E-Business
AI, Bots Will Free Smart Businesses’ Employees from Mundane Processes

Bots won’t take away (all of) your work, but they will help build a more creative workplace, says Jennifer Sutherland of Standard Bank who sat down with Sage’s Kriti Sharma to talk about the future of work and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and bots.
Businesses shouldn’t be developing bots and artificial intelligence solutions just because they’re trendy, or because they think they can replace their employees.
However, smart businesses will use these technologies to free employees from mundane business processes and allow them to be more creative and ‘human’ at work.
That’s according to Kriti Sharma, VP of Bots and AI at Sage, who was recently named in Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30. She built her first robot at the age of 17, designed to bring chocolates to its controller. The software bots she works on at Sage today are designed to helping business builders do less admin, and more of what they love.
Less Admin, More Freedom
Sharma is the brain behind Sage’s recently launched chatbot called Pegg, developed to hide the complexities of accounting and let entrepreneurs manage their finances through conversation. “Few business owners wake up and say “Yay! I get to do my invoices today””, she says. “Pegg takes away a lot of the pain by making it as easy as chatting to a friend on Facebook.”
Automation can give accountants more freedom, too. By taking over manual tasks like scanning receipts and updating expenses, bots will free up their time to focus on serving as strategic advisors to their customers and offering a more personalised service.
Freeing Us Up for Higher Value Tasks
Jennifer Sutherland, Innovation Capability Builder at Standard Bank believes that bots and automation could help unlock a friendlier and more human workplace, rather than taking us into a cold, dystopian future. Supported by automation, people serving customers will be able to focus on higher value tasks, be more creative and take more initiative.
“Creativity is a mindset. Many people believe they simply aren’t creative by nature, when in fact there are techniques to bolster creativity,” says Sutherland. “But they need the time and space to explore new things. When they are busy for 8 hours a day on their core job, they don’t have time to learn something new, solve problems, or explore a new technology.”
AI, she believes, should serve to free up time for things like encouraging creativity, and help bring motivation and purpose back to the frontline of customer service.
Building Friendly Bots
Sharma notes that one of the important elements of a chatbot is the personality it projects – it must be likeable and it must be adaptable to the user’s personality. “We’ll be spending a lot of time with bots in the future because they will our virtual assistants,” she says. “So we must be able to enjoy interacting with them. We place a big focus on building ‘nice’ robots”.
At the same time, Sharma believes that we should embrace ‘botness’ and build bots to be bots, not to be like humans. Humans, she says, aren’t naturally the most optimised for tasks like intelligent automation, which is what we’re developing bots for in the first place.
Bots Shouldn’t Imitate Human Biases
As bots are set to become a prominent feature of the future, it is important that they reflect the diversity of the audiences they serve and don’t replicate human biases. “We also shouldn’t build bots that project the same stereotypes and biases that characterise human society,” says Sharma.
For example, many virtual assistants today use female voices, building on the stereotype of associating women with administrative and personal assistance work. Sharma specifically developed Pegg as a gender-neutral bot for this reason. Bots should be inclusive and feel welcoming to people irrespective of gender, language or culture.
To get this right, we should consider not only how bots’ personalities are projected, but also the diversity of the teams that make them and the diversity of the data that bots use for their inputs, Sharma says.
E-Business
Galaxy Backbone Celebrates the Federal Government’s Paperless Civil Service Milestone

Galaxy Backbone (GBB) aligns with and celebrates the successful announcement by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation on the achievement of a Paperless Civil Service, a significant milestone in Nigeria’s public sector reform and digital transformation agenda.

