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4 Disastrous Ways to Push Your Start-up Through Lies

There was this popular ad on TVs and billboards. The ad introduced a croissant brand into the one of the biggest emerging markets in Africa, Nigeria.
In fact, the feeling was great, the visuals were powerful and compelling. To crown it all, a popular celebrity was used to personify the brand.
If there were a thousand and one consumers craving for the product, I was one of them but for several weeks, I couldn’t lay my hand on ituntil on a very tiring day while returning home from work.
The adrenalin rush to devour the croissant was unimaginable but hey, the traffic law says you shouldn’t eat why driving!
The whole excitement turned into dissonance even before consumption. The product size could not measure up to the same as the size portrayed by the advertisement.
I felt cheated, embarrassed and discomfited for wasting my hard-earned money on a product that could not deliver its promise.
Since there was no value for money, repeat purchase was the last thing on my mind and never would I allow my close associates to make the same mistake.
Things like these are common in mostemerging markets and because the consumer laws are rather weak in these markets, advertisers sometimes escape the necessary regulatory scrutiny and whack.
Be that as it may, below are four ways I think your start-up can unsuccessfully lie to its market:
Making Promises You Can’t Fulfil
Every start-up should be reminded that a brand is a promise to the consumer to deliver a particular desired experience most of the time.
It should be known that consumers offer their trust and loyalty with the implicit understanding that your brand will behave in certain satisfying ways through product/service performance and through appropriate pricing, promotion, and distribution programs. In the croissant story earlier told, do you think I felt cheated because the product was too small? Not at all.
I felt embittered because the advertiser had failed in its promise to meet my expectations as conveyed in the billboard and television.
Believing Advert Would Do The Magic
Troublingly, many well-funded start-ups oftensubscribe to advertisingto blatantly make implicit promises they would never keep.
When the product or service doesn’t match up to the advertised promise, isn’t that like cheating, or at some level, stealing from people’s hopes?
Well, your ever wise customers would soon realise this, jettison your brand and pitch their tent with your competition who is real and truthful.
A marketing professional once said that advertising is powerful but ad is not what the consumer is buying.
You can spend one billion dollar on ad, if the product lacks merit, you would not sell. In fact, your ad begins to irritate. The value of an ad is based on the fact that the product is right.
There is a coinage in marketing, which underscores this, that the best way to kill a bad product is to advertise it.
Bad Positioning
More importantly, in our social media crazed world, venting out broken promises made to consumers has instant ramifications to the credibility and trajectory of your start-up’s perceived value.It is true that the goal of any brand positioning exercise is to develop a brand promise that is unique, compelling and believable.
Any successful brand positioning project must evaluate all potential brand promises against these three criteria – unique, compelling and believable. The winning promise must deliver against all threecriteria or it won’t work.
Thinking That Lies Would Engender Profitability
It’s wrong to assume that lies would ensure profitability. In fact, a lie told will only stimulate trial but never engender repeat purchase that can guarantee sustainable profitability.
Most times, a betrayed consumer will make sure others around him never fall victim. Tell the truth and don’t shoot yourself in the leg.
Don’t over promise and under deliver. Lies shouldn’t be ‘sold’ to push your start-up.
I’m sure you’re still interested in the croissant story I shared with you at the beginning of this article.
Well, I’m pleased to inform you that its makers only survived for two years. The croissant is abysmally dead, never to be resurrected.
Is your start-uppositioned to lie? If yes, please have a rethink!
Jide Ayegbusi is the founder of Edusko.com, an edtechstart-up that connects Africans with good and affordable schools in Africa and beyond. Follow Jide on twitter @jideayegbusi.
News
INTERPOL Report Shows Cybercrime is West, East African Most Dominant Security Concern

Cybercrime has emerged as a dominant security concern across Africa, with more than 30 percent of all reported crimes in Western and Eastern regions linked to cyber activity, according to the newly released 2025 Africa Cyberthreat Assessment Report by INTERPOL.
The report, based on data from African member states and private sector partners, reveals that two-thirds of surveyed countries describe cybercrime as constituting a medium to high share of total criminal cases.
This highlights how cyber-enabled criminal activity is evolving rapidly across the continent. The report identified alarming spikes in scam attempts, with some countries witnessing a 3,000 percent increase in suspected scam notifications in the past year.
Neal Jetton, INTERPOL’s Cyber Crime Director, warned that the threat landscape is evolving faster than enforcement responses.
“This fourth edition of the INTERPOL African Cyber Threat Assessment provides a vital snapshot of the current situation, informed by operational intelligence, extensive law enforcement engagement, and strategic private-sector collaboration.
“It paints a clear picture of a threat landscape in flux, with emerging dangers like AI-driven fraud that demand urgent attention. No single agency or country can face these challenges alone,” Jetton stated.
In the past year, suspected scam notifications rose by up to 3,000 per cent in some African countries, according to data from Kaspersky, one of several private sector partners that work with INTERPOL’s cybercrime directorate
Online scams, particularly through phishing, are the most frequently reported cybercrimes across the continent. Ransomware attacks and Business Email Compromise (BEC) incidents are also increasing, particularly in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.
“Ransomware detections in Africa also rose in 2024, with South Africa and Egypt suffering the highest number, at 17,849 and 12,281 detections respectively, according to data from Trend Micro, followed by other highly digitised economies such as Nigeria (3,459) and Kenya (3,030),” it stated.
Incidents included attacks on critical infrastructure, such as a breach at Kenya’s Urban Roads Authority (KURA), and on government databases, such as hacks of Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the report stated.
News
GSK to Slash Cost of Malaria Jab to Less than $5

