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Looking in to 2014: Need for Speed in e-Commerce World

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Sven Hammar is founder and CEO of Apica
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As we are leaving 2013, heading for 2014, e-commerce is under heavy expansion in Nigeria and the rest of Africa.

A growing number of online consumers will put pressure on e-commerce sites’ functionality. Web performance expert Sven Hammar, CEO of Apica, gives his best advice on how to avoid being the e-retailer who throws the customers out on the street in 2014.

New technology has put e-commerce in a constant growth. Feeling more secure and accustomed to shopping online, more consumers are turning online for their essential shopping. Increased creativity and the rapid development among e-commerce retailers with expanding loyalty programs and promotions also play an important role in this process.

Forrester predicts that the average shopper will spend $1,738 annually by 2016, compared with $1,207 in 2011.

The same institute also claims that the estimated increased figures in sales will largely be contributed from existing online shoppers.

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Increased promotional sales and the fact that each consumer makes more transactions will not reduce the pressure on the e-commerce sites.

On the contrary. This leads to increased pressure on e-commerce sites. E-commerce companies really need to take in to consideration what impact on the web sites’ performance and functionality a sudden growth of visitors and transactions may result in.  An ill-prepared e-shopping site could lose customers very quickly.

 

Picture yourself doing a supposedly quick online shopping errand during lunch. When something that should take a few minutes ends up taking your entire lunch hour because of a slow website, you lose patience quickly. You would probably regard it as unacceptable, as probably most of your customers. But that situation can easily be avoided. Here are six ideas on how ro to optimize desktop and mobile website performance:

1.    Minimize or remove Flash. Flash is bulky and is often not worth the added limited benefits. Flash is also incompatible with most mobile devices so a big chunk of your visitors may be unable to view the content anyway. If you cannot eliminate it completely, minimize it.

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2.    Optimize images. Keeping images in their full size consumes a lot of bandwidth as they load so resize them whenever possible.
Also, change the format and optimize them for the web. Sometimes there is extra space or padding around graphics to separate it from text or other elements, but consider cropping that out and using CSS to create the padding.
Fine-tune image settings in programs with that option because reducing the colour palette from 256 to 32 greatly reduces file size. And finally, decrease the quality setting, since reducing them to 80 or 90 percent will not show any significant difference from the original.

3.    Do not embed external media. Eliminate links to videos hosted on other sites because your pages will only run as fast as theirs.
 If it is really good and beneficial to reference, host it on your own site whenever possible so you are not relying on another website’s performance.

4.    Consider utilizing a content delivery network. A CDN is a system of servers networked across the Internet and designed to serve up content closer to end users, shortening the delivery cycle and decreasing page load times.

This improves scalability and efficiency but more importantly, it provides a better user experience for your site visitors. When users abandon sites after waiting a mere two seconds or less, it is an option worth considering.

 5.    Choose the best web host for your business. Do not stick with a host provider overloaded with thousands of other sites, slowing yours down, just because you have been with them for a long time.
Your host needs to understand your organization and its requirements, including performance, availability, security and more, so in order to keep up with business demands and continually evolve, make sure they are continually delivering on their promises.

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 6.    Conduct load testing and monitor your site regularly for performance dips and spikes. Address the dips with code and content changes.
If you have a proactive load testing and monitoring plan in place, you have a better chance of avoiding the site abandonment issue described earlier.

 by Sven Hammar, CEO, Apica

 Sven Hammar is founder and CEO of Apica, a provider of load testing and performance monitoring for cloud and mobile applications and one of Europe’s fastest growing technology companies (Deloitte’s ”Fast 500” list). Mr. Hammar is a serial entrepreneur who has founded several successful IT companies. See http://www.apicasystem.com/

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Dangote Plans to Donate One-Third of Wealth to Charity as Legacy

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Aliko Dangote
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Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, plans to dedicate one-third of his wealth to charity as part of his succession plan, Halima Dangote, his daughter, has revealed.

Dangote Plans to Donate One-Third of Wealth to Charity as Legacy

Aliko Dangote

Halima, a trustee of the Aliko Dangote Foundation, disclosed this in an interview with Bloomberg published on Tuesday, saying the billionaire had secured the support of his family to commit 33 per cent of his estate to philanthropy.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Dangote’s net worth is estimated at $35.1 billion, meaning one-third of his current wealth would be worth about $11.7 billion if his fortune remains at that level.

Halima explained that her father views philanthropy as a key part of his legacy and has incorporated it into the family’s long-term succession plans.

She said Dangote had structured his estate to ensure that charitable giving continues across generations, particularly in areas such as healthcare and education.

