposal. It takes hard-work, perseverance and smart thinking.

You should only decide to work online, if it is absolutely convenient for you to do so. You should factor your family, your social life, your current commitments, availability of a fast Internet connectivity, steady electric power supply etc.

What can I do to make a living online?

There are literally thousands of things you can do, to make a legitimate income over the Internet. However, I will divide them into three broad categories:

1. Offer expertise:

The kind of expertise you offer online should be related to something you are passionate about, have a reasonable amount of knowledge about, and have a solid experience practising.

For example, if you are a photography enthusiast, what about creating a website (or specifically, a blog) about camera reviews, news about the latest release of digital cameras, photo-taking tips and such. In short, you will be sharing useful information about something you enjoy doing, and more importantly, some making money.

2. Join affiliate programs

You can earn money by referring buyers to e-commerce websites. Depending on the policies of the e-merchant, you are paid a commission based on the amount of business leads you provide. You do not necessarily need your own website to join an affiliate program since you will be provided with a unique website URL with which you can promote the e-commerce website. Example? Web4Africa offers an affiliate programme to its customers whereby they can make some money on each web hosting referral.

3. Offer service / sell goods

You can create a website, where you market goods for sale, or offer your skills for hiring by others. Examples: you can set-up an online shop to sell shoes or you can set-up a website to offer website design if you have been trained for that.

Are there any downsides to working online?

Of course there are. Every job has its associated risks and hazards:

Sitting behind computer screens for long periods of time without regular exercise can result in health hazards like poor vision, exposure to Ultra-Violet rays, muscle pulls, back-ache etc
Affiliate programs can shut-down and a web hosting server can go offline due to technical hitches leaving you high-and-dry. There are 100,000 examples of dot-coms that have gone belly-up for several reasons.

Posted in Business, Ghana, Nigeria, Personal Diary | Tagged making money online, money | 17 Responses

How Do I Make Money Online?

By Oluniyi David Ajao on February 21, 2009

Wads of British Pounds Sterling

Following-up on an earlier reply, Obafemi wrote me again, asking how best he could make money online. I chose to answer this question publicly, so as to guide other up-and-coming Internet-based entrepreneurs. I reproduce his email below:

Thank you David,

I do respect your expediency, I like your blog and I like eolutsin’s blog too. I will like you to please give your honest opinion about this project I am working on right now. I am setting up something just like eolutosin’s. Do you think it is a worthwhile venture?

Though I know about some programs online but I am just starting out real-time (Just cutting my teeth). I also don’t want my blog to look like all these get rich quick schemes around. They ask you to buy one book or the other yet after purchase you find out that it’s not what you think. Please I want a steady source of income from the net something stable different from scams etc. For example, 3 years ago it was forex, 2years ago fixed odd, last year crude oil. I know of Adsense and affiliates and am going into that.

Your opinion is greatly cherished.
Thanks a lot.

My response:

Thank you for writing Obafemi.

For a start, you need to know who Emmanuel Oluwatosin is. He is a young entrepreneur from Nigeria. In 2004, he started Nairahost with 3 other people and that means he must have been online before 2004 to have gained the knowledge + experience needed to set-up a business based online. In August 2007, he resigned from a paid employment and started an MBA program at Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom.

What is eolutosin.com about?
EOlutosin.com is a weblog whose focus is to provide relevant and up-to-date information to everyone interested in starting and managing their businesses or those who want to make the best of their current career and / or job. The blog offers motivations and help for personal and entrepreneur development. The focus is on challenging people to move from words to actions.

By sharing a summary of Emmanuel’s profile, I am pointing-out to you that he has a wealth of experience, good education and some useful knowledge to share with the world. Unless you have something really useful to share, setting-up a blog like his is probably not the best idea for you right now. It is very important that you gained some deep-rooted knowledge in a particular field before attempting to share – if you want to be taken seriously. It is not wrong to aspire to be like him or other people making loads of money online but it is also very important to truly understand what you want and how you will get there.

Since money is your motivation, I will add that I am not sure about how much he makes monthly from that blog. However, I am sure that blog is just a means to an end for him, and not an end in itself. He is using the blog to build a brand around his personality and that will help boost his core businesses online.

I agree with you about not wanting to follow the bandwagon of getting-rich-quick on the Internet. It is indeed true that too many of such programmes are only exploiting ignorant people, and others who have some change to loose. I must quickly add that it is indeed possible to make a legitimate income online – enough to take care of all your wants, with more to spare. There are multiple factors that would determine how much you can earn online: your skill, knowledge, experience, persistence (or lack of it), capital, fast Internet connectivity etc.

