Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, guys. Welcome to the Techpoint Africa podcast.
Your usual host, Nifemi, would not be joining us today. She's dealing with some other assignment somewhere else.
So today, myself and Tim Goziram will be co hosting the podcast today.
So on the podcast today, we'll be talking about one of Nigeria's foremost fintech startups, interswitch, and their financial results from last year. We'll be taking a look at how they performed and also be looking at another nigerian startup, Lemphi. It's a remittance startup, and we're looking at their expansion into China. Sounds very interesting, and I do hope you join us till the end of the podcast. On the podcast today, we have a very interesting guest joining us. His name is Abu Bakr Idris. He's a very well known tech journalist. I will allow him introduce himself and tell you about himself. Hello, Abubakar. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Hi, guys. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Hello. My name is Abu Bakr Idris. I'm a tech journalist covering the US and the african tech industry. Over the last seven years, I've worked at various publications, including tech, about technics, stairs, business, rest of world, and currently at the information where, you know, Silicon Valley, and I'm based York.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much for joining us today, Abubaka. All right, so let's get into it. So, like I said, we're starting with Interswitch, right? And their financial results from last year. And very interesting stuff.
Abubaka, what really stood out? What were those things that stood out in that financial reports for you?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess the first thing that I found interesting was the fact, the size of the company, the revenue in particular.
Over the last couple of years, people have speculated how large interest rates could look like maybe it's a trillionaire business and stuff like that. But now we have definitive information that it is not a trillionaire business yet, but it's high growing. It's a high growth business. It's grown revenue 23% over the last up to March 23. And so that's interesting. On the one hand, other things that I found interesting is that this business is profitable, which is something that you do not see often in the fintech space or even in the startup space generally. But it's been profitable for a long time, like, I think relatively since 2019. It's posted profits according to the reports that we've seen. And so that's also interesting. Other things that I found to be fascinating is the fact that a significant chunk of his revenue still comes from Nigeria. We've always seen interswitch with various business units like verve, the card business, as a behemoth that covers the african continent entirely. For some reasons, this business still has limited footprints. It has a large footprint outside of Nigeria. But for some reasons, the bulk of its revenue still comes from Nigeria. Although the business is expanding, they recently scooped up the rest of the ownership shares in their East Africa business. Basically what that does is it gives them the right to incorporate the full revenue for Interswitch East Africa as part of the Interswitch holdings full revenue. So maybe we'll get to see more of the performance in East Africa, and that will be helpful to contextualize how big this business really is. And, yeah, we've also seen how Interswitch is expanding into mobile money. They have two businesses in this space, Mkudi and Quickteller, which they incorporated as Interswitch, financial inclusion services, IFIs. And so now they're merging both businesses into a single unit, which would help them grow faster and become more efficient. That's how they described it. And I think the last thing is the fact that they expanded into telecoms. It's not something that we saw coming. But for some reasons, Interswitch believes that it needs to expand into telecom services. And so it has scooped up that mobile virtual network operator license from the NCC. And so we might get to see an interswitch mobile operator, whatever, in the next couple of years or months, depending on the timeline for which they are going about their product launch.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: All right. Really interesting stuff, actually. And out of those things, that really stood out for you. I think one interesting thing is about how we've always perceived interswitch as, like you said, probably a trillion dollar company. And I'm wondering, what does this now mean for similar companies in Nigeria? Take flutter wave, for example.
Could that mean that mean that there could also be a possibility that we've overestimated the size of some other fintechs in Nigeria as well?
[00:05:23] Speaker B: That is an interesting question. I mean, people ask the same question with Interswitch, too. The fact that Interswitch's revenue in dollar terms, it seems very small.
The business looks very small.
I believe at the time, the business was, in current money terms, like the business did, revenue of $6.6 billion, billionaire. But in dollar terms, that is just $42 million in today's money. But a year ago, that was $145,000,000. So when people compare the revenue in today's terms, they believe that interest, which is overvalued at the billion dollars. But in reality, this business actually has grown revenue on the one hand, and then its revenue at the time when the report was filed was actually significant. $145,000,000.
