Medic West Africa Exhibition and Conference, the biggest gathering of healthcare trade professionals in the West African region, will be making a long-awaited in-person return to Landmark Center in Lagos, Nigeria, on 7-9 September 2022.
Organised by Informa Markets, the 9th edition of the show will bring together healthcare equipment manufacturers, distributors, procurement professionals, dealers, medical practitioners, and regulators. More than 5,000 healthcare professionals are expected to attend, with 150 exhibitors representing 32 countries taking part. Addressing post-pandemic market needs, the event will furthermore see the addition of a dedicated space for laboratory professionals for the first time, “Medlab Area”.
Amogh Wadwalkar, Exhibition Manager, Medic West Africa, said: “Medic West Africa is the premier healthcare exhibition and conference platform showcasing global healthcare technologies and innovations in support of healthcare solutions in Nigeria and West Africa. We look forward to connecting all parties in the healthcare ecosystem as the one-stop shop for all healthcare sourcing and procurement needs in the region, and to unveil the latest innovations in healthcare technology – needed for the urgent transformation of our health infrastructures.”
Among the scheduled exhibitors are leading local and international industry players such as GE Healthcare West Africa, Siemens Healthineers, DCL Laboratories, Erba Manheim, Alpha Specialties, Qiagen, Abbott, and Standard Electro Medical Equipment Company (SEMED). Products and services on display will include state-of-the-art imaging equipment, laboratory and IVD technology, developments in surgery, advances in prosthetics, cost-effective disposables, among many others.
In addition, Medic West Africa is set to play host to several interactive sessions, leveraging the expertise of key players in the industry on topical issues for the advancement of the healthcare industry.
Cynthia Makarutse, Senior Conference Producer, Medic West Africa, explained: “In collaboration with Nigerian healthcare societies, Medic West Africa conferences will promote dialogue on key stakeholder issues for the advancement of the industry. We connect government stakeholders with leading commercial entities to deliver solutions on topical issues and challenges facing healthcare professionals in West Africa. The conference will focus on key post-pandemic outcomes such as innovation and disruption, health equity and workforce resilience. It is the pre-eminent event for healthcare professionals who value the power of knowledge-sharing, networking, and business”.
Key discussions will occur in the following planned conferences:
Healthcare Leadership Conference – ‘Leveraging disruption in healthcare – opportunities & challenges in technology’, in partnership with the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria.
Quality Management Conference — ‘Human Resource for Healthcare: Building an efficient and resilient workforce’, in partnership with the Society for Quality in Healthcare in Nigeria.
Healthcare Business Conference — ‘Consumer-Driven Healthcare Innovations (CDHIs) – Data, Devices and Digital Health Solutions’, in partnership with Healthcare Leadership Academy.
Access to Healthcare Conference — ‘COVID – A socioeconomic phenomenon’, in partnership with Bey Health.
Attendance at the Medic West Africa trade exhibition is free for healthcare and trade professionals. For more information, please visit www.medicwestafrica.com.
Kevin Britz and Craig Page-Lee, hosts of Lunchtime Marketing and Leadership every Thursday at 12pm on ebizradio.com, discuss how customer segmentation can help companies in the expansion stage.
Also known as market segmentation, customer segmentation is the division of potential customers in a given market into discrete groups. That division is based on customers having similar needs and buying characteristics.
Visa today announced that Visa tap to pay will officially arrive on GO Transit, and has launched on the UP Express, making it easier to travel on transit by offering riders a contactless payment option with their Visa credit card or payment-enabled device (e.g. smartphone or smartwatch).
Transit systems help city residents sustain their livelihoods, connect to services and pursue activities that create a vibrant city life. In Canada, electronic payments are a ubiquitous element in everyday life and Canadians have come to expect fast, simple, secure payments as part of their retail and leisure experiences. However, until now, public transit is a segment where customers have not enjoyed the same frictionless experience, instead having to use either exact change, a pre-loaded payment card, or line up at a kiosk or use an automated machine to purchase a ticket.
“We’re thrilled to bring the simplicity of Visa tap to pay to transit riders in the GTA in collaboration with Metrolinx. Transit is essential for so many and we believe in the importance of making the riding experience as seamless as possible. Now, Visa cardholders can enjoy the convenience of tap to pay on their commute, just as they already do with their morning cup of coffee,” says Brian Weiner, VP and head of product and digital, Visa Canada.
