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Nigeria: 26-Year-Old Nigerian, Adekunle Becomes World Highest Paid Robotics Engineer

Success is always great when it is work in progress, when achieved you look further, deeper and depper for sustainability. Africa Big News has gathered that the Smartest game guru, and in fact, the highest paid robotics engineer in the world today is a Nigerian.
Now read on...

Silas Adekunle, a 26-year-old Nigerian, credited for building the world's first gaming robot, has just become the highest paid in the field of Robotic engineering.

Adekunle achieved this feat after signing a new deal with the world's reputable software manufacturers, Apple Inc.

The robotics engineer was also named as "Someone to Watch in 2018" by the Black Hedge Fund Group, according to reports by thebossnewspapers.com.

Adekunle is currently the founder and CEO of Reach Robotics, a company developing the world's first gaming robots.

He also recently graduated with a 1st class degree and has four years' background in robotics.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Adekunle studied in Nigeria before relocating to the UK as a teenager.

After completing his secondary school education, he proceeded to the University of the West of England where he graduated with a first class graduate in Robotics.

In 2013, he founded Reach Robotics and developed a lot of experience on robotics within a space of four years.

Adekunle was also a team leader of Robotics In Schools programme, a programme which encourages and pays attention to students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

The programme encouraged him to develop robotics to make education more entertaining for STEM students.

In 2017, MekaMon, he released the world's first gaming robot, with the special ability to customise the gaming bot to perform personalised functions.

The initial launch of Mekamon sold 500 bots, generating $7.5 million, according to The Guardian.

Following this feat, Adekunle received support from various organisations including London Venture Partners ($10 million) and in the same year, his company, Reach Robotics signed a deal with Apple securing exclusive sales in Apple stores.

"Impressed by the quality of his robots and their ability to show emotion with subtly-calibrated movements, Apple priced his four-legged "battle-bots" at $300 and has put them in nearly all of its stores in the United States and Britain.

"Early customers skew towards male techies but a growing number of parents are buying the robots for their children to get them interested in STEM, Adekunle told Forbes in an interview this year.

The young entrepreneur who once indicated that the secrets to his success are "balance, shared ideas, time management and being oneself", was recently listed in the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe: Technology.

Adekunle, who has taken over the world with his inventiveness, is currently located at the Bristol Robotics Lab which is said to be the best robotics research centre in the UK.

More on This

Apple Sells Mekamons Robots Built By Nigerian-British Engineer

Apple Stores in the United States and the United Kingdom have begun the sale of gaming robots, MekaMons, built by a… Read more »

Read the original article on Leadership.#AfricaBigNews 

Europe is not doing enough to check illigal immigration - Samey Shoukry

Egypt condemns Europe for weak counteraction to the influx of illegal migrants

The contribution of Europe to the fight against illegal migration is not enough. This was stated by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, his words lead agency MENA.


Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs: Samey Shoukry

According to Shoukry, in Egypt they expect that the European Union will intensify its efforts to counter the influx of illegal migrants. At the same time, the diplomat stressed that Egypt fulfills all obligations undertaken and since September 2016, no boat with illegal migrants could leave Egyptian territory.

Shoukry also noted that Egypt in its own territory "without protests and noise" accepts about 5 million migrants - people from Arab and African countries.

"At the same time, Egypt bears the costs associated with their stay, providing the necessary services in health and education, along with Egyptians," the head of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said.

According to Shoukry, Egypt in this sphere is experiencing much more pressure than the European partners.

BREAKING: Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun resigns

Both from her twitter and Facebook pages thousands of Nigerias expressed mixed reaction to the News.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday accepted the resignation of the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun. This information is contained in a statement issued by Mr Femi Adesina, the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, in Abuja on Friday.

