Connect with us

Uncategorized

Courier Companies Not Happy With Illegal Operators-Olufade

Published

on

Kindly share this post

Toyin Olufade, president, Association of Nigerian Courier Operators (ANCO) has immense knowledge of the courier industry having cut his teeth in DHL for nearly two decades. Olufade breathes sleeps and speaks with passion about the industry.

He is also the managing director of Swift Courier limited, a company founded in 1997 and today a frontrunner in the sector. Olufade spoke to Emeka Okafor on a wide range of issues.

Courier and Economic Development

I would want to say that as at today, the industry itself is just about 30 years old in Nigeria and it is still emerging. It is a growing industry and we expect it to contribute its own quota to the development of the economy of the country. Courier is what people call air express, movement of sensitive document at a rapid rate from one origin to a destination within the country or outside. Therefore, if you are talking about industrialization, the courier industry plays a prominent role. If you are talking about express document, you need courier and that implies that information can begin to move from one place to another at a very fast rate. We utilize the air, the road and the sea and that means we contribute to the development of the transport industry. Apart from that, do not forget we also utilize utilities. In this case we are talking about motorcycles, cars, trucks and we are a very high demand sector for these equipment. When you talk about employment, we have a lot of people employed in courier companies. If you believe that registered courier companies are about 240 in Nigeria at the moment, then you can imagine the number of employees in that sector. It is expected that each courier company should have at least five offices nationwide; so you can imagine the number of people in each office. So, it is a very big industry and we are still tracking the throttle. As it is on the international scene, a lot of courier companies have airlifts of their own but we are limited here. If you look at it in general, the courier industry, the air express sector, logistics sector, which all come under the same umbrella, contribute in the development of the economy.

Experience as ANCO President

You see, they say uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Right now, it is an evolving association. We are just about 4-5 years in the making and we thank God that we are duly recognized. Our mandate was handed over to us by Chief Cornelius Adebayo, immediate past communications minister, who was very supportive. That was some two and half years ago and since then, we have been waxing strong. The ideal is to promote the industry, to coordinate the activities of the courier industry and to ensure that we deliver service to the customers and clients alike. As for followership, we encourage our members, each registered and licensed courier company; that is registered with the CAC and licensed with the Courier Regulatory Department (CRD); to become a member so that we can have a vision of how to further develop the industry by contributing our quota in an organized, coordinated method and procedure. So far, we are making our impact and we are trying to coordinate it with other stakeholders in the industry. We work with the Shippers Council; we work with airfreight people, the commerce ministry, the embassy, so that we can have a coordinated approach to service delivery. Well, it has been good and membership of ANCO now ranges between 50-55 members. People are becoming aware of the need to come together to fashion a way forward, especially with the challenges that exist. The association in recent past has made its own input into other national assignments. We have been invited to several for a where we were asked to deliver papers and make our own input into those other organized private sectors. So, things have been working well for ANCO and we are actually asking other people whom we are hooking up to, to come together so that we can determine the way forward for the sector.

Illegal Operators

The funny thing is this, as you find a means of curbing their activities, they device another. It is an unending battle. But we are not relenting. Many thrive on illegality, they want to cut corners as to avoid due payment to government; and also cheat unsuspecting customers. The battle has been on by the courier regulatory body and we give them our one hundred percent support. As a matter of fact, in the last meeting we had with the regulatory body, we told them we were even prepared to go on raiding rounds with them so as to express our support. Let it be known that registered courier companies are not happy with the illegal conduct of others because the truth of the matter is; it keeps the industry in a bad light because if one company errs it is like every other company has done wrong and we want to clear negative impressions. We are professionals, adequately and well trained to offer optimum quality service to the country. Yes, illegality exists. You will be surprised that every person believes that he can run a courier service. It becomes a matter of just give me the letter and I will take it there. As such you find road transporters, the airlines and individuals running courier service from the booths of their cars in car lots, no fixed address. It is really dangerous for the industry and we give our support to the CRD in the current fight to correct the illegality.