Visa understands using the contactless payment for fares can save valuable time for transit users, and that riders are looking for flexible payment options. In fact, research commissioned by Visa found that nearly one in three (32%) public transit riders cite contactless payments as a top feature that would entice them to use public transit with 50% citing the increased convenience of contactless as the primary benefit. That is why Visa is collaborating with Metrolinx to bring tap-to-pay with Visa credit to riders in the GTA.
Now, transit riders can pay for their adult fare with their Visa contactless credit or payment-enabled device as part of PRESTO Contactless Payments. By simply tapping on any PRESTO device when getting on and off GO Transit and UP Express the solution eliminates the need to purchase or load a separate transit card or handle cash while boarding.
Visa supports transit operators globally to deliver digital tools to draw in more passengers and remove friction from the transit experience. Visa’s Global Urban Mobility team has brought its experience and expertise to help cities and transportation agencies globally accelerate their intelligent travel solutions in Bangkok, Thailand; Fukuoka, Japan; Lyon, France; Izmir, Turkey; and Mexico City, Mexico.
This collaboration with Metrolinx builds on the success of Visa’s partnership with TransLink in Metro Vancouver, bringing the benefits of contactless payment to even more Canadian riders.
Business building is increasingly important for company resilience, and CEOs are uniquely suited for the job. Here are five tasks that CEOs can undertake to build successful new businesses.
This may be the most challenging time in more than a generation to be a CEO. Global uncertainty, a concussive series of tech-driven disruptions, and an ever-broadening set of risks have piled onto an already daunting set of pressures in running a business.
Those new-business aspirations are simply impossible without an active and fully engaged CEO. In fact, if a CEO isn’t ready to commit, it’s probably better for the company not to pursue a new business.
Competing priorities mean that CEOs need to be conscious of the unique aspects of their role as chief executive that allow them to have the greatest impact on building new businesses (see sidebar, “CEO traits and behaviors that support a new business”). Of course, an important function of the CEO is to delegate various tasks to teams and empower leaders across the business. But our research, combined with our experience building more than 300 new businesses, reveals a cluster of activities for which the CEO’s involvement has an outsize impact—from continually raising aspirations to systematically building and sustaining support for the new business to resolving natural organizational tensions and barriers.4
In digging into this set of activities, we found that there are five tasks that can’t be delegated—tasks that only CEOs with their overarching strategic focus and decision-making authority can do. When CEOs adopt these measures as part of a clear playbook, they can succeed in building new businesses.
1. Set the bar high: Look to launch unicorns
If companies expect 50 percent of their new revenues to come from new businesses, products, and services, they need to aim high.
Too often, however, new businesses fail to lead to transformational value, with about four-fifths generating less than $50 million in revenues, according to our research.5 The CEO has a challenging role to play to ensure that the time and resources that go into a new business are worth it. The CEO’s laser focus on value is crucial in keeping the organization from being distracted by the latest hot idea that might sound good but that doesn’t have the market potential to be transformative.
Orienting the entire company toward this level of value starts with identifying a clear aspiration, ambitious goals, and specific targets. For example, the CEO of one insurance company was explicit in wanting to quadruple the size of its B2C business within only five years by building a new digital customer-centric B2C offering. From the beginning, targets included ambitious concrete milestones, such as the launch of a minimal viable product within five months and go-lives in two additional countries within one year, as well as operational key performance indicators (KPIs), such as one million website visitors within the first nine months.
Another example is Patrick Hylton, president and CEO of NCB Financial Group, the largest and oldest bank in Jamaica. Hylton oversaw the launch of Lynk, the bank’s digital payments business. He set targets for the new business to reach the 35–40 percent market share of individuals without bank accounts. “I have huge ambitions for Lynk, the digital payments business we’ve launched,” he said. “I want it to rival and even surpass the incumbent.”6 This mindset aligns with broader patterns we have seen of successful CEOs being uniquely bold in their ambitions.7
Bold ambitions are particularly important when there is directional clarity in a business-building thesis and its value but there is not enough conviction in some parts of the business to invest in hiring a significant number of people or building out the technology assets needed to capture the opportunity. If the CEO does not step forward in these moments to act as a bridge by pushing forward decisions, actively building support, or driving toward specific deadlines, the initiative grinds to a halt or reverts to business as usual. An important part of a CEO’s role, as we have learned in business transformations and other contexts, is to help organizations avoid these collective-action problems.