It's not truly money. It's really huge in the context of Nigeria. And so when you think about it in that sense, $145,000,000 at the time, using exchange rate in March 2023. That is useful context for thinking about what the size of similar businesses could look like. And so I expect that other nigerian businesses, other nigerian fintechs like Flutterwave, paystack are also dealing with the same devaluation crunch which makes their naira revenue in dollar terms look smaller. But their revenue in naira terms, strictly in naira terms, is probably for some business. I've heard that their revenue in naira town is probably higher than what interestrich is doing or close to what interest is doing. So I think the good thing is interstate revenue gives us a price point or a marker to think about the revenue that we should expect from fintech. Similar businesses like Interswitch, whether it's flutterwave or op in some instances. Now we have contextual revenue to work with to think about the side of some of these businesses.
People throw around figures weirdly in the nigerian tech industry about revenue and growth. But now when you have hardcore facts like what interstitial put out there, it makes it simpler and more reasonable for people to think, okay, if industry is doing roughly six $7 billion billionaire rather than other businesses are probably doing around this figure. And so it helps people to tame their expectations about what kind of revenue they should expect from similar businesses in the space.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: All right, thank you very much, Abubaka. That actually makes a lot of sense.
I don't know if you have thoughts based on what we think about fintech businesses in Nigeria, but if you don't, maybe, I'm sure you have some interesting things that also stood out for you in that interswitch report. I don't know if you could share some of those with us as well.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: I don't exactly have thoughts that are different from what Abu Bakr said for how we look at other fintech businesses. I think we've had some numbers about flutter waves revenue in the last few years. I think about supposedly around $90 million. So it kind of tracks with what intersweet does. But for what I found interesting would probably be interswitch trying to get into telco or getting into the telco space. They are doing it with an MVNO license, which kind of just to do a little explanation. MVNOs, they basically broadband from mobile network operators. So MTN, ETL, Glue, and probably nine mobile, they lease from them and then they resell to other consumers. So why is it interesting to me? I mean, ideally, ordinarily you don't expect a fintech to go from financial services to providing telecoms, but I'm also curious as to why they made that decision.
Industry has been around for quite some time, about 20 something years. And I like to think that if you stay around for that long and you do very well, then you didn't get there by chance. It's because you've made some good decisions. So I'm not very sure, but in this case, I'm not very sure what they are seeing. I'm not too optimistic. The MVNO license was launched, it became a thing last year, and we have about 30 companies or so that have gotten it. But I'm not really sure that there's a lot of opportunity in that space for any new entrants. Of course you will not.
Yeah, I mean, people, you could disagree, but of course you're not going to be competing with MTN because you're essentially feeding off them so you can be competing with them. You're competing with the other 31 companies or so that have the same license. Thankfully, industry has the highest license and they can offer a lot more services. So why do I think that market is probably not as interesting as large as people expect?
MTN has the largest coverage right now, and what an MVN can possibly do is reduce the cost of accessing certain services. Now, whether people would switch from an MTN or an established telco to a cheaper product is left to be seen. Yes, we know that Nigerians are price sensitive, but they are not necessarily going to provide you with a service that is heavily discounted because they have to make some revenue. So they're not going to provide you with heavily discounted services. So I am not expecting a huge shift from the likes of MTN to, let's say, interswitch, for example.
Now that's on that. But we also know that. So MVNOs are more common in the US, and lately we've seen them try to, they're trying to move away from just depending on the revenue they make from providing those telecommunication services to value added services. So that suggests that there's sort of a cap on your revenues. As an mVNo, you can only do so much. So what value added service could interswitch possibly come up with? I'm not very sure. At this point. But I don't know.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: I'd like to know what Abubaka thinks about this.