The milestone was formally highlighted at a press briefing led by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, who commended Galaxy Backbone for its sustained support and contribution throughout the implementation of the programme.
GBB has played a critical role in enabling this transition by providing secure, scalable, and shared digital infrastructure that supports the digitisation of government processes across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Through the 1Government Cloud, MDAs have been empowered to migrate from paper-based workflows to digital platforms, improving efficiency, collaboration, data security, and service delivery across the Federal Civil Service.
In addition, GovMail, GBB’s secure government email platform, has strengthened official communication, enhanced records management, and reinforced cybersecurity standards—key pillars in sustaining a paperless operating environment.
Galaxy Backbone acknowledges the collective efforts of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Permanent Secretaries, Directors of ICT, consultants, partners, and dedicated public servants whose commitment and collaboration ensured the smooth delivery of this initiative.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Backbone, Prof. Ibrahim Adeyanju, was represented at the press briefing by Akintayo Bamisaye, Acting Group Head, Research, Digital Innovation and Skills Department (RDIS).
GBB describes the achievement as a strong close to 2025 and reaffirms its commitment to supporting the Federal Government in building a modern, efficient, and digitally enabled public service.
E-Business
Jumia CEO says Black Friday Signals Nigeria’s E-Commerce Maturity

At the close of 2025, Temidayo Ojo, the CEO of Jumia Nigeria, reflected on a year-end shopping season that points to the growing maturity of the country’s e-commerce market. “Black Friday is no longer a single, short-lived spike in activity,” he said.

“It has become a familiar, anticipated moment in the retail calendar, where consumers shop deliberately and with confidence.”
Preliminary KPIs for the two months ended November 30, 2025, show strong year-on-year growth in both orders and Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), with GMV growth outpacing order growth. This indicates that customers are placing fuller, more considered baskets rather than shopping in fragmented transactions. Nigeria ranked among Jumia Group’s better-performing markets, with engagement remaining steady throughout the Black Friday period rather than spiking briefly and tapering off.
A key factor behind this performance is the growing familiarity of consumers with online shopping. Customers are increasingly leveraging platform features such as saved carts, brand stores, and price comparison tools to plan purchases in advance. This trend suggests that digital commerce is becoming embedded in everyday habits rather than being viewed as a one-off event.
Ojo also highlighted the role of Jumia’s JForce network in connecting digital commerce to local communities. “Our agents are critical to ensuring that customers across Nigeria, including secondary cities and smaller communities, have access to variety, consistent pricing, and reliable delivery,” he said. “During peak periods like Black Friday, JForce agents can respond faster, serve more customers efficiently, and build stronger local relationships. This isn’t just a distribution channel—it’s a pathway to sustainable income and inclusion.”
Reflecting on the overall performance, the CEO concluded: “What we’re seeing this year-end is steady engagement across categories, stronger consumer confidence, and partners like our JForce agents benefiting from increased activity.
“It confirms that Nigeria’s e-commerce ecosystem is maturing, growing in a more structured and resilient way. As the December Holiday Sale continues, we expect these patterns of familiarity, trust, and participation to sustain momentum and drive both commerce and community impact across the country.”
E-Business
Galaxy Backbone Tops FG’s Website Performance Ranking

Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) has been ranked first overall in the 2025 Federal Government Website Performance Scorecard.

This is a landmark achievement for Nigeria’s digital economy.
The ranking, conducted by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), is the definitive benchmark for digital excellence and transparency across all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).
Professor Ibrahim Adepoju Adeyanju, managing director and CEO of Galaxy Backbone, received the award during a ceremony in Abuja.
He described the feat as a validation of the agency’s“Nigeria First”data sovereignty strategy and its relentless pursuit of service excellence.
This recognition comes as the Federal Government intensifies its push to achieve a fully paperless civil service by December 31, 2025.
GBB has been the primary architect of this transition through its 1Gov Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform, which now hosts the operations of almost all federal MDAs.
The award adds to a growing list of accolades for Galaxy Backbone in 2025, following its recent win of the “International Standard Excellence Award for Best IT Service Provider.”
As the central hub for government shared services, GBB’s performance serves as a blueprint for other agencies currently undergoing digital transformation.
With its expanded fiber-optic backbone now covering over 13 states and its secure cloud solutions, Galaxy Backbone remains the cornerstone of Nigeria’s vision to become a leading digital nation by the end of the decade.
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