Inevitably, some new businesses will fail. CEOs must not get too attached to a single business but instead focus their energy on where the real value is: developing a serial business-building capability. Serial business builders generate an average of 40 percent greater revenue for each new business they build when compared with first-time new-business builders. For this reason, CEOs need to focus their energy on managing a portfolio of new businesses (for example, recalibrating strategies and reallocating resources) and strengthening the organization’s institutional business-building muscle.
2. Protect the new business from business as usual
Our analysis makes it clear that allocating protected funding for the new business is one of the most important things a CEO can do. CEOs must invest sufficiently and then protect that money from the inevitable attempts from incumbent parts of the enterprise to take it back as issues arise.
In practice, securing promises of investment is often easier than securing and distributing the investment itself, because funding tends to follow a traditional (and inflexible) P&L-driven process that relies on annual budgeting cycles. The result is that funding can’t be released when needed or funds are taken from other initiatives, which creates resentment in the existing business. To secure the new business’s financial independence, the CEO needs to establish a dedicated and protected funding source as well as an agile budgeting approach based on venture-capital-style stage gates whereby funding tranches are unlocked when the new business hits certain milestones.
The CEO has to extend that protective posture to preserve the new business’s broader independence. While it’s tempting to use established tools and processes in IT, HR, and marketing, for example, hard lessons have shown that these come with significant bureaucratic strings attached that lead to cost overruns and significant delays.
In fact, business-as-usual protocols and processes can pose a significant danger to the new business and require the CEO’s active intervention. The new entity needs new mechanisms for funding and expectations that don’t tie to the quarterly P&L cycle of a company. The markers of success are different; it’s crucial to provide clarity on KPIs that are meaningful to a new business—such as revenue growth, accomplishment of milestones, and customer experience—and to get leadership alignment on those KPIs. Existing compensation structures and hiring processes are often less appropriate when it comes to attracting talent, and they are hard to change because they require the CEO to work closely with the head of HR.
At a large regional bank, existing practices for onboarding new vendors were often time-consuming because of the risk-evaluation process. The CEO accepted the need for the checks but approached the head of procurement to make sure someone was dedicated to support the new business. As a result, onboarding a vendor for the new business went from three and a half months to three and a half weeks.
To ensure this operating model is practical and effective, the CEO needs to put in place a clear governance process. An ingoing precept is that more separation between the new business and the incumbent (except when it comes to strategic direction) is most effective. With that grounding, the CEO should work to mold a governance model that incorporates focused oversight aimed at enabling the new business, providing explicit authority for the new entity to make decisions (often through a venture board), and installing a funding mechanism in which the budget is released based on meeting specific KPIs.
3. Identify a leader who could one day be CEO and create the right talent blend
The success of a new business relies on finding the right balance between the independence of a start-up and the relevant advantages of the existing business. Where the CEO can have the greatest impact is in striking that balance, starting with hiring the leader for the new business. The CEO needs to find someone with not only the entrepreneurial and operational capabilities to run the business but also the softer influencing and collaboration skills to be able to work well with those in the incumbent business—whether that means working with various functional leaders to access talent and assets or aligning strategies with the board.
Understanding the importance of working with the incumbent was one reason why Øyvind Eriksen, president and CEO of Norwegian-based energy company Aker ASA, had the CEO of Aker’s new business spend extensive time learning about the parent business and its capabilities as soon as he was hired.8
Part of finding someone who can work with the incumbent is seeking a leader with stature. One leader told us that the new-business leader should be someone who could be CEO of the entire company someday. Putting the new-business leadership in a position to work as equals with leadership in the incumbent led the CEO of a consumer services company to assign two acknowledged top performers in the organization to lead its new business. This move demonstrated the importance of the new business to employees and ensured the new-business leaders had the credibility to work with incumbent executives.
Ensuring a productive relationship between the new business and the incumbent extends to ensuring the new business has a blend of new hires and strong performers from the existing company. Finding the optimal internal-external talent mix isn’t an exact science, and it requires persistence from the CEO to understand where the blockers are and break through them when needed—convincing functional leaders to commit their best people to the new business, for example, or working with the chief human resources officer (CHRO) to put streamlined rotational and transfer policies in place.
