Broadcasting
How Business and Government Can Put Trust at the Centre of Our AI Future
Zuko Mdwaba, Salesforce Area VP / Africa Executive
Generative AI is revolutionising the way we live and work. Across industries, leaders and users alike are experimenting and tapping into the power of these technologies to their advantage.
Photography for SAS in April 2017 by Jeremy Glyn.
Nearly 7 in 10 workers say generative AI will help them better serve customers.
But like any new technology, generative AI is not without risks. Unlike consumer AI, like Apple’s Siri and Amazon Alexa, enterprise customers require higher levels of trust and security, especially in regulated industries.
When working with the world’s leading businesses, it’s critical to explore this technology in an intentional and responsible way so that ethics remain top of mind for customers, addressing concerns around data ethics, privacy and control of their data.
It’s encouraging to see governments begin to take definitive action to ensure trustworthy AI. Businesses are eager for guardrails and guidance and are looking to the government to create policies and standards that will help ensure trustworthy and transparent AI.
Helping users understand when and what AI is recommending, especially for high risk or consequential decisions, is critical to ensuring that end users have access to information about how AI-driven decisions are made.
Creating risk-based frameworks, pushing for commitments to ethical AI design and development, and convening multi-stakeholder groups are just a few key areas where policymakers must help lead the way.
It’s not just about asking more of AI. We need to ask more of each other — our governments, businesses, and civil society — to harness the power of AI in safe, responsible ways.
We don’t have all the answers, but we understand that leading with trust and transparency is the best path forward.
There are numerous ways that business and government can deepen trust in AI, providing us with the technical know-how and muscle memory to handle new risks as they emerge.
Protect people’s privacy
The AI revolution is a data revolution, and we need comprehensive privacy legislation to protect people’s data.
At Salesforce, we believe companies should not use any datasets that fail to respect privacy and consent.
By creating a separation of the data from the Large Language Model (LLM), organisations can be confident that their data is being protected from access via third parties without customer and user consent. When that data is accessed by the LLM, it’s important it is kept safe through a number of methods like secure data retrieval, dynamic grounding, data masking, toxicity detection, and zero retention.
When collecting data to train and evaluate models, it’s important to respect data provenance and ensure that companies have consent to use that data.
For governments, protecting their citizens while encouraging inclusive innovation means creating and giving access to privacy-preserving datasets that are specific to their countries and cultures.
Policy should address AI systems, not just models
A lot of attention is being paid to models, but to address high risk use cases we must take a holistic view: on data, models, and apps. Every entity in the AI value chain must play a role in responsible AI development and use.
A one-size-fits-all approach to regulation may hinder innovation, disrupt healthy competition, and delay the adoption of the technology that consumers and businesses around the world are already using to boost productivity.
Regulation should differentiate the context, control, and uses of the technology and assign guardrails accordingly. Generative AI developers, for instance, should be accountable for how the models are trained and the data they are trained on. At the same time, those deploying the technology and deciding how the tool is being used should establish rules governing that interaction.
When it comes to model sizes, bigger is not always better. Smaller models offer high quality responses and can be better for the planet. Governments should incentivise carbon footprint transparency and help scientists advance carbon efficiency for AI.
Appropriate guardrails will unlock innovation
Trust in AI is as important as functionality. Enterprises increasingly require on-demand availability, highly solid uptime, and reliable security. For example, when companies offer a service, customers expect it to be available most of the time. This powers trust.
Organisations need AI tools that are available, fault-tolerant, secure, and sustainable – this is ultimately how they build trust both within their organisation and with their customers.
Luft Pay TV has officially launched in Nigeria’s Pay TV landscape, bringing a fresh perspective to home entertainment.
Officials of Luft Pay TV at the launch
The brand’s dynamic debut in Lagos recenlty, drew media executives, content creators, industry stakeholders, and entertainment enthusiasts.
Yemi Adebowale, head of Corporate Communications and Media at Luft Pay TV, emphasised the brand’s mission to simplify entertainment and provide real value. “Luft Pay TV is more than just another player in the market.
He said, “We’re here to simplify entertainment, eliminate confusion around billing, and provide real value with high-definition content that reflects both global quality and local identity.
Luft Pay TV’s standout feature is its all-in-one subscription model, offering over 35 premium channels for ₦7,500 per month.
The channel lineup includes Sports, Live sports action, Movies: Nollywood and Hollywood films as well as Kids’ Programming, Documentaries, Music and Lifestyle content.