Since I am not inclined towards long blog posts, I will break here. My next blog post would be for you. Though I originally wrote it on 7th April 2007 and published it on another blog of mine, I have re-edited and re-published it here: Is it really possible to make a living online?

Posted in Business, Nigeria, Personal Diary | Tagged emmanuel oluwatosin, how to, making money online, Nigeria | 10 Responses

Ghana’s Most Powerful Women

By Oluniyi David Ajao on February 20, 2009

The Fourth Republic of Ghana is historical for many reasons. It has more women in higher public office than it has ever had, in its 51 years as an independent nation. This post highlights some of the women at the height of power.

The Speaker of Ghana's Parliament - Rt. Hon. Justice Joyce Bamford-Addo. Photo courtesy of myjoyonline.com

The Speaker of Ghana's Parliament - Rt. Hon. Justice Joyce Bamford-Addo. Photo credit: myjoyonline.com

The Speaker of Parliament

Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo (born 26 March 1937) is the Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana. She is also a retired Supreme Court Judge. She is the first female Speaker in Ghana. According to Ghana’s constitution, she is the 3rd in the Order of precedence in Ghana and comes after the President and Vice President of the Republic.

According to parliament.gh, she was elevated to the high office of Supreme Court Judge in 1991 from where she continued to dispense justice for more than 13 years until she retired voluntarily from active service in 2004.

Her Ladyship Justice Georgina Theodora Wood. Photo courtesy of ghana.gov.gh

Her Ladyship Justice Georgina Theodora Wood. Photo credit: ghana.gov.gh

The Chief Justice of Ghana

Georgina Theodora Wood (born June 8, 1947) is a judge and also a former police prosecution officer. She is the Chief Justice of Ghana and the first woman to occupy that position.

She was nominated for the position of Chief Justice of Ghana in May 2007. On 1 June 2007,the Parliament of Ghana approved her nomination as the new Chief Justice of Ghana by consensus. As at June 2007, this made her the first woman in the history of Ghana to head the Judiciary and also made her the highest ranked female in Ghana’s political history. She assumed office on 15 June 2007.

Honorable Betty Mould-Iddrisu, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General. Image courtesy of thecommonwealth.org

Honourable Betty Mould-Iddrisu, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General. Photo credit: thecommonwealth.org

Attorney-General and Minister of Justice

Betty Mould-Iddrisu until recently, was the Director of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division for the Commonwealth Secretariat – a position she held since November 2003. She has a vast experience with the Ghanaian Ministry of Justice specifically in administering various facets of intellectual property law, international law, human rights and gender in Ghana and the rest of Africa.

Among several previous appointments, she was Chief State Attorney and head of the International Law Division of the Ghanaian Ministry of Justice. She established the intellectual property course and taught on a part time basis, at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, between 1990 and 2000. She has delivered numerous papers globally and published several articles in the area of intellectual property law.

This formidable woman was seriously considered as a running mate to the then Presidential candidate, Professor Atta-Mills and according to Pan-African News, “nearly elected as the Speaker of Parliament”.

Mrs. Elizabeth Mills-Robertson, acting Inspector-General of Police. Photo credit: ireport.com

Inspector-General of Police

Mrs. Elizabeth Mills-Robertson, the acting Inspector-General of Police joined the Ghana Police Service in 1978. She is a Barrister at Law with extensive experience in various fields of policing and holds an Executive MBA from the University of Ghana, Legon.

She makes history as the first female Inspector-General of Police and before her latest appointment, she was a Deputy Inspector-General of Police.

Ms Elizabeth Adjei, Director of the GIS.

Director of Immigration

Appointed in September 2002, Ms Elizabeth Adjei is the first female Director of Ghana Immigration Service.

She joined the Service as an administrative assistant in 1988 when the entire workforce was not more than 60. Today, Ms Elizabeth Adjei has over 1,000 personnel working under her.
Sources: Wikipedia, Commonwealth Secretariat, Parliament.gh, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, Ghana Police Service, Modernghana.com

Posted in Ghana, Politics | Tagged Ghana, Politics, women | 2 Responses

CNBC Africa now on DSTV West Africa

By Oluniyi David Ajao on February 14, 2009

CNBC Africa logo

I was quite excited to see CNBC Africa beamed to West Africa on DSTV, yesterday. I had hitherto been looking forward to this since I am fully aware that CNBC Africa is the only serious business TV channel on the continent.