In charting a path to the optimal internal-external blend of talent, CEOs should consider pursuing an acquisition, but only when it’s measured and focused on scaling. Our research has shown that new businesses that made two acquisitions early in the scaling process were 25 percent more likely to significantly exceed expectations than those that made no acquisitions or made three or more of them.
4. Give leaders in the incumbent a stake in the new business’s success
Inevitably, there will be conflicts between the new business and the established one. For example, the needs of the new business might appear small to an IT function that has huge projects under way, so the chief information officer (CIO) may not be as responsive to the new business’s needs. Or, as the new business grows and operates in different ways, the existing business can start to perceive it as a threat, leading to counterproductive dynamics and lost value.
In these cases, the CEO must be ready to personally work with the corresponding functional or business leaders to resolve the issue. One CEO told us he would sit down with a resistant business unit head and detail how the new business helped improve his P&L. Clear expectations and explicit agreements with deadlines and metrics are instrumental in providing objective reference points that the CEO can use to exert appropriate influence on incumbent leaders to follow through on commitments.
In navigating these organizational tensions, the CEO should structure a governance model that directly incorporates incentives for parent business leaders. One way to do that is to identify the senior gatekeepers of a needed asset or capability, such as data or intellectual property, and provide them with a leadership role in the new business. The role may be to participate on a venture board that helps direct the new business or to be part of a task force to help the new business meet a specific need. In this role, these executives would have accountability for the new business’s success. Tying compensation and bonuses to specific KPIs for the new business has also proved to be effective in many contexts.
In providing these incentives, CEOs must remember to achieve a fine balance between involving incumbent leaders and protecting the new business’s autonomy. That means limiting the incumbent leaders’ ability to stall progress, for instance, by reducing their approval powers and keeping existing reporting structures from taking hold.
5. Communicate, and when you feel you’ve done enough, do some more
CEOs understand the importance of communication—much of their success is based on how well they do it. But in the context of supporting a new business, CEOs often underestimate how systematic and persistent communications need to be and how much they can affect the outcome of the new business. By communicating that a new business is part of a broader shift to become more of a digital, software, or tech-enabled company, for example, a CEO can help support new multiples for his or her public companies.
The art behind successful communications is being systematic and intentional in tailoring the message to the audience. Focusing on how the new business can help drive growth and build skills for the incumbent, for instance, can help convince those in the company who might be resistant to the new business. When speaking to a skeptical board, the CEO should highlight growth opportunities and potential disruptions based on marketplace dynamics.
Patrick Hylton has adopted a “sources of meaning” approach to his communications in building support for Lynk. He systematically identified the stakeholders and determined how to align the new business’s activities with their interests. “With regulators, for example, I explained how our new digital payments business would be more inclusive by being able to reach more people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, would help reduce any exposure to pandemics, and would aid labor productivity. I showed through our analysis that customers really wanted digital financial services,” he said.10
Building support is just the start. Communications is a continuous effort. One example of this is how the CEO and the CFO of Moody’s announced to the Street that they would be investing in creating several new businesses to aid clients with their integrated risk-assessment and decision-making needs—for instance, in third-party risk management. They made clear that these were part of the overall strategy of the business and communicated why the investments would benefit the core business, for example, sharing “the goal here . . . is to have more comprehensive offerings, to be able to deepen customer penetration and to add new customers that allow us to grow faster.” In every quarter during earnings calls, the CEO talked about the new businesses and focused on progress and linkages to the overall strategy.
This near-constant drumbeat of communication serves to reinforce conviction and goals. In our experience, the hallmarks of effective communications include reaffirming vision and rationale, highlighting meaningful external validation, setting ambitious but realistic expectations, being authentic (including when there are setbacks), celebrating progress, understanding the salient facts (such as progress against KPIs), and maintaining a cohesive message. This last point warrants emphasis. This communications program is best thought of as a CEO narrative, in which business building figures prominently and continuously in the overall strategy.
As CEOs drive their communications strategy, they should guard against communications stagnation over time. What they say needs to evolve as the new business changes—it is a story rather than a static set of talking points. Building excitement is important at the beginning, for example, but the message needs to shift and focus on operational progress as the new business matures.