The manufacturers of the world’s first malaria vaccine are set to slash the price by more than half by 2028 to less than$5 per dose.
The manufacturers of the shot, known as RTS,S, said a phased reduction in cost would begin immediately, with an ultimate aim to reduce the price to less than $5.
The announcement could hardly come at a more critical moment.
Gavi, a major vaccination initiative which funds immunisations in the world’s poorest countries, is facing a major budget crunch.
In Brussels on Wednesday, Gavi’s replenishment event raised $9 billion to fund immunisation programmes over the next five years. While this sounds like a huge sum, it’s significantly less than the $11.9bn the group had been aiming for.
Governments around the world are cutting development spending dramatically.
The UK, for instance, cut its contribution to Gavi by 40 per cent in real terms, telling The Telegraph it was prioritising defence, while the US has pledged nothing at all.
Though America previously gave Gavi roughly $300m a year, the country’s new health secretary claimed without evidence that the organisation was ignoring vaccine safety.
The announcement from the British pharmaceutical giant GSK and Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech will therefore be a relief to those trying to balance the books.
In a statement the companies said the price reduction demonstrated their “commitment to Gavi”, and was “driven by process improvements, expanded production capacity, cost-effective manufacturing, and minimal profit margins”.
By the time the price has fallen to below $5 per dose, a technology transfer agreement means Bharat will have taken over production, though GSK will continue to supply the adjuvant piece of the shot.
“For us, this is more than a cooperation, it’s a promise,” said Dr Krishna Ella, executive chairman of Bharat Biotech International Limited.
“By joining forces with GSK, and working closely with Gavi, and the WHO [World Health Organization], we are taking a real step toward closing the gap between vaccine supply and the urgent needs of children at risk of malaria.”
Each year, malaria still kills 500,000 people – the vast majority of them children aged five and under in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to WHO estimates, cases and deaths fell significantly between 2000 and 2015, but progress has since stalled.
Some have high hopes that RTS,S, as well as another vaccine called R21 developed by Oxford University, could prove critical in efforts to turn the tide.
In clinical trials, RTS,S reduced hospitalisations for severe malaria by 30 per cent.
But critics say the shot is too expensive and not as effective as existing tools, such as bed nets and antimalarials.
The reduction in price will bring it more in line with the cost of R21, which is priced at around $4 per dose.
Yet the cost will still add up, as both jabs require multiple shots. For RTS,S, this means four doses – the first three doses are given monthly, starting around five months of age, while the fourth dose is administered 15-18 months later.
Both jabs “provide reasonable short term efficacy – over about a year – so are a useful addition to other measures,” said Professor Nick White, a professor at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit who specialises in malaria.
“In the past GSK had limited production capacity – one of the reasons the R21 was developed. So reducing the price will be good and the two comparable vaccines can fight it out in the market place.”
A spokesperson for Gavi said the alliance’s goal is to “create sustainable demand backed by predictable financing so that companies – like GSK and Bharat – can continue investing in technology transfer and other efficiencies that bring down costs, thus making critical vaccines more available and affordable.
GSK’s decision to lower its prices, the spokesperson added, is “an important step for the global malaria vaccination programme, and our ability to make this lifesaving tool more widely available to those who need it the most”.
Gavi plans to help fund RTS,S in 12 African countries by the end of this year.
Previously, GSK has said it will supply up to 18 million vaccine doses between 2023 and the end of this year.
The company plans to supply 15 million doses annually from 2026-2028, a spokesperson told Reuters.
News
Rack Centre Signs Collocation Deal with TelCables Nigeria

Rack Centre, West Africa’s Tier III carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre, has struck a collocation agreement with TelCables Nigeria, an Angola Cables subsidiary.
TelCables Nigeria is delivering its high-capacity network and cloud infrastructure, as well as four international subsea cable systems (SACS, MONET, SEBRAS, and EllaLink), directly into Rack Centre’s regional carrier ecosystem as part of the agreement.
According to Angola Cables, the move provides reliable, low-latency south-bound routes to Europe, the Americas, and Latin America, reducing the danger of future cable disruptions along West Africa’s coast and enabling next-generation cloud services across the continent.
“Our unique Africa – to – Latin America route via SACS, combined with MONET, SEBRAS and EllaLink, gives customers the lowest – latency paths to the Americas and Europe,” said Fernando Fernandes, CEO of TelCables Nigeria.
“Businesses in latency sensitive sectors: financial services, content delivery and real-time communications will experience faster transactions, reduced lag and an enhanced user experience.
“By hosting at Rack Centre we also localise Clouds2Africa resources, price them in naira, and remove expensive ingress/egress charges or FX exposure.”
Rack Centre said its 13.5MW data centre campus designed with its recently launched LGS2 facility that delivers a design PUE of 1.35 and powered from sustainable energy sources, already hosts 70+ carriers, ISPs and network operators.
Lars Johannisson, CEO of Rack Centre, commented: “Adding a global operator of Angola Cables’ calibre through TelCables Nigeria dramatically deepens our connectivity fabric.
“We can now offer 99.95 % SLA routes to more destinations, enabling enterprises, governments and cloud providers to meet performance and data-residency requirements while keeping traffic local.”
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