CNBC Africa is a television service for Sub-Saharan Africa which was launched by CNBC and Africa Business News Limited on June 1, 2007. CNBC Africa is headquartered in Sandton, Johannesburg and currently has bureaus in Nairobi (Kenya), Abuja and Lagos (Nigeria), Cape Town (South Africa) and London (UK).

Hitherto, CNBC Africa was available on DSTV only in South Africa, on free-to-air digital satellite platform (IntelSat 10 located at 68.5°E) and via select local TV stations in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.

I have spent some time monitoring it since yesterday and must say it is enjoyable for me since I happen to be a tech geek and an online business ‘guru’ rolled into one. Monitoring CNBC Africa makes more sense for a business man in Africa then watching BBC World News and CNN International. I dare say CNBC Africa is much more localised and contains more African content. They also do link-up to CNBC World in the USA for some business news from New York.

Tech @ Work, CNBC Africa. Image courtesy of cnbcafrica.com

My Saturday mornings just got better. After monitoring Click on BBC World News (0630 t0 7000 hrs GMT), I can now flip to CNBC Africa (7000 to 0730 hrs GMT) for another tech programme called Tech @ Work. This week Tech @ Work featured the new Blackberry Storm with the head of RIM sub-sahara Africa in the studio to demonstrate the features of the smartphone, the latest product from Sony – a netbook computer, as well as a panel discussing Online Solutions.

From cnbcafrica.com:

Tech@Work is just the very best technology. Fast. Reliable. Cutting edge. It’s the show that brings you the bottom line on corporate technology – week-in and week-out.

Darren Kerr gets the inside story on the technology you need to invest in and gives you a heads-up on the gadgets and gizmos that will make you money.

It’s the ultimate download for the businessperson looking for a competitive advantage. Everyone has tech at work but only some know how to make tech work for them.

Posted in Business, Ghana, Mobile, Nigeria, South Africa, Technology | Tagged africa, cnbc, cnbc africa, dstv, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, tv, west africa | 1 Response

The Naira Brand: Naira dot-com websites

By Oluniyi David Ajao on February 11, 2009

Naira notes. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org

One of the hottest Nigerian dot-com brands today is “Naira”, and for good reasons. The Naira is the currency of Nigeria and many have found creative ways to use it for their dot-coms. It is short and relieves it’s users of the burden of the word “Nigeria” whilst still maintaining some appeal to Nigerians.

The earliest Naira dot-com brand I knew was naira.net
Naira.com was later acquired and pointed to naira.net. The domain name naira.com currently owned by Chams Plc (a leading IT solutions company in Nigeria) once belonged to Cosmos Technologies Ltd. The previous owners of naira.com attempted to provide an e-commerce platform for trading goods and services via the Internet to Nigerians, and one can say the Naira domain name was ideal but their venture fell on its face. I however remember sending free sms via naira.net in 2002 or thereabout. They developed a portal and attempted to drive traffic to it by offering free sms. The rest is history. The model failed.

I respect long-lasting dot-coms
NairaDomains.com is operated by McReal Online Network Systems Limited in Port Harcourt Nigeria and aims to offer low-cost real-time domain name registration to customers in Nigeria. Nairadomains.com is another dot-com that has been around for some time. The domain name was registered in 1st August 2001. It is interesting to note how far Nigeria has come when one thinks about the fact that Nairadomains.com was offering .com domain registration for N5,000 per year back then and that was supposed to have been the lowest pricing!

The biggest and most popular
The next Naira dot-com brand that comes to mind is Nairaland. Nairaland happens to be Nigeria’s most popular website and is managed by ‘Seun Osewa who describes himself as “extremely ambitious, goal-oriented, conscientious, and a capitalist to the core”. Nairaland is essentially a public discussion forum and has gained popularity over the years. It is ad-supported and most of the content is generated by the users. Nairaland has been so popular that there have been spin-off dotcoms, hoping to cash-in on the sizzling Naira brand. On a lighter note, Seun wrote on his personal website seunosewa.com: “If you want to buy Nairaland, the non-negotiable price is 25 billion naira so I can start my own bank.”

The Naira Host
Another dot-com that comes to mind is Nairahost. Founded in October 2004, Nairahost is currently a leading web host in Nigeria and offers other IT-related services as well. From nairahost.com, “a multi-dimensional media outfit delivering high Impact Solutions in high-end functional Website Development, online portal solution and E-learning development & deployment “. It is operated by a formidable team of young and entrepreneurial Nigerians and it appears this website would be around for a long time.