Z Zurich Foundation (ZZF) announced today—International Youth Day—that it will partner with JA Worldwide and JA Africa (www.JA-Africa.org), building on relationships already established with JA Canada and Junior Achievement España (JA Spain).
ZZF has made a strategic decision to venture and fund Africa, and has chosen us, Africa’s largest and most-impactful youth-serving NGO, JA Africa, as their implementing partner.
This three-year partnership will enable thousands of youth to access JA programs to set them on the path to success, not just as individuals but as leaders who will influence positive change within their communities. The partnership will also enable JA Africa to expand existing operations in four countries, and launch operations in five new countries.
According to the African Development Bank, each year, 10 to 12 million African students finish their education and compete for three million jobs (https://bit.ly/3pbVAZ0), resulting in sub-Saharan African youth becoming entrepreneurs by necessity, not by choice. The ZZF-JA partnership empowers young people in Africa to succeed as both innovative job creators and well-qualified job seekers, following the path best suited to their economic realities.
“The partnership integrates the education and economic ecosystems of the countries in which we work,” said JA Worldwide CEO Asheesh Advani, “leading to long-term sustainability. Over the course of the next three years, this partnership will impact the lives of more than 550,000 young people across nine countries—Burkina Faso, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda—resulting in greater capacity in four current JA Africa countries and brand-new operations in five more.”
JA Africa is a trusted and well-respected NGO that has partnered with local leadership and communities across the African continent for over 40 years. As part of the global JA network, JA Africa has the advantage of drawing on the best practices, curricula, pedagogies, effective governance models, fundraising, communications, and financial-management capacity of over 100 JA member locations, five additional JA regions, and a global headquarters, all of which provide the solid foundation upon which this partnership is built.
Grégory Renand, Head of Z Zurich Foundation, agreed. “JA is best known for utilizing volunteers to deliver educational experiences. We are very proud of this new partnership, delivering interventions and skill-based expertise with the aim to create brighter futures in Africa, building on impactful programs we’ve already built with JA around the world. The Z Zurich Foundation’s expertise on social equity and mental well-being nicely complements JA’s track record in building resilience and self-efficacy in more than 12 million young people every year.”
JA Africa CEO, Simi Nwogugu, has led efforts in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa for more than 25 years. “Many young Africans are entrepreneurial by nature,” she said, “but may be limited in their ability to develop solutions to the challenges around them and capture value from those solutions. The ZZF-JA partnership will help African youth develop the resilience, problem- solving and design-thinking skills, and mental well-being they need to understand the complex problems in the region and design sustainable solutions, and mentorship will play an important role.
“Exposing Africa youth to Zurich Insurance Group employees as global mentors,” Nwogugu continued, “as well as to JA Africa alumni and role models such as Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, who has founded not one but two unicorns in Nigeria, will help build the critical social skills and confidence necessary to validate their ideas and communicate them to a global audience of funders and clients.”
The announcement was made today at an event through which members of African media were able to ask questions, with a special interest in scaling and fast-tracking entrepreneurship education in Africa. The panelists noted that Z Zurich Foundation, JA Worldwide, JA Africa, and JA member countries in Africa are working to create a new breed of partnership that develops an ecosystem of role models and mentors, who work with youth through a mix of high-tech digital learning experiences; low-tech options like television, radio, and podcasts; and face-to- face experiences. Then, after students graduate, regional and local vehicles that either match students with employers or help youth launch businesses through incubators and seed grants.
“For Africa to be successful as a continent,” said Nwogugu, “all our youth need access to immersive education that leads to economic success. Through this partnership, we’ll create entrepreneurship ecosystems that work together to fuel young Africans to become changemakers, creating businesses that solve the continent’s challenges with climate change, food shortages, and inadequate infrastructures for health and education.”
The African Union defines ‘youth’ as someone between the ages of 15 and 35. With 70% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population under the age of 30, Africa has the youngest population in the world.
With such a burgeoning young workforce, the continent’s economy has a chance to grow exponentially, but only if the next generations are given the tools they need. It is crucial that young people participate in decision-making processes and be provided with numerous possibilities for employment and innovation.
Depending on their needs and stage of life, access to financial services can empower young people and improve their well-being in the right circumstances. According to research, children start developing good financial habits as early as age seven.