I think I disagree with, you know, when he says what this license could mean for interswitch in terms of revenues or basically how big they could get with this new license. I'd like to know what your thoughts are on this. Abubakar, do you agree with.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: I think I agree partially in the sense that Nigerians are price sensitive, but still, they would not easily switch telecom brands as easy as we think. But I think there's a lot of opportunities in the space, too. When you look at the data filed, published by the NCC, for example, you realize that the nigerian telecom space is essentially a three company market right now, because nine mobile has consistently lost customers since 2017. And it has lost customers on every level, whether it's on porting on data on regular mobile services. And so basically, it makes it a three horse race. And for anybody who customers in the space, it kind of limits their options. And so they are stuck between an MTN igloo and an Airtel, and then a fast. Our fourth option is a nymobile. And very few people want to switch to nymobile right now because speculation is that the quality of their network has degraded significantly, which is sad. And so basically, that leaves three companies in the space. And so if you are an Mnvo like Interswitch is planning, you're basically going to be riding on the rails of an established telecom company like MTN, for example. And you are basically expecting that MTN will provide you with top notch infrastructure for you to reach customers, if that is possible. Then the only thing you would need to do as an MNBO, in this case, would be to market your brand to customers and make them think that it's a new thing detached from the MTN experience that they already know. Detached from the Airtel experience they already know, or a glue experience. And basically, you're making them feel like they're starting afresh with something more sustainable, with something different. And so, from a brand perspective, they seem to be that opportunity that exists, that an MNPO could actually win over customers that want to find an alternative to the three biggest players in the space right now. So there is that hook. The other hook is data is growing and growing fast in the country. And the top three telecom companies are benefiting from this growth significantly. And you can see it in their reports. For example, the data segment of MTN's revenue finally overtook the voice aspect of it, which is airtime and regular phone calls that people make and so now data is overtaking that aspect, which means that in the next couple of years, MTN is actually going to be a largely data driven business. And so for anybody who's paying attention to this space, that creates a lot of opportunity.
That signals, again, that the infrastructure is robust enough to support MnVos. It also means that there's a lot of things that customers are expecting from their telecom service beyond regular voice calls. So I believe that there are still a lot of opportunities there for the right player to step in and figure out the right strategy to reach customers and to support customers on different levels, beyond making voice calls and also providing a different type of revenue beyond the regular airtime income that NTN currently gets or the other three telecom companies currently get. So I believe there's a lot of opportunities there. What I do not know is what kind of strategy interestrich is looking to get with their report. Basically hints that they want to know, find a sweet spot between payments and telecoms with this Mnvo license. But I'm not sure what that entirely means because they can't exactly run a data center, for example. They can't exactly run paypoint, deploy POS devices. That's not really a telecom business that they can run with. So it's a little bit confusing, or should I say unclear about what this telecom business could look like. But they've spent 500 million trying to get the license. So the safe bet is that they have a strategy in place, and we'll get to know eventually what direction they are going to go when this business kicks off.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, you're absolutely right. Only time will tell what their strategy is and how exactly they'll go about it.
I think another way to look at this would be, while I agree with you and Jim Kosim, I think another way to look at this would be looking at it through the lens of looking at it outside the telecom space. Right.
We all know the kind of impact telecommunications companies have that they've had on the tech ecosystem. Right.
Some people will even say telecoms companies were the first tech businesses in Nigeria. Right. And they literally paved the way for other tech companies.
I think there's still a bit of.
There's still a group of boarding tech ecosystems within Africa that can benefit from these MnvO licenses, which is the interesting thing about these licenses, because when you look at a lot of other countries where these licenses are more popular, like Jim comes in, said in the US, the group of people that are able to tap into it are usually those segments that the telecoms companies have actually left behind that they've not really been able to offer the services to. So maybe it might not be like a super huge revenue generator for Interswitch, but it could actually have a very huge effect on the tech space in general. And I don't know, maybe you can see more ecosystems come up as a result of this license. Okay, so before we go on to the next thing, I think it's also important for us to let our listeners actually understand what MNV licenses.
MNV. Did I say that correct? Sorry, mVno. I've been saying MNV, what mVNo licenses actually are.
[00:19:18] Speaker C: I think I already explained it.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:22] Speaker C: Okay, so like the data resellers some of us use.
Okay, so mobile network operators like MTN, Glow Nine, mobile and ETL, they have specific bandwidth that they typically can't use. But it's not like, let's say you need like 100 units, for example.
You're not just going to buy 100 units, you need to buy more than that.
It's common practice for them. So they'll typically buy more than that and you have some excess bandwidth that you're not exactly doing anything with. So with MVNOs, what they now do is that they are basically leasing it out or selling it to MVNOs who can now offer the same services that they offer to customers. So I think for Nigeria's case, this license kind of mandates them to put a lot of their services in rural areas, which is why I'm also not very optimistic about it because I see in the rural areas, MTN, for example, has really good coverage in rural areas.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: So if MTN has really good coverage, I don't know, would people really switch? But like Abu Bakr said, is your job to market to those people? And hopefully they switch. But the fact that they are being encouraged to spend a lot of their basically encouraged to target the rural areas heavily, I'm not exactly sure.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: But let's see, I have a different mindset about it. So I think the whole point of MVNO license means that you can offer these services, but without spending the amount of money that MNOs like MTN have spent on infrastructure, basically. So I think that kind of gives you room to be more agile than MNOs. Right. It gives you room to be more agile. It gives you room to give very competitive prices, to offer those services at very competitive prices, which again is also dependent on the tier of license you have.