It’s all about Nigerians
NairaNames.com is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alireta Nigeria Limited and describes itself as “low cost domain name registration, transfer, and management in naira for Nigerians”. NairaNames.com was registered back in October 2006 and the website offers web hosting as well. There is scanty information on the website and so users would have to visit alireta.com for full information about the company operating it.

Then there is Nairalist.com
Nairalist is essentially an off-shot of Nairaland and it is owned by the same ‘Seun Osewa. Nairalist I dare say, is Nigeria’s response to craiglist.com It offers a simple web interface for users to post classified advertisements and is very easy to use. One good thing about it is that it is coded from scratch and not based on an over-the-shelve web script. Naturally, “Lagos” and “Dating” are the most popular sections of the new website since is Lagos is the busiest place in Nigeria, and Nigerians like other humans, are keen to socialise with other people. For a website that was launched as recently as January 2009, it is already commanding reasonable traffic and it is only a matter of time before it is listed among the top 20 Nigerian websites due to the fact that it is well-implemented.
Nairaland has always been littered with ad posts and I reckon this new website will reduce that pressure on Nairaland, so more meaningful conversations can be held.

This is by no means an exclusive list of naira dot-com brands but I had to exclude some websites based on my concerns about their credibility. With the ones I listed above, I offer no warranty and their names/trademarks are acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.

Do you know of any other leading dot-com brand I have excluded, or have any opinion about any of the above-listed, share your comments here and now.

Posted in Business, Nigeria, Technology | Tagged Business, naira, nairadomains, nairahost, nairaland, nairalist, nairanames, Nigeria | 32 Responses

Another Fibre Optic Cable Internet Connectivity for Africa

By Oluniyi David Ajao on February 7, 2009

An image showing the SAT-3/WASC (cable system) route. Image courtesy of Wikipedia

It appears Internet connectivity on the African continent especially in Ghana and Nigeria is about to get better soon. The Ghana News Agency (GNA) reports the launch of yet another private effort to improve Internet connectivity in Africa:

Work has begun on a 200-million dollar undersea fibre optic cable, which aims to provide reliable Internet and telecommunication services to industry stakeholders across Ghana and Nigeria.

The project being undertaken by Main One Cable Company will help to minimize the difficulties of switching traffic between African countries and eliminate the inconveniences and added cost of first routing traffic to Europe.

More information:

The company has already begun laying the cables, which will run from Portugal to Ghana and Nigeria to enhance efforts to digitally connect Africa with the rest of the world.

Speaking at a press briefing in Accra to officially announce the commencement of work, Ms Funke Opeke, Chief Executive Officer of the company said the first phase of the project is expected to be completed in May 2010.

The first phase spans 6,900 kilometres extending from Portugal to Ghana and Nigeria with an additional 6,000 Kilometres extension to South Africa and Angola in the second phase.

This is not exactly the first effort. I am aware that Globacom Ltd, the second national operation (SNO) in Nigeria is currently building a similar cable through the Atlantic from Nigeria, through Benin Republic, Ghana, Senegal, Portugal, to the United Kingdom. Globacom’s fibre optic network is called Glo-1 and expected to be commissioned for commercial activities in March 2009.

Other fibre optic cables are in the pipeline for West Africa:

The West African Festoon System, a Telkom-led project to link SA with Nigeria to address capacity problems on the existing Sat-3 system.
The Africa West Coast Cable, an SA-led initiative to build a cable system between SA and the UK along Africa’s west coast. The high-speed system is meant as a replacement to Sat-3, which is expected to reach capacity in the next few years.

These optic connections are very important for Africa because only one active fibre optic called SAT-3/WASC (South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable) serves West Africa presently. Too many Internet users especially in Nigeria, access the Internet through independent satellite connections (VSATs) and this creates a big problem as even local traffic is routed through Europe, North America or even South-East Asia. With more fibre optic connectivity options for West Africa, I expect that more businesses/organizations/ISPs would eventually move away from VSAT. I also expect the fibre optics to be connected at some point, through an Internet exchange. At that point, real Internet would have been coming to Africa.

Posted in Business, Ghana, Mobile, Nigeria, Politics, Showbiz, South Africa, Technology | Tagged africa, fibre optics, Ghana, globacom, internet, Nigeria | 4 Responses