A study done by the OECD for the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion shows that young people are more likely to choose non-traditional financial service providers since they frequently have weak links with the official banking sector, both in sub-Saharan Africa and globally. It should come as no surprise that this generation is driving fintech adoption globally given that they have never known a world without mobile, web, and app-based services.
The study further revealed that; one in three internet users worldwide is under the age of 18, and globally, 71% of young people and only 48% of the general population use the internet. Many national governments, including those of Costa Rica, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, and Spain, have explicitly recognized Internet access as a human right since access to online information and services has become so crucial.
At Cellulant (www.Cellulant.io), we view fintech collaborations as a vehicle for advancing financial inclusion, business expansion and the overall economic development of Africa. We are daily working towards opening up options for people to become financially autonomous and empowered by giving global, regional, and local enterprises the rails they need to own their financial journeys.
We view collaborations with Fintech firms, especially those Founded and Led by the Youth, as a tool to promote financial inclusion and the growth of individual businesses as well as the continent of Africa’s economy as a whole. As evidenced by some of our recent partnerships, Young African Founders in Africa are making significant steps in a variety of sectors to drive financial inclusion;
In the Gig Economy:
The one-stop financial platform for Africa’s gig workers, ImaliPay (www.ImaliPay.com) partnered with Cellulant, for its payments infrastructure and solutions in Kenya and Nigeria. Founded by 2 young Africans, Tatenda Furusa (https://bit.ly/3QoO9tw) & Sanmi Akinmusire (https://bit.ly/3zQi3Q8), ImaliPay is driving financial inclusion by allowing ImaliPay users to access financial services quicker through Cellulant’s payment rails while at the same time building an ecosystem where gig workers can create a safety net around their work through savings, credit, and insurance that drives their productivity and economic empowerment.
Cellulant is also the Payments Processor for Grey (https://bit.ly/3JNRakz), a Y-combinator-backed fintech startup, powering its payouts to thousands of Grey customers. Grey offers a unique international money transfer service that enables its users to send and receive international payments without restrictions quickly. Grey was launched in 2021 by Idorenyin Obong (https://bit.ly/3zK17uE) and Femi Aghedo (https://bit.ly/3zOl1Vr), who wanted to help Nigerians easily exchange to local currency and access the foreign currencies in their accounts.
In the Retail Sector:
Leveraging Cellulant’s footprint across the continent, where we are present in 35 countries, MarketForce (https://bit.ly/3AhDfzZ) entered a partnership with Cellulant to offer additional revenue opportunities for informal retailers through empowering them to be agents for major financial services, as well as access payments, savings, investments, insurance and buy-now-pay-later products. Founded in 2018 by Tesh Mbaabu (https://bit.ly/3QmKE6O) and Mesongo Sibuti (https://bit.ly/3C3ZJG8), MarketForce is an all-inclusive B2B commerce platform that empowers informal merchants in Africa to source, order and pay for inventory digitally and conveniently, access financing, collect digital payments and make extra money by reselling digital financial services such as airtime, electricity tokens and bill payments through its RejaReja app.
In the Remittances Sector:
At Cellulant, our goal is to simplify how payments are made by ensuring they are made in the most seamless manner. This seamlessness is also required in the remittance space hence our partnership with Nala (https://www.Nala.com) to facilitate seamless cross-border payments and significantly reduce the cost of sending money from the UK and the US into Africa. Nala is a Y-Combinator-backed company, founded by Benjamin Fernandes (https://bit.ly/3SGQ7XL), that provides an app for Africans living in the United Kingdom and the United States to send money to the continent seamlessly.
Cellulant continues to power payments across the continent, one transaction at a time assisting businesses to explore how the evolution of digital payment solutions may assist job creation, increase efficiency in service delivery, and encourage financial inclusion for our youth population in order to develop Africa’s payment sector and to boost economic development.
In February 2022, Mariam Udeh, 26 years old, residing in Garki, Abuja, gave birth to her first child and was in uncharted territory. As a new mother, she agreed with her husband to exclusively breastfeed their baby for six months.
“He is our firstborn, and I have heard that exclusive breastfeeding is good for the baby, but I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task. For us to achieve the goal, I decided to support my wife whenever she needs help caring for the baby. I support her mentally, emotionally and physically because breastfeeding can be tedious,” said 30 years old Mr Udeh Ifeanyi, a technician.