Kemi Adeosun

The President also approved that the Minister of State Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, should oversee the Ministry of Finance with effect from today. Below is the full text of Mrs Adeosun’s resignation letter.                                                                                                          14th September, 2018   His Excellency Muhammadu Buhari President, Federal Republic of Nigeria State House Aso Villa Abuja Dear Excellency, Let me commence by thanking you profusely for the honour and privilege of serving under your inspirational leadership. It has been a truly rewarding experience to learn from you and to observe at close quarters your integrity and sense of duty.  I have, today, become privy to the findings of the investigation into the allegation made in an online medium that the Certificate of Exemption from National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) that I had presented was not genuine. This has come as a shock to me and I believe that in line with this administration’s focus on integrity, I must do the honourable thing and resign. Your Excellency, kindly permit me to outline some of the background to this matter. I was born and raised in the United Kingdom, indeed my parental family home remains in London. My visits to Nigeria up until the age of thirty-four (34) were holidays, with visas obtained in my UK passport.  I obtained my first Nigerian passport at the age of thirty-four (34) and when I relocated there was debate as to whether NYSC Law applied to me.  Upon enquiry as to my status relating to NYSC, I was informed that due to my residency history and having exceeded the age of thirty (30), I was exempted from the requirement to serve. Until recent events, that remained my understanding.  On the basis of that advice and with the guidance and assistance of those, I thought were trusted associates, NYSC were approached for documentary proof of status. I then received the certificate in question. Having never worked in NYSC, visited the premises, been privy to nor familiar with their operations, I had no reason to suspect that the certificate was anything but genuine. Indeed, I presented that certificate at the 2011 Ogun State House of Assembly and in 2015 for Directorate of State Services (DSS) Clearance as well as to the National Assembly for screening. Be that as it may, as someone totally committed to a culture of probity and accountability I have decided to resign with effect from Friday, 14th September, 2018. Your Excellency, It has been an exceptional privilege to have served our nation under your leadership and to have played a role in steering our economy at a very challenging time. I am proud that Nigeria has brought discipline into its finances, has identified and is pursuing a path to long term sustainable growth that will unlock the potential in this great economy. Under your leadership, Nigeria was able to exit recession and has now started to lay the foundations for lasting growth and wealth creation. 

Repositioning this huge economy is not a short term task and there are no short cuts, indeed there are tough decisions still to be made but I have no doubt that your focus on infrastructural investment, revenue mobilisation and value for money in public expenditure will deliver growth, wealth and opportunity for all Nigerians.  I thank His Excellency, the Vice President and my colleagues in the Federal Executive Council for the huge pleasure and honour of working with them. I also thank most specially, the team in the ‘Finance Family’ of  advisers and heads of agencies under the Ministry of Finance. Your Excellency, this group of committed Nigerians represent a range of backgrounds, ethnicities and ages. They have worked well above and beyond the call of duty to support me in the tasks assigned. The diversity in my team and their ability to work cohesively to deliver reforms, convinces me that Nigeria has the human capital required to succeed.  Your Excellency, let me conclude by commending your patience and support, during the long search for the truth in this matter. I thank you again for giving me the honour of serving under your leadership, it is a rare privilege, which I do not take for granted. As a Nigerian and committed progressive, I  appreciate you for your dogged commitment to improving this nation.   Please be assured, as always, of my highest regards and best wishes Kemi Adeosun (Mrs) 

Africa Big News/ NAN

Africa: Can China Free Africa From Dependency On the Mighty Dollar?

ANALYSIS
By Peter Fabricius

Is China, aided and abetted by the other BRICS member countries - Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa - making a bid to dislodge the dollar from its global pedestal and replace it with the yuan? And if so, will it help African countries, in particular, to escape from the iron and often onerous grip of the greenback?

One way China is expanding the reach and influence of the yuan is through currency swaps - many with African countries. The latest was with Nigeria, for the equivalent of US$2.4 billion. For Nigeria, the currency swap was a lifeline as its dollar reserves had largely drained away and the naira had plummeted against the dollar after the 2015 drop in oil price.

The currency swap is only a temporary reprieve for Nigeria. A loan is still a loan, in any currency, and must be repaid. The growing tide of Chinese loans into Africa is raising concerns of another debt crisis, like that in the first years of the century.