“Decoder and STB Kit Prices: Decoder: ₦25,000 – Complete STB kit with accessories: ₦35,000. As a proudly Nigerian brand, Luft Pay TV is committed to promoting local storytelling through partnerships with indigenous content creators.
“This initiative aims to project African stories globally and provide an inclusive, affordable, and proudly African entertainment experience to Nigerians everywhere.”
Luft Pay TV has commenced nationwide installations across the six geopolitical zones, supported by a growing distribution network and robust customer service infrastructure.
This ensures a seamless user experience for subscribers
With its innovative approach and commitment to Nigerian talent, Luft Pay TV is poised to revolutionise the television experience in Nigeria.
By Aniekan Ezekiel
What happens when legacy meets preparedness? What results from such a combination? Let us not be in a hurry to put forward any answers yet. Instead, let us consider first the opposite situation: When legacy meets unpreparedness.
The world abounds in examples of this distressing situation. A dynasty that has built wealth from generation to generation, with its illustrious heirs providing generational leadership, finds itself in a strange phase where an ill-prepared heir takes over the reins and in that same generation, not the next, wipes out the entire family fortune built over several generations.
We see the same thing with nations. History is replete with examples of great nations built by great leaders, which slid into oblivion when they were hit by arguably the greatest misfortune that ever befalls humanity – bad leadership. It is the reason American author and leadership expert John Maxwell asserts, “Everything rises and falls with leadership.”
As with nations, so with organisations. We see organisations that have thrived for decades and over several generations, get a new leader who is not prepared for such leadership, and the leader pushes the organisation to the brink of collapse.
Contrast this picture with the situation at Nigeria’s most enduring corporate organisation with the most amazing legacies of firsts, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, which witnessed a leadership transition about a year ago. Faced with a number of quality options in and outside the then management team, the decision-makers at the bank and its parent company FBNHoldings, now First HoldCo Plc, had to be clear-minded about who could become the new Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group.
Equally important as the need for continuity was the non-negotiable requirement for capacity to manage the ship of the 130-years-plus institution to sustain its enviable legacies and consolidate the gains made in recent years. The search was for someone with a steady head and hands (talk of risk control and mitigation), in addition to an excellent track record of sterling performance and achievements.
Fortunately, fate was on their side. They did not have to look outside. Right there before them was someone who understood all kinds of risks and how to control and mitigate them. He had been with FirstBank since 2016 when he joined as Group Executive / Chief Risk Officer. Then in January 2022 he was elevated to Executive Director / Chief Risk Officer and Executive Compliance Officer.
This man has given nearly three decades of his working life to the banking and financial services industry. He has under his belt a rich tapestry of cross-functional experience in credit risk management, financial planning and control, credit and marketing, and trade. His cross-functional exposure also includes corporate and commercial banking, agriculture financing, oil and gas, transportation, including aviation and shipping, and project financing
Meet Olusegun Alebiosu, the man history had prepared and the one decision-makers chose among the quality options. He was appointed substantive Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group in June 2024, having acted in that capacity since April 2024 when the former CEO left.
Determined to build on the bank’s legacies while navigating the ever-changing landscape of the financial services industry, Alebiosu has shown unwavering commitment to lead the bank through a transformative period that places emphasis on strategic consolidation, technological advancement and market expansion.
Alebiosu’s approach to sustaining the legacies of firsts at FirstBank, which has been at the vanguard of accelerating Nigeria’s digital payments as the first bank to issue over 13 million cards to customers, draws from his vast professional experience which began with Oceanic Bank Plc, now Ecobank Plc, in 1991. Between then and joining FirstBank in 2016, he had worked at Coronation Merchant Bank as Chief Risk Officer, at African Development Bank Group as Chief Credit Risk Officer and at United Bank for Africa as Group Head, Credit Policy and Deputy Chief Credit Risk Officer.
Under one year of his appointment as substantive CEO of FirstBank, Alebiosu’s strategic consolidation efforts have demonstrated that he is a worthy successor, not an ill-prepared or unprepared one, proving the decision-makers right. Understanding the critical role of its human capital in sustaining the bank’s legacies, Alebiosu has invested himself and the bank’s resources in promoting staff welfare.