But I think with that advantage that major because these infrastructures are like one of the, probably some of the biggest expenses by these telcos we're talking about MTN in the last podcast and how much they lost, how much did the devaluation cost them? Because a lot of their expenses are in dollars, right? So if Interswitch doesn't have that problem, if other firms with MVNO licenses don't have that issue, where they have to now start setting up infrastructure and they don't have to spend that much money, I think maybe those competitive prices could be a significant competitive edge for them.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: I mean, that's the hope here.
So I'm just thinking about our local cloud services provider or local, let's say, web hosting providers, right?
In a way, they are using a similar model. Most of them are not. They don't have the capacity to offer, they don't have the infrastructure for some of the services that they offer. So they either buying from, they either renting servers from foreign companies or something like that. And one of the biggest complaints has always been the quality of service. And I remember, I think last year or two years ago when Hugo, now go, 54, former CEO, was speaking with us, he mentioned that the problem is the quality of their service is at the mercy of the quality of service of their partners. So if your third party service provider is, if they don't have really good services, you really can't do better than them. So that's the biggest problem. And in the last few months, we've had almost all, I think all telcos, we've had major issues with the quality of service.
I think MTN at some point had to, I think they suffered fiber damage.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: We don't know what happened with Ethel and maybe glue, but we are sure of what happened with MTN and the quality of their service has been bad for quite some time. So the fact that these guys are at the mercy of the MNOs, or makes me cautious, because if MTN doesn't do well, if they are down for a day, you're down and your customers do not, they probably would not know that you're getting your services from a third party. And really they don't care and you're going to get all the blame. So if MTN services, for example, improve, then if you get from MTN, of course you do better. But let's see what happens over the next few months.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So, Abubaka, I understand you can't join us throughout the podcast, so I don't know if you have time for one more question.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Okay. All right. So I just want to touch on Interswitch, their earnings and how the devaluation of Dinara really impacted it. So what I want to know is, for example, like I said last week, we're talking about MTN, and while some of their expenses were in dollars, right, it really affected, and they end in error, right. It really affected their revenue. Right. I think they lost about 760,000,000,000 error or so just due to that narrow devaluation. So I want to know, how does this devaluation really impact interswitch based on the kind of cost for them that is in dollars?
Is it just as bad as what we saw with MTN? Or is just that when they convert their earnings to dollars is just lower? Is that the only issue they have, or does it go beyond that?
[00:25:37] Speaker B: I think it's both problems. When you look at Interswitch's earnings, a couple of main takeaways. The first is their gross margin. Their gross margin is relatively high.
They've consistently maintained 88% gross margin on their business, which basically means that it cost them their cost of selling interest rate services, whether it's their mobile money business or their card payments, all of it is fairly low on a cost basis. Where they have a problem is the expenses, the rest of the expenses, the operational expenses, like several components of it, it could be priced in dollars. And so that actually eats into their profits. Revenue is growing, which is a good thing, or profits is declining because they're not able to make as much money as they should, because they are spending all this money on operating their business to keep it alive. And so that has been the main challenge for businesses like intersweet. Like you have all this cost, like you mentioned, in dollars.
