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Jun
3rd
Conferences - M-Pay Nigeria Conference
Published by: Mac on 3rd Jun 2009
I’m currently sat at Agip Hall, Muson Centre waiting for the M-Pay conference to start. It was supposed to start at 10am with registration between 9 and 10, and at teh moment it’s 10:35 with no sign of it starting any time soon.
I’ve been to a fair few conferences in my time and being sat here observing the activity going on around me made me think about what the do’s and don’ts of conferences.
Jun
3rd
Mobile Payments
Published by: Mac on 3rd Jun 2009
The main talk of mobile payments is in reaching the unbanked, as if they are a market just waiting to become banked, and the reason they don’t use a bank is a lack of access to them, or some kind of fear of ATM cards.
Surely the issue here is not one of regulatory frameworks or technology, which seems to be what everyone thinks is the issues holding back the adoption of mobile payments and banking, instead it’s the core question for any business, why? Why should a customer use the system, what is the benefit to them?
May
6th
Fuel Scarcity - Too much vested interest for it to end
Published by: Mac on 6th May 2009
So the fuel scarcity continues in Lagos and the rest of the country with seemingly no end in sight. My question though is does anyone involved actually want it to end, lets look at some of the people with a vested interest in this scarcity:
The Importers
They are apparently the root cause of the issue but the longer they refuse to import the more they demonstrate their control over the government, and the more time they buy before the downstream sector is de-regulated. The current regulated sector and the subsidy is a corrupt system beyond belief with payments made all over the place to people who don't need it.
NNPC
Why would they want this to end, they are currently the only people importing fuel in any volume into the country, which means they are the only ones making money and the only ones collecting bribes / money to deliver fuel to stations.
Station Attendants
They are clearing up, these 2 weeks of scarcity so far have probably put more filling station attendants children through school than their entire careers to date. 500 Naira a go seems to be the current "thank you" to pay to an attendant for doing their job and selling fuel to you
Area Boys etc
They are also collecting their 100 to 200 Naira a go to jump you up the queue or just to let you into the station.
Black Marketers
Is there anything more depressing than someone stood outside a filling station with a tiny 5 litres or 2.5 litre cannister of fuel and a hose / funnel? But these guys are also making huge profits, trading on the Nigerian sense of lack of time, and over reaching. If you're too busy to queue, what choice do you have?
Filling Station Owners
If you own a filling station and you can get fuel to it at the moment you can clear up. Admitedly everyone you know will be hounding you for fuel and delivery schedules but at least you're fine and you're making money regardless.
So here's an interesting question, is scarcity actually good for the economy, informal economy obviously, there's a lot of extra money floating around at the moment, proabbly enough that even if the subsidy was removed tomorrow and fuel traded at market prices we'd still be paying less on average. On second thoughts then maybe it's all a very clever communication strategy by the government, we'll all be so fedup of paying black market prices and "thank you's" that if the price went up to N150 a litre from N65 we'd still be happy, especially if we didn't have to queue anymore.
The Importers
They are apparently the root cause of the issue but the longer they refuse to import the more they demonstrate their control over the government, and the more time they buy before the downstream sector is de-regulated. The current regulated sector and the subsidy is a corrupt system beyond belief with payments made all over the place to people who don't need it.
NNPC
Why would they want this to end, they are currently the only people importing fuel in any volume into the country, which means they are the only ones making money and the only ones collecting bribes / money to deliver fuel to stations.
Station Attendants
They are clearing up, these 2 weeks of scarcity so far have probably put more filling station attendants children through school than their entire careers to date. 500 Naira a go seems to be the current "thank you" to pay to an attendant for doing their job and selling fuel to you
Area Boys etc
They are also collecting their 100 to 200 Naira a go to jump you up the queue or just to let you into the station.
Black Marketers
Is there anything more depressing than someone stood outside a filling station with a tiny 5 litres or 2.5 litre cannister of fuel and a hose / funnel? But these guys are also making huge profits, trading on the Nigerian sense of lack of time, and over reaching. If you're too busy to queue, what choice do you have?
Filling Station Owners
If you own a filling station and you can get fuel to it at the moment you can clear up. Admitedly everyone you know will be hounding you for fuel and delivery schedules but at least you're fine and you're making money regardless.
So here's an interesting question, is scarcity actually good for the economy, informal economy obviously, there's a lot of extra money floating around at the moment, proabbly enough that even if the subsidy was removed tomorrow and fuel traded at market prices we'd still be paying less on average. On second thoughts then maybe it's all a very clever communication strategy by the government, we'll all be so fedup of paying black market prices and "thank you's" that if the price went up to N150 a litre from N65 we'd still be happy, especially if we didn't have to queue anymore.
Apr
30th
Fuel Scarcity hits Lagos - Importers want to maintain the status quo
Published by: Mac on 30th Apr 2009
So after last week's glut of fuel on the Lagos market (left over from scarcity the previous week), we're now in the same position as the rest of the country with scarcity beginning to hit us hard.Apparently the issue is all to do with the lack of information from the government on reforms in the downstream oil and gas sector, and removal of the fuel subsidy. As a result the importers are importing only trickles meaning that the country is left with NNPC's supply only, couple this with a broken refinery and the country is short by about 20 million liters of fuel a day.
Personally I think the importers are idiots, even if the subsidy is removed they will then be able to sell at whatever price they want to (that's the whole point!) so if it's greed or a worry about losing money that is driving them then all they have to do is think about it and start pouring the fuel into the country. The real issue I suspect is around maintaing the status quo, the current system works for them and requires no effort so why change it.
Apr
29th
Mapping Web Trends
Published by: Mac on 29th Apr 2009
There's an interesting post here External Link which explores the so called transitions between web 1.0 to 2.0 to 2.5 to 3. The area that is quite interesting is a move from CPC (Cost per Click) advertising to CPA (Cost per Action), personally I don't see how this is beneficial to site owners at all and it totally fails to replicate real world models of advertising that are still really based on CPI (Cost per impression) models.In the brave new CPA world I would only pay if my advert is clicked on and then the visitor does something, like buy a product or register for more information. Now this model can only exist becuase of the added technology involved, there's no way it could happen in the traditional advertising world. Now in theory becuase you're paying per action not just per click or view the cost per action should be substanitally higher but I bet it won't be. What it implies is that the internet cannot be used for promotional / brand / product awareness advertising, which is in effect what all traditional print / billboard advertising is.
This idea brings the whole online advertising area into quite an interesting relief, particularly in Nigeria. Here people will think nothing of spending over a million Naira to advertise in a daily newspaper (of which no guranteed ciruclation figures are available and of which there are rarely more than 50,000 copies printed, sometimes as little as 10,000), but hardly anyone would spend even near that to advertise on a website that had the same number of unique page views. Why not? there is probably a higher chance that the advert will be seen and properly noticed, rather than just flicked past, but non one seems to trust it. For Nigerian websites and the Internet as a medium here to take off businesses have to learn to trust a little, and have to begin to equate the virtual world with the real one.
Footnote: I have recently heard that to advertise in Next on Sunday's Elan supplement costs in excess of 2 million Naira per full page, for a newspaper whose distribution is currently tiny (about 40,000 copies an edition) and that you rarely even seem to see on the streets.