For China the benefits of this and other currency swaps it has done are less clear. Of course it does mean that Nigeria will be buying US$2.4 billion in goods from China. It's not obvious though what China might want to buy from Nigeria, except perhaps oil. And China faces the risk of getting back less than it put in, because of the likely depreciation of the currencies of its swap partners.

Beijing's main goal with currency swaps seems more strategic than commercial

Beijing's main goal seems more strategic than commercial - to boost its ambition to establish the yuan as an international reserve currency. And it is making progress. In 2016 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) added the yuan to the basket of currencies in its own supplementary reserve asset unit - special drawing rights.

China is also boosting the yuan by putting pressure on the many countries along its modern Silk Road, the huge Belt and Road Initiative connecting China to the Middle East, Europe and Africa, to fund their development projects in yuan. China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which 86 countries have joined, also boosts yuan usage.

And another, indirect, Chinese vehicle for the ambitious yuan is the BRICS forum of major emerging economies. BRICS's New Development Bank (NDB) will soon issue its second bond in renminbi (or RMB, the official name for the Chinese yuan), as well as bonds in the other BRICS members' local currencies. These bond issues will enable the bank to lend money to the five BRICS members for development projects in their own currencies, bypassing the dollar.

BRICS bank vice president Leslie Maasdorp tells ISS Today that by issuing loans in local currencies - unlike other international development banks - the bank eliminates the foreign exchange risks borrowing countries face by having to repay in dollars, possibly at lower exchange rates. The BRICS bank is widely seen as a developing world alternative to the World Bank.

Trump's recent reimposition of sanctions on Iran shows the importance of China's strategy

BRICS has also established its own version of the IMF - the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). As the IMF does for its members, the CRA provides a financial safety net for BRICS members that might run out of foreign reserves to pay for its imports.

SA Reserve Bank deputy governor Daniel Mminele tells ISS Today that the CRA is ready to be accessed by member countries. He says Beijing makes no secret of its ambition to internationalise the yuan - that's why it made such an effort to get it into the IMF's basket of currencies and why it is increasing investment, trade and bond issues in yuan.

The company Swift, which does international interbank transactions, says China is also trying to increase global oil deals done in yuan. Russia is already doing that and Saudi Arabia could follow, which would be a huge boost to the yuan. For Russia, especially, circumventing the dollar also helps circumvent US financial sanctions.

President Donald Trump's recent reimposition of sanctions on Iran, which will prevent any company doing business with Tehran from also doing business through the dollar, underscores the importance of the Chinese strategy.

BRICS bank will be able to lend to members in their own currencies, bypassing the dollar

Nevertheless, it would be 'stretching it to think that at this time the RMB could replace the dollar as the global reserve currency', Mminele says. Mminele and Maasdorp also both dismiss any suggestion that BRICS wants to replace the World Bank with the BRICS bank, the IMF with the CRA or the dollar with the yuan.

Maasdorp says the BRICS bank will continue issuing many loans in dollars. Mminele says the aim of both the BRICS bank and CRA is simply to diversify funding options for BRICS members and thereby complement the World Bank and IMF. He says the CRA alone could never fix a major financial crisis but would have to work with the IMF.

The CRA is contributing to the larger global financial safety net because by standing ready to help BRICS members, it potentially frees up IMF funds to be used for non-BRICS countries in crisis. The BRICS bank likewise frees up World Bank development funds for non-BRICS countries.

Nor does China itself seem to be competing with the World Bank or IMF, but is rather increasing cooperation with them and trying to increase its influence in them. This is in line with President Xi Jinping's goal of displacing the currently isolationist and unilateralist United States with China as the new champion of multilateralism and globalisation.

Chinese currency swaps will help African and other countries, especially those with highly volatile currencies, reduce their dependencies on the dollar - but won't end them. Currencies will still largely be indexed against the dollar, bonds will largely be issued in it and so will most loans.