You also have to pay your employees at a rate that matches up to or is higher than inflation, or else you lose talent. And so you have all of these challenges you have to keep up with. And so that impacts your revenue significantly, not rather your profits. And so what you end up realizing, like, even with the case of MTN is revenue is high, it continues to grow, but your net profit continues to decline because you just have to spend a good chunk of your revenue on maintaining your cost, on keeping your cost, servicing the rest of your business. And so that's where the main challenge is. Revenue is doing well. Revenue is on the high side, profits is declining because you are being squeezed on an operating basis. And so that's the challenge that business like Interswitch and MTN are facing. But also, you realize that this business, they have foreign investors, and so their investors are paying attention to the revenue. Their investors are all private guys, and they've marked up the value of this company on a dollar basis. And so when they have to now evaluate how this business performed in 2024, for example, they are going to use present money rate. That's the dollar rate. And that, in a sense, is going to devalue this company, like maybe Devalue their revenue by 7% here about. And so when you have to deal with that kind of situation from an international investment investor perspective, it's not rosy, it's not a good idea, it's not as positive as you expect. But on the whole, if the investor is comfortable with the realities of investing in an emerging market like Nigeria, these are the kind of things you have to expect. You have to expect devaluation. You have to expect that in terms of dollar revenue, this business is not going to look as exciting as you expect. But everybody is pinning their hopes on this very nifty thing, which is the exchange rate. And if that picks up, dollar revenue for interswitch would pick up, too. If it goes down, dollar revenue for interswitch would go down, too. So that is something that investors have to get comfortable with. And I believe the guys, like Visa, for example, have priced this in way back since 2019. They've already estimated that if interest rate grows to whatever revenue gets to by 2023 or 2024, what would their revenue run rate look like? What would their multiples revenue multiples look like? And would they be comfortable with whatever multiple they get five years down the line by 2023? March, when it switch filed this report, or when this report was ended, it looked like visa had good reasons to price the company the way they did.
Revenue was around seven times the valuation. With the current exchange rate, it's 24 times its current revenue, current valuation. So these are all the realities that international investors have to take into cognizance when they invest in businesses. And it can dent investor confidence when you look at markets like this, but it can also create opportunities for faster growth in the future because this business are able to take advantage of the growth domestically and just leapfrog whatever innovation already exists. But that's where the challenge is. Everybody's hoping that at some point, the macroeconomic environment for Nigeria would improve, and the business that have been able to take advantage of the weaknesses in the market for a while will benefit off that growth eventually.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you very much, Abubaka. That makes a lot of sense. I think investors, or should I say people in the tech ecosystem in Nigeria, I think now they have, like, two major prayer points. It's for investors to be comfortable with knowing that the narrative could keep falling, or for them to pray that the narrator gains against the dollar. I don't know which one is more likely to happen, but it's a real problem, and I hope we find a solution to it. Jim, do you think investors will be comfortable with thinking that? Okay, if I'm investing in Nigeria, I have to be comfortable with the fact that my returns will be low due to the exchange rate. Do you think that's something investors will have at the back of their mind.
[00:31:13] Speaker C: Businesses are exiting Nigeria, so obviously they're not very comfortable with it, but some people would be. So I guess the people who stay back either get burnt or they would get to make lots of money.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Okay.
Thank you so much, Amubaka. Thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure having you and very insightful comments by you. We hope to have you some other time.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Thanks, guys. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Have a lovely day.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: You too.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: All right, so from Interswitch, we're going to go to another fintech company, right? But this time around, while Interswitch is trying to get into telecoms, this other company is trying to get into China. And that company is Lemphi. Right.
Lemphi is working on the expansion into China. And I think that is really interesting.
But I think one very interesting question I have about Lemphai's move to China is Lemphai is into remittance. Right? So what's the size of the chinese diaspora in Africa, and also the other way around?
[00:32:34] Speaker C: Okay, so do we really need to know the size of the african diaspora, for example, in China? Anyway, so I think it's an interesting move and a good one.
We've seen nigerian startups or african startups begin to build solutions that target the diaspora. And I think it's smart.
The people back home are seeing their purchasing power dwindle. So it just makes sense for you to go to the people who have hopefully a little more purchasing power.
We know already that Nigeria received about 20 billion in remittances last year. And so what Lempha is basically doing, Nigeria alone, Africa had about 100 billion. So what Lempha is doing is basically plugging into one of those markets. We've seen them go into the US, into China, and into UK, into the UK. China is, I mean, on the outside. I think it's kind of obvious why you would enter China first. We've seen increased chinese influence in Africa, or we've seen increased chinese influence in Africa.
Some of the largest mobile phone manufacturers are chinese.
We've also seen african governments increasingly more comfortable with doing business with the chinese government or with chinese businesses. So there's a green link.
Some people in the west are really g three over that. Boy, there's definitely something happening there.