ICT and Courier Sector

ICT and courier work together because we are talking about information processing. For instance, in courier we have what is called ‘Track and Trace’. That is, if you hand over your documents to me, it means you will be able to process it and know where it is at any point in time until it is delivered and of course, you cannot do that by word of mouth. It is information that is fed into information devices. For the industry itself, it also advertises us. If you have a website, people know where you are and you can feed them with information about you at any time. I have received calls through the internet from people and associations trying to find out about certain companies and it was easy for me to give them information or ask them to visit the companies’ websites. See, it makes life easier. So, ICT is very crucial to courier and I know by the way we are going; there will be further development between ICT and the Air Express industry.

Postal Reform

We should not talk much of postal reform because that is more of the public sector postal system. The postal system is not operating on the optimum currently but it is to our own advantage because it has helped us to move forward too. If it were effective, what would have happened to courier? But we have to step up ourselves and be able to deliver on time. The postal reform is necessary in Nigeria because the country is one of the poorest corresponding countries in the world. We do not write much and as a matter of fact, we do not even read. We need to improve on our communication at the postal sector which will rub off on the courier industry. As for the postal commission, it is what we the private sector operators and stakeholders agitated for. We really believe that it is an unfair practice to have a player regulating. There is no way he can be justified and we want to say that ANCO is impressed by the way things are going. We feel that it should even have been considered by the Senate at the moment but I believe it is already there and they are looking at it and probably thinking whether to make further submissions. We are eagerly looking forward to the establishment of the postal commission which will regulate and guide the operations of the postal sector.

Expectations from the Commission

We expect that there will be a more coordinated approach to service delivery and at the moment we have a sole regulator whose sole responsibility is to ensure that the consumer gets the best service which means that there will be more competition and effectiveness on service delivery and people will demand more from us. It will also affect pricing, time delivery and ways in which we offer services. It can even give rise to categorization because we will then begin to specialize. We are looking forward to its implementation so that consumers can begin to experience the effects.


Kindly share this post

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek believes that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. So since 2007, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and how they affect lives.

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Comments

Uncategorized

EAIF Commits Additional US$30M to Support Indorama’s Expansion with Third Urea Plant in Nigeria

Published

on

Kindly share this post

The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company, has committed a US$30 million senior debt facility to Indorama, a leading producer and exporter of fertiliser.

The investment enables the construction of a new plant, port terminal, handling stations, and storage facilities in Nigeria, providing a major boost for the country’s agricultural sector, which is a crucial driver of the country and region’s economic growth.

EAIF acted as a co-lender within a broader debt financing package arranged by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), mobilising US$1.25 billion from a syndicate of impact investors, development finance solutions, and commercial banks.

EAIF’s investment increases the Fund’s lending to the company to $111 million, reflecting a joint-ambition to accelerate Indorama’s growth strategy and Nigeria’s aspirations for diversification and industrialisation.

The new funding unlocks fresh capital to enable the construction of a dedicated port terminal and state-of-the-art urea fertiliser plant, anticipating an increase in its current capacity from 2.8 million metric tons to 4.2 million metric tons per annum.

The expansion leverages the company’s strategic location as a freight-competitive supplier serving the needs of significant urea markets in the southern Atlantic, including Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as West Africa, South Africa and the USA.

The facility bolsters Indorama’s capacity, extending its complex beyond the current two urea fertiliser plants, which is well poised to meet the entire demand of the Nigerian market.

The third urea plant aims to maximise output to meet the food demands of growing populations as disruptions precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis affect food security around the globe.

Global crop production is reliant on the international supply of fertiliser. The landmark project is expected to position Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, as a leading producer of urea among the top 10 producers worldwide.

Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 9 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, EAIF’s loan forms part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) objective for new infrastructure to drive action on climate and nature.

The construction of the port terminal and third plant is set to begin in 2024, with commercial operations expected to commence in 2026. During the construction phase, it is estimated that over 500 jobs will be generated, further contributing to economic development in Nigeria and beyond.

Commenting on the transaction, Olivia Carballo, Managing Director, Emerging Market, Fixed Income at Ninety One, the fund manager of the EAIF, said: “Our continued support for Indorama demonstrates EAIF’s commitment to harnessing the region’s significant economic prospects.

Africa’s potential for industrialisation is tremendous, and this landmark project is a testament to Nigeria’s enhanced ability to produce and export competitively priced, high-quality fertiliser to farmers in regional and international markets, which will remain a priority for years to come.”

Munish Jindal, CEO, Indorama, said: “Indorama will utilise state-of-the-art technology and adhere to stringent environmental standards to ensure optimal efficiency, product quality and sustainability.