Maasdorp estimates that only 3% to 5% of all foreign exchange transactions in the world are now in RMB and about 75% are still in dollars. 'The dollar will remain the anchor currency for a long time. But given that China is destined to become the biggest economy, the RMB will become a much more important currency in trade and foreign reserves,' he says.

So no African finance minister or central bank governor should be planning for a dollar-free world just yet.

Peter Fabricius, ISS Consultant

Read the original article on ISS.

What future for The African Union?

The continent needs a pan-African body; but is THIS African Union tackling the right problems? We asked four leading thinkers; @DonaldKaberuka @Nanjala1 @LopesInsights @EroComfort @Mo_IbrahimFdn https://youtu.be/fk5nZGoFgc4  with thanks to @OsmontU for the edit.

On the other hand we need to look deeper into mending our differences, so as to remove tensions and conflicts in Africa.
Most people say, "There is beauty in diversity" but diversity in many African countries is a problem.
The Big question is, how do we deal with diversity to make it work for Africa, instead of tearing us apart?

How China Went From a Business Opportunity to Enemy No. 1

Republicans, Democrats, unions and manufacturers are aboard the anti-China train. What about Silicon Valley?

One of the remarkable things about the Donald Trump era is how significantly the American conversation about China has changed.

As recently as 2016, Barack Obama argued that a weak China that could not contribute to solving global problems was more dangerous than a strong and potentially aggressive China. The Trump administration, by contrast, has identified China as the biggest long-term threat to U.S. geopolitical and geo-economic interests. Trump himself has labeled Beijing an implacable economic competitor even as he has occasionally tried to buddy up to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In sum, only a few years ago, China was seen primarily as a difficult but essential partner, one that might yet be co-opted into supporting the U.S.-led international system. Today, it is more often described primarily as a destabilizing revisionist power.

Amid the chaos of the Trump presidency, it can be hard to tell what has changed permanently and what has shifted only temporarily. Yet this transformation in U.S. views of China seems likely to outlast Trump’s tenure. Polls show that the American public has grown more skeptical of Beijing’s intentions. In 2016, 82 percent of Americans saw China’s ongoing military buildup as a somewhat serious or very serious concern. More recently, the number of Americans considering China the greatest immediate threat tripled from 2017 to 2018.

For nearly 25 years, there was a bipartisan consensus on the need for intensive engagement with Beijing. Now, one can see the outlines of a nascent — if still incomplete — consensus stressing the need for stiffer competition.

That consensus begins with intensifying concern about the national security risks a rising China poses. Although the foreign policy establishment often finds itself at odds with Trump and his America First agenda, when it comes to China most members of that establishment broadly agree with the way the Trump administration defines the China threat.

As Xi has reached for power and influence on the global stage, the perception that China is determined to unseat the U.S. as the dominant actor in the Asia-Pacific — and perhaps globally — has become more widespread among informed observers of U.S. policy. So has the belief that efforts to change Beijing’s behavior and limit its ambitions through persistent economic and diplomatic engagement have failed to produce the desired results.

Earlier this year, two former high-ranking Democratic foreign-policy officials — Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner — wrote an article describing the China challenge in roughly the same terms as Trump’s National Security Strategy. It is hard to imagine the next administration’s strategy identifying China as anything other than the most formidable great-power challenger the U.S. has faced in decades.

The nascent consensus on China also reflects that fact that Beijing has come to represent a major ideological threat. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was widely assumed that ideological conflict was a thing of the past, because Beijing would eventually liberalize both economically and politically. Now, that rosy scenario has largely been abandoned.

China is becoming steadily more autocratic under Xi; it is also seeking to expand its influence and ensure its security by promoting authoritarianism abroad. As the Chinese regime undermines democratic rule in Hong Kong and Taiwan, undertakes horrific repression against Muslims in Xinjiang, supports autocrats in countries from Cambodia to Venezuela, and seeks to stifle free speech even in Europe and the U.S., it is earning itself a reputation as the leader of an authoritarian resurgence that is promoting repression and undermining democratic values around the world.