We are doing a lot more business with them. More chinese nationals are moving into Africa, either as investors or to set up businesses. So there's definitely something there. To the question about how many. The size of the chinese diaspora in Africa, some estimates put it between a million and 2 million people. So that is a sizable market, at least for now. That could grow over the next few years. That could grow. And if it does grow, then that's a larger market that we could expect lemfi to serve. As for how many Nigerians or Africans, for example, are in China, I think it's probably bit difficult to know the exact numbers, but I'm going to assume that it's roughly okay. So if you have about a million, I'm just going to do a back of paper math. Maybe around 300,000 people or maybe 200,000 people. We've seen Nigerians or Africans move there for education in particular, and some of them end up staying back after education. So, yeah, there's a sizable market there that they are going after. But what I think they are probably looking at is the fact that we are doing a lot of business with them. And it may not be your $100 every month that they are after. It could be the nigerian businesses who have to do business with the chinese guys and who have to send money. Of course, remittance is different from cross border payments anyway. So whether they decide to do cross border payments at some point, I think that's something they might be looking into. But, yes, I think it's a good move generally.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: It's definitely a good move because in 20 alone, trade between Nigeria and China was valued at around 4.5 billion. Right. Which I think is a bit conservative.
[00:36:25] Speaker C: First of all, your economy is in a very large economy, so let's start with that.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: All right? Okay. All right, I agree with you. So if two countries are doing that much when it comes to trades, I think it really puts Lempha in a position where they can not just profit from people that are sending money back home for school fees or sending money back home to their parents. It now puts them in that position to end from people that are actually doing serious business and are sending really large sums of money.
We're just talking about investors and what the narrow devaluation has been doing to businesses. So maybe this is a technique by Lemfi to stay afloat, which I think work really well.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: I mean, most of their business is not in.
Yeah, they probably are not too affected.
I think a good number of their team would be in Nigeria, which is good if you're not primarily serving the nigerian market, for example. But a good number of your team is here. You have, like, a low cost base.
So this might not be something that I think. Last year, they moved into Canada and the UK.
They also acquired the fintech. Can't remember the name. I think an IMto in the UK, which is good. So I think it's just following that line. They just raised 38 million or so last year. So you have enough money to play?
I don't know.
I think it's a good movie.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: To.
[00:38:15] Speaker C: Not sound like I am a lemfi fan, but I think it's a good move. Live the nigerian market, go to other markets, test yourself.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: I just remember that gig logistics also did something similar where they.
[00:38:35] Speaker C: Tried to.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: Open a service center in China for people who need to send stuff back home. Well, I mean, Jaiji, we've not really gotten any update on how that is going. It's probably going really well. And Jaiji is not really known to review so many things about the operations. But I think it makes sense, again, going back to the amount of trade we do with China. So, yeah, interesting stuff. All right, thank you so much, guys. I think that's been a really interesting conversation, from interswitches finances to the MVNO license, I hope I got it correctly. And Lemfi's move to China, this is all we can take for today, but we have a ton of other things happening in the news, in tech news, generally in Africa, and you can find them on the techpoint Africa websites, but I'll just mention a few. So, Uber and Lagos, they're in a bit of a scuffle with each other.
There is something about Uber sharing some sort of data with the Lagos State government. Uber doesn't want to. Lagos State government insist they should. And then a US federal agent and a kenyan executive have reviewed.
So a bit of a backstory to this. So I'm sure you're already aware we've talked a lot about the scoffle going on between binance and the nigerian government.
Two executives from that company were detained. Now we have their identities. They've been detained for about two weeks now, and the nigerian government has not really said why they are being detained or charged them with any criminal offense. So that is still going on. The families of the two executives have said a lot about their state of well being. One of them actually got sick, but has been treated. We hope all goes well, and we hope negotiations between Nigeria and binance goes well. And yeah, that's pretty much everything. For more news, and to stay on top of the news, go to Techpoint Africa website. Another way you can do that is to subscribe to our flagship newsletter, Techpoint Digest.
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If you are a fan of the investment world in Africa, investments in the tech ecosystem, basically you should pitch your tent with Tim Gazun. He has a newsletter called Equity Merchants that talks about investors, talks about founders and their relationship with investors. But if you're more around the work space and you want to know what's going on with work in startup ecosystem or work generally in Nigeria, you should subscribe to the modern workplace Africa newsletter that is run by Oluanifemi. That is all we can take for today. Thank you so much for joining us. Remember to share this podcast. Like and subscribe. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend.