“He sort of put all the structure in place whereby we focus a lot on health and education. He actually donated 25 per cent to the foundation. If you look at it, it is what we call in Sharia Code in Islam; it means he has donated 33 per cent of his whole inheritance to his foundation,” she said.

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Halima added that Dangote believes giving back is central to the success of his businesses and the family’s values.

She said the billionaire asked her, her two sisters, and his mother to sign the agreement allowing 33 per cent of his inheritance to be dedicated to humanitarian causes.

The planned donation builds on Dangote’s longstanding philanthropic activities through the Aliko Dangote Foundation, which was established in 1994.

According to Halima, the foundation received an endowment of $1.25 billion about a decade ago and has since received an additional $700 million in funding.

She said about 70 per cent of the foundation’s spending goes to programmes in Nigeria, while 20 per cent supports projects across Africa, with the remaining funds directed to initiatives in other parts of the world.

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The foundation’s interventions focus on healthcare, education, nutrition, and humanitarian support, including partnerships that contributed to the eradication of wild poliovirus in Africa.

Dangote’s planned charitable commitment adds to increasing global attention on billionaire philanthropy.

Although the proposed 33 per cent allocation is below the 50 per cent commitment associated with the Giving Pledge, it would rank among the largest philanthropic commitments announced by an African billionaire.

Earlier this year, Dangote was named among the world’s most influential philanthropists by TIME magazine’s inaugural TIME100 Philanthropy list, recognising the impact of the Aliko Dangote Foundation, which reportedly spends more than ₦50 billion annually on programmes across Africa.

 

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Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission Seeks Collaboration on Power Plants

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Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC), has said that there are plans for Nigeria to begin to generate electricity from nuclear sources.

Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission Seeks Collaboration on Power Plants

Mr Anthony Godwin Ekedegwa, chief executive, NAEC stated this when he recently visited Mr Umar Yusuf Girei, acting managing director, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA),in Abuja.

He was at NIWA’s office to solicit the support of NIWA in achieving the numerous advantages of using nuclear energy technology in the country.

According to him, the partnership of critical stakeholders in Nigeria will position the country well in developing and maintaining its nuclear power plant.

The NAEC chief said Nigeria intends to begin the generation of electricity from nuclear sources instead of fossil-based power plants and hydro-based power plants, stressing that for Nigeria to develop, there is a need for the country to diversify its energy needs.

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In his remarks, Mr Girei assured NAEC of his agency’s readiness to collaborate on the advancement of a nuclear power plant in Nigeria.

He promised the full support of NAEC for the success of a nuclear power plant in the country, saying that as the organisation saddled with the responsibility of regulating and developing Nigeria Inland Waterways, his entity is strategically positioned to play a critical role in the federal government’s quest for sustainable energy through the new technology.

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Pan-Africanism: Why Integration is Non-Negotiable for Africa’s Future

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In a powerful call for continental solidarity, Ralph Mupita, Group CEO of MTN, has asserted that the future of the African continent depends on the dismantling of xenophobic barriers.

Pan-Africanism: Why Integration is Non-Negotiable for Africa’s Future

Speaking at the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation (KMF) Winter Seminar, Mupita framed migration as a fundamental characteristic of the African identity, urging South Africa and other nations to embrace integration over exclusion.

He emphasised that the survival of African enterprises depends on a borderless approach to trade and talent. “The digital economy we’re fast moving to knows no borders.” Mupita declared, noting that the mindset of exclusion is an outdated relic that hinders the continent’s ability to compete globally.

He argued that for Africa to leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the psychological barriers of xenophobia must be eradicated.

Providing a stark financial justification for this stance, Mupita highlighted MTN’s own operational reality as a blueprint for Pan-African success. “We earn about 80 to 82% of our earnings from outside South Africa,” he revealed, illustrating that the prosperity of South African-born entities is inextricably linked to their success across the rest of the continent. This figure underscores the interdependence of African economies and the danger of isolationist policies.

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Mupita’s stance was strong advocating for unity: “The future of Africa will not be determined by the borders that separate us, but by the economic opportunities that connect us. Governments must set predictable policy and regulations.

Businesses will follow and allocate resources and capital. Together, we can build a continent where opportunity is more evenly shared and prosperity is more widely created.”

Analysts observing the seminar noted that Mupita’s remarks come at a critical juncture where economic volatility often fuels nationalist rhetoric. By tying the fight against xenophobia to the balance sheet, MTN is positioning Pan-Africanism beyond the moral imperative to its function as a business necessity. The CEO stressed that “Migration is part of who we are,” suggesting that the movement of people is the primary engine for the movement of capital and innovation.

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