This may seem like an abstract issue, but for Americans it has traditionally been quite powerful. As pointed out in a recent essay by Aaron Friedberg, a Princeton professor and former national-security official in the George W. Bush administration, nearly every time the U.S. has mobilized for a serious competition with a great-power rival — whether Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union — it has done so in part because that rival seemed to threaten the survival and spread of American political ideals. Just last week, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives urged Trump to slap sanctions on Chinese officials involved in creating Beijing’s “high-tech police state” in Xinjiang. Expect to see more of this in the future.

Then there is the third driver of rising American hostility to China: the threat to U.S. economic competitiveness. To be clear, organized labor was always skeptical of engagement with China, out of fears — justified, as it turned out — that increased trade with Beijing would accelerate the hollowing out of American manufacturing. Yet that concern has become more politically salient, as Trump harnessed frustration with the dislocations of globalization in his 2016 campaign — with China as the poster child for all that had gone wrong. As Trump showed, there are votes in China-bashing.

More broadly, the past few years have produced growing evidence that China is not simply labor’s problem. It now represents a larger economic threat, through practices such as forced technology transfer, deliberate efforts to weaken the U.S. industrial and technological base, and its Made in China 2025 project that aims to make Beijing dominant in numerous critical sectors. Americans are becoming less likely to see China as a massive market for U.S. goods and debt, and more as a predatory competitor. Recent polls show that overwhelming majorities of Americans now see Chinese economic strength and Chinese economic practices as somewhat serious or very serious concerns.

Yet the economic realm is where the emerging consensus on China remains most tenuous, because a critical constituency — the U.S. business community — is still of two minds on the matter. On the one hand, there are plenty of American firms — media outlets, tech companies and others — that have experienced rampant intellectual property theft, bullying and censorship, and other abusive Chinese practices. On the other hand, there are still gobs of money to be made in China, and the Chinese are experts at employing the divide-and-conquer tactics that prevent U.S. firms from more effectively asserting their interests.

These factors are sometimes exacerbated by the mix of techno-utopianism and post-nationalism that prevails in key parts of the business community, namely Silicon Valley. One can find examples of leading tech firms that now realize it is critical to partner with the U.S. government to prevent China from dominating the future of artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies. Yet there also remain companies like Google, which refuses to continue cooperating with Uncle Sam to use AI to enhance the performance of American drones, but is willing to secretly work with the Chinese government to build a search engine more conducive to censorship.

To help an authoritarian regime strengthen its power while recoiling from involvement with the Pentagon bespeaks a special kind of corporate moral illiteracy. It is also short-sighted, because American firms will lose out if China becomes the technological, economic and geopolitical superpower of the next century. And, of course, it undermines any strategy that requires harnessing private-sector innovation to enhance U.S. national security capabilities, while also carefully calibrating U.S. economic engagement with China to limit the creation of dangerous dependences.

There is a stronger consensus today on the need to get tough with China than there has been in decades. But that consensus is still not broad or strong enough as it must be to meet the China challenge.

By 

Hal Brands

To contact the author of this story:
Hal Brands at Hal.Brands@jhu.edu

Is Emerging markets heading for a crisis?

Argentina and Turkey look like outliers but the rot could spread fast.

Emerging-market stresses have been building since at least 2013. Investors may have forgotten the effect of the “taper tantrum” on the so-called Fragile Five — Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa — a term coined by Morgan Stanley to describe their vulnerability to capital outflows. Monetary accommodation, lower current-account deficits and growth disguised the underlying challenges, attracting more capital to those markets.

The textbook recipe for an emerging-market crisis requires a large dose of debt and an associated domestic credit bubble, including misallocation of capital into uneconomic trophy projects or financial speculation. Then add: a weak banking sector, budget deficits, current-account gaps, substantial short-term foreign-currency debt and inadequate forex reserves. Season with narrowly based industrial structures, reliance on commodity exports, institutional weaknesses, corruption and poor political and economic leadership.