A comprehensive review of the bank’s compensation structure was undertaken to position it within the 75th percentile of the industry, making the bank more retentive of, and attractive to, the best talents. The highest number of staff promotions across various grades in the last five years has happened under Alebiosu’s watch, with 1,654 employees being elevated in one single promotion cycle.
Under his leadership, over 2,186 new hires have been recruited across key functions and subsidiaries, with a large number of them deployed to the sales function to ensure that retail customers are adequately served. Staff are now more engaged based on the high employee engagement score of 86% achieved in the April 2025 WorkBuzz survey, indicating remarkable progress in the bank’s multi-pronged efforts to promote a positive and inclusive workplace culture.
This drive to reinforce a culture of inclusion and recognition has been accentuated by the launch of a group-wide culture transformation initiative with the goal of embedding the core values of integrity, excellence and innovation. It has also been strengthened by a renewed focus on inclusion, collaboration and high performance. Also contributing was the staging of a FirstBank Employee Appreciation Day 2025 featuring, among others, a personalised appreciation video message from the CEO to all employees across the group throughout Africa and beyond. The inclusion message is further boosted by the launch of the inaugural edition of the bank’s pioneering initiative, Mandarin Language School, to bolster the bank’s expansion in the Asian market.
Expansion is a critical plank in FirstBank’s new strategic planning horizon, under Alebiosu’s leadership. Taking off this 2025, the plan seeks to reinforce the bank’s market dominance across all operational regions and it includes deliberate expansion into new markets within and outside Africa.
Beyond geographical and horizontal expansion, Alebiosu’s plan has also targeted a skyward expansion. Or how else does one describe the groundbreaking ceremony in March 2025 for the bank’s new green-certified, 44-storey iconic head office building in Eko Atlantic City, Lagos State?
Alebiosu is also prioritising the acceleration of process automation in recognition of the importance of digital transformation. It is a massive push for technological advancement that includes adopting robotics technology and artificial intelligence at scale, to give the bank an unassailable competitive advantage among its peers in the industry.
The bank has deployed digital tools to enhance seamless account opening and optimised backend systems and customer service delivery. Two additional Digital Experience Centres (DXCs) have been launched – one at Lekki Admiralty Way, Lagos State and the other at its UNN branch, Nsukka, Enugu State. Also, the bank’s agent network has expanded to over 280,000, a 50,000 increase from the 230,000 agents it had in 2023.
As expected, shareholders, among other stakeholders, have been observing the strides the bank has been making under Alebiosu’s leadership, with a keen eye on the numbers. Fortunately, again, the bank’s results for the financial year ended December 2024 speak volumes, with after-tax profit of its parent company rising to the highest point it has reached in the last 12 years, according to the company’s latest financial statement.
In recognition of his achievements within such a short period and his exemplary leadership, Alebiosu was honoured at the World Business Outlook Awards as “Banking CEO of the Year – Nigeria 2025”. He has also been honoured with the “Special African Banking Leadership Award” by African Leadership Magazine. This was in 2024.
The story of Alebiosu’s leadership at FirstBank has clearly been one of preparedness meeting legacy. Working with the board and management team, he has consistently sustained the bank’s legacies and also consolidated its recent gains in ways that will ensure the gains keep compounding. FirstBank, more than ever before, is poised for greater intra- and intercontinental growth and impact in the years ahead.
South Africa’s competition authority announced Wednesday it had approved the buyout of Africa’s largest pay TV enterprise MultiChoice by France’s Canal+, which wants to expand its footprint on the continent.
The merger, which has been in the works for nearly a year, needs the final go-ahead from the commission’s Competition Tribunal, it said in a statement.
Canal+ holds around 45 percent of MultiChoice’s shares and offered last year to acquire the remainder for 125 rand (6.16 euro) per share.
Canal+ is present in 25 African countries through 16 subsidiaries and has eight million subscribers, according to the French group.
MultiChoice operates in 50 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and has 19.3 million subscribers, it said.
It includes Africa’s premier sports broadcaster, SuperSport, and the DStv satellite television service.
“This is a major step forward in our ambition to create a global media and entertainment company with Africa at its heart,” Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada said in a statement.
The commission said its approval of the merger was subject to public-interest conditions worth about 26 billion rand over three years, including increasing the shareholding of people disadvantaged under South Africa’s white-minority apartheid regime.
It will also maintain the MultiChoice headquarters in South Africa.
A date for the Tribunal’s decision on the merger has not been announced but Canal+ said it was aiming for the deal to be completed by early October.
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