We believe that the establishment of this fertiliser will position Nigeria as a key player in the global agricultural market. We are committed to maximising the potential of this project to benefit farmers, communities, and stakeholders across the value chain.

The involvement of esteemed lenders like the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund will not only help Nigeria’s in becoming one of the largest exporter of the fertilisers in the region but will also address the issues of global food security. We extend our sincere appreciation to all our partners, lenders, and stakeholders for their unwavering support and dedication to our shared vision.”

Sérgio Pimenta, IFC Vice President for Africa, said: “Reliable access to high quality fertiliser is essential for food production and food security around the world. IFC’s investment in Indorama, along with African, Asian, European, and American partners, signals our joint commitment to support the agriculture sector, Nigeria’s economy, and the expansion of Indorama, an important supplier in the global food chain.”


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

Uncategorized

Lifi.net Achieves 500mbps Speed to Rank among Fastest Internet Providers in Nigeria

Published

on

Kindly share this post

Lifi.net, a fast-growing internet service provider, has attained internet speed that is many times faster than the documented average internet speed in Nigeria as at January 2024.

Lifi.net Image

Latest disclosure by LIfi.net shows that the company now delivers up to 500 megabits per seconds (mbps) internet speed in unlimited services provided to homes and offices. This is higher than the country’s average internet speed of 26.74mbps.

As internet subscriber base increases in Nigeria and hit 161.68 million in January, the quality of internet service provided by operators to their users still constitutes concerns as 2G network which has limited speed dominates the space by covering 57.78%.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed through its latest data that while 3G is responsible for 9.36% of internet users in the country, 4G covers 31.75% of internet access and 5G internet only serves 1.11% of internet users in the country.

This combination explains why Nigeria ranked 93rd on the global mobile internet speed test out of 144 countries tested by Ookla, a U.S-based internet speed analysis firm, in January, putting the country’s median internet speed at 26.74 megabits per second (mbps).

However, Lifi.net (NT/007/22), a licensee of NCC, is among few Internet service providers (ISPs) that deliver fastest internet speed in Nigeria with up 350mbps for homes and 2500mbps for offices while assisting new ISPs with speeds over 5000mbps at the data centre and delivering the capacity to their various hubs at no extra cost.

“For over five years Lifi.net has been a leading network company, providing quality internet solutions at the speed of light and at affordable rates. We have highly technical and hard-working personnel and partners. We are very skilled at managing Cisco and Mikrotik Routers’ deployment, configurations, and integrations, fibre laying, and splicing,” says Abraham Oluwambe, Chief Operating Officer of Lifi.net.

He added that as operators attract more subscribers to their respective networks, they should equally place a premium on upgrading the quality of services to deliver broadband at the fastest internet speed possible.

“Our services are not only widespread but also affordable. We believe in making quality connectivity accessible to all. We understand the importance of budget-friendly solutions. Our cost-effective broadband plans ensure you get the best value for your investment without compromising on quality.

“While providing high-speed and reliable broadband connectivity, operators may choose the floor or the peak performance of its service. At Lifi.net, we always go for the latter,” he said.


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

Uncategorized

Our 2023 Ads Safety Report

Published

on

Kindly share this post

By Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety

Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

Gen AI Bolsters Enforcement 

Our safety teams have long used AI-driven machine learning systems to enforce our policies at scale. It’s how, for years, we’ve been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively – they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.

LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies. Take, for example, our policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They  adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.

To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.

We’ve only just begun to leverage the power of LLMs for ads safety. Gemini, launched publicly last year, is Google’s most capable AI modeI. We’re excited to have started bringing its sophisticated reasoning capabilities into our ads safety and enforcement efforts.

Our Work to Prevent Fraud and Scams

In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.

  • In November, we launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar. Under this policy, we’ve implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances–for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

  • A critical part of protecting people from online harm hinges on our ability to respond to new abuse trends quickly. Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.

Overall, we blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.

The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.

Investing in Election Integrity

Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.

Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions.

Additionally, we’ve continued to enforce our policies against ads that promote demonstrably false election claims that could undermine trust or participation in democratic processes.

Overall 2023 Numbers

Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all these fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.

Staying Nimble and Looking Ahead

When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. That’s why we are continuously developing new policies, strengthening our enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.

In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.

Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead.


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

Trending