Based on these criteria, the number of emerging markets at risk extends well beyond Turkey and Argentina. Like Tolstoy’s families, each nation has different sources of unhappiness.

Total emerging-market borrowing increased from $21 trillion (or 145 percent of GDP) in 2007 to $63 trillion (210 percent of GDP) in 2017.Borrowings by non-financial corporations and households have jumped. Since 2007, the foreign-currency debt — in dollars, euros and yen — of these countries doubled to around $9 trillion. China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and some Eastern European countries have foreign-currency debt between 20 percent and 50 percent of GDP.

In all, EM borrowers need to repay or refinance around $1.5 trillion in debt in 2019 and again in 2020. Many are not earning enough to meet these commitments.

Turkey and Argentina have twin deficits (combined budget and current-account gaps as a percentage of GDP) of 8.7 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively, that require financing. Pakistan has a twin deficit well above 10 percent. Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Ukraine are at or above 5 percent on that basis. In India, if state governments are included the number approaches double figures. Those gauges are rising in China, Malaysia, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Poland.

Then look at reserve coverage — foreign-exchange holdings divided by 12-month funding needs for the current account, short-term debt maturities and amortization of long-term debt — which measures the capacity to meet immediate foreign-currency obligations. Turkey and Argentina score 0.4 and 0.6 respectively, meaning they can’t cover their needs without new borrowings. Pakistan, Ecuador, Poland, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Africa have reserve coverage of less than 1. Chile, Hungary, Colombia, Mexico and India have coverage of less than 2. Brazil and China come in at 2.5 and 3.1 times, respectively.

Even where reserve coverage appears adequate, caution is warranted. Long-term debt becomes short-term with the passage of time or an acceleration event. Forex holdings may not be readily accessible. Much of China’s $3 trillion of reserves is committed to the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. The ability to turn U.S. Treasury bonds and other foreign assets into cash is limited by liquidity, price and currency effects. Reserve positions are notoriously opaque: In 1997, the Bank of Thailand was found to have grossly overstated available currency holdings.

China and India face well-documented difficulties in their financial systems. The true level of Chinese non-performing loans may be several times the official 1.75 percent. India’s NPL ratio is around 10 percent of all loans.

Events in Turkey and Argentina show how these weaknesses become exposed. Global liquidity tightening, led by the U.S. Federal Reserve increasing rates and unwinding its bond purchases, reduces capital inflows and increases the cost of borrowing. Trade tensions, sanctions, the breakdown of the global institutional structure and rising geopolitical risks exacerbate those stresses.

Weaknesses in the real economy and the financial system feed each other in a vicious cycle. Capital withdrawals undermine currencies, driving down prices of assets such as bonds, stocks and property. The reduced availability of finance and higher funding costs add to pressure on overextended borrowers, triggering banking problems that feed back into the economy. Credit rating and investment downgrades extend the cycle.

Policy responses can make things worse. Higher interest rates to prop up currencies (60 percent in Argentina) may be ineffective. They reduce growth and aggravate the debt burden. Weaker currencies import inflation. Supporting the financial system and the economy pressures government finances. IMF remedies, which aren’t always effective, impose financial and human costs that many nations find unacceptable, prompting political and social breakdown. And the IMF’s capacity to assist may be constrained by concurrent crises.

Investors are assuming that critical vulnerabilities have been addressed.

Important changes made after the 1997 Asian crisis created different risks, however. Floating exchange rates and unrestricted foreign-exchange movement increase currency volatility and allow capital flight. While local-currency debt has increased, unhedged foreign-currency debt remains significant.

Higher returns on local-currency debt attracted foreign investors to India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and Eastern Europe. But weakening currencies may drive them to exit, hurting all assets.

Turkey and Argentina may be special cases. But given the fundamental problems, other emerging markets are likely to come under pressure. As Herbert Stein’s 1976 law states: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

(Fixes reference to Tolstoy in third paragraph.)

By 

Satyajit Das

To contact the author of this story:
Satyajit Das at sdassydney@gmail.com