According to him, his wife and son have not been ill, and his wife does not complain of tiredness because he is always available to lend a hand.
“It would be nice if men support their wives during and after pregnancy because they need the emotional and physical stamina to encourage them to breastfeed so that we can have healthier children, he added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, starting within an hour of birth.
According to WHO, exclusive breastfeeding – without any other food – for the first six months promotes sensory and cognitive development and protects babies against infectious and chronic diseases. Yet, policies that support breastfeeding are not available to most mothers worldwide.
“We teach that early and exclusive breastfeeding is good for the baby, and it needs to be supported by healthcare facilities, healthcare workers, governments and families”, said Margaret Bawa, a retired midwife with 38 years of working experience, volunteering at the Kuchingoro Primary Health Care Centre (PHC), Abuja.
She said most mothers blame lack of family or societal support as reasons why they do not exclusively breastfeed their babies for six months.
“We emphasize the importance of breast milk to mothers during ante and post-natal care and advise them to practice exclusive breastfeeding notwithstanding their health conditions after birth. But in cases where they cannot breastfeed directly, we encourage them to feed the babies with breast milk expression.
“A support system will assist a woman practice exclusive breastfeeding as it will ensure that the new mother is not struggling, feel isolated, and needs support. We also advise the men who follow their wives to ante-natal to assist their wives at home so they can have more time for breastfeeding and rest”, she said.
According to the WHO, up to 800,000 lives could be saved annually through six months of exclusive breastfeeding and continued breastfeeding with appropriate complementary feeding for up to two years or longer.
However, statistics from the National Demographic and Health Survey 2018 indicate that Nigeria’s breastfeeding indices are still below optimal.
Globally, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding for infants under six months of age is 40%, while its 28.7% in Nigeria.
To mark the 2022 World Breastfeeding Week, a joint statement by UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell and WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on governments, donors, civil society and the private sector to step up efforts to:
prioritize investing in breastfeeding support policies and programmes, especially in fragile and food insecure contexts;
equip health and nutrition workers in facilities and communities with the skills they need to provide quality counselling and practical support to mothers to successfully breastfeed;
protect caregivers and healthcare workers from the unethical marketing influence of the formula industry by fully adopting and implementing the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes, including in humanitarian settings; and
implement family-friendly policies that provide mothers with the time, space and support they need to breastfeed.
This year’s theme, World Breastfeeding Week, under its theme Step up for breastfeeding: Educate and Support, seeks to involve governments, communities and individuals who can strengthen the capacity of people that have to protect, promote and support breastfeeding across different levels of society.
The one-week-long awareness days is celebrated from 01 to 07 August, as breastfeeding is key to achieving the number 2 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of improving nutrition, ensuring food security and ending hunger.
Reigning Champion, Manchester City, will welcome newly promoted Bournemouth to the Etihad Stadium this weekend for Matchday 2 of the 2022/23 English Premier League season.
The tie is set to broadcast this Saturday at 3:00pm on SuperSport Premier League (DStv channel 203) and Go Football (GOtv channel 31).
Pep Guardiola’s team got off to a bright start in the opening match against Westham courtesy of new signing Erling Halaand’s brace and they will be hoping to sustain their winning momentum against The Cherries managed by Scott Parker.
Guardiola has led The Citizens to four Premier League titles in the last five years and will be keen to guide them to another Premier League title this season and follow the footsteps of Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson who won three titles consecutively on two occasions.
On the other hand, Bournemouth also got off to a new era in the Premier League under Parker by defeating big spending Aston Villa, but Manchester City is a better opponent than Steven Gerrard’s team was and they will have to pull off a good fight.
Meanwhile, the Spanish La Liga will officially commence this weekend. SuperSport viewers on DStv and GOtv can watch live action on their decoders.
This Saturday, Barcelona will begin their quest to end their three-year La Liga drought by paying a visit to Cadiz. Xavi Hernandez will be hoping to see his team avoid another poor start to the season and become contenders for the league. This match is showing at 5:30pm on SS LaLiga Channel (DStv Channel 204 and GOtv Channel 32).
On Sunday, Champions Real Madrid will begin their title defence by playing host to Mallorca at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium. This match is showing at 8:30pm on SS LaLiga Channel (DStv Channel 204 and GOtv Channel 32).
To enjoy the new football season, customers can download the MyDStv and GOtv apps to subscribe or upgrade or set up Auto-Renewal to stay connected without interruptions. Customers can also dial *288# to recharge.
Mitsumi Distribution, one of the leading IT distributors in the Middle East and Africa, today announced that Seagate has signed Mitsumi as strategic distribution partner for PAN Africa. Under the accord, the leading distributor aims to further drive and promote Seagate`s complete range of storage solutions across PAN Africa
Satyen Chokhsi, Business Unit Head, Mitsumi Distribution and Mohit Pandey, Sales Head (Middle East Africa & Turkey) Seagate
According to IDC, the global datasphere will grow to 175 zettabytes by 2025. Seagate stores most of the world’s data, shipping over 400 Exabytes per year. As the world adopts IT 4.0, customers and partners in Africa have massive data that needs real-time processing and action near where it is created – close to the edge of the network, away from the core. Seagate offers the best storage solutions – no matter the data size from petabyte to exabyte – at the best value with industry-leading capacity, firmware, and multi-core capabilities.
From left to right Satyen Chokhsi, Business Unit Head, Mitsumi Distribution and Mohit Pandey, Sales Head (Middle East Africa & Turkey) Seagate
“We see a lot of growth opportunity in Africa and we aim to better serve customers’ data management challenges and address this growing demand in the African storage market. Seagate would like to leverage Mitsumi’s strong in-country presence in Africa region, regional distribution network and wide channel breadth, which is currently incomparable”, Mohit Pandey, Sales Head (Middle East Africa & Turkey) Seagate. Our partnership with Mitsumi bolsters Seagate’s offerings with better product availability in the region while strengthening our presence in Africa.”
Commenting on the partnership, Satyen Chokhsi, Business Unit Head, Mitsumi Distribution said, “Seagate is one of the leading mass data storage manufacturer and infrastructure solution provider in the world, with key focus on mid and large capacities. Data is fueling a smarter and more responsibly connected world and will continue to play an instrumental role across all business segments in Africa. As the African datasphere is growing at an unprecedented rate, Mitsumi is proud to be appointed as Seagate’s strategic distribution partner in Africa. Mitsumi’s partnership with Seagate clearly strengthens our portfolio and offering and is also in line with our Pan African expansion.
Mitsumi has 21 offices in Africa and recently opened eleven new logistics and sales offices in Ivory coast, Cameroon, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, DRC, Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Gabon. Furthermore, Mitsumi will also have representative offices covering the whole Francophone African countries by the end of the year – to better serve and support the region.
Companies spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to attract new customers to their product or service. But less thought is given to customers who stop buying and simply leave.
Customers leave for various reasons. And it’s not always easy to pick out the exact reason why they leave. When you ask, they may give a variety of excuses but those may not be the real reasons.
Statistics, depicted in Figure 1 and Figure 2, tell us the major reasons why customers leave.
Quite simply and clearly, the bar graph above shows that 68% of customers leave because they have the perception that the company does not care about them. 14% leave because they are dissatisfied with product or service while only 9% leave because of price.
Expectedly, there are a few factors that are not within the company’s control, like when a customer dies or moves away, but those constitute only a small percentage of the reasons why customers leave.
So, all together, 91% of the reasons why customers leave are potentially within the company’s control.
Now these are not hard issues to address – but as will be seen in figure 2 below, most companies don’t recognize them as the issues that make customers to leave.
Figure 2 above shows that a staggering 73% of customers leave because they are dissatisfied with customer service, but the company losing the customer thinks only 21% leave because of customer service – look at the purple bar underneath.
Again, the company losing the customer thinks 48% leave because of price, when in fact only 25% do so. Also, look at the difference in views regarding the impression that customer’s needs have changed – company thinks 35% leave because their needs have changed but customer thinks it’s 9% that leave because of that reason.
What this clearly demonstrates is that companies tend to place the reasons (why customers leave) firmly at the feet of the customers (i.e. something outside the company’s control). It’s easier to rationalize a customer’s decision to leave by blaming it on cost, needs change, etc. but, as statistics have shown, often times, it’s primarily because we didn’t care about our customers.
And caring about customers – treating customers well – requires great attitude and good customer service skills. Do your employees have them?
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