Malagasy Vanilla has transformed its decades-old wholesale business by embracing direct-to-consumer sales through Temu, enabling the family-run company to reach customers in 14 European markets while significantly reducing logistics costs.

For years, premium Madagascan vanilla supplier Malagasy Vanilla sold exclusively to restaurants, bakeries and wholesalers because the cost of shipping a single pack to individual customers often equalled the value of the product itself. That changed after the company joined Temu’s Local Seller Program in November 2025.

The Belgian-based business, which sources high-quality vanilla from Madagascar, has leveraged Temu’s logistics network to cut domestic shipping costs by nearly half through a partnership with Belgian postal operator Bnode. The move has enabled the company to enter the retail market for the first time and quadruple its sales within four months.

According to Belinda Rabenandrasana, co-Chief Executive Officer of Malagasy Vanilla, Temu has opened up an entirely new customer segment for the company.

“Temu opened a new avenue for us,” she said. “We were finally able to explore selling to individuals.”

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The platform now contributes between five and 10 per cent of the company’s overall revenue.

Expansion into 14 European Markets

Malagasy Vanilla is among businesses participating in Temu’s Local Seller Program, launched in Europe in 2024 to help local merchants expand beyond their domestic markets.

Through partnerships with more than 150 logistics providers across Europe—including Bnode in Belgium, La Poste in France and DHL Group in Germany—Temu offers sellers access to affordable shipping and delivery infrastructure without requiring major investment in logistics.

After successfully establishing direct-to-consumer sales in Belgium, Malagasy Vanilla expanded into 14 European countries, including Germany, France, Spain and Poland.

Rabenandrasana said the logistics support, competitive shipping rates and seller assistance provided by Temu made the expansion possible.

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“Without Temu and its partnership with Bnode, it would have been very difficult for a small business like ours to start selling directly to consumers,” she said.

She added that Temu also assists sellers in managing regulatory requirements such as the European Union’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) compliance, making cross-border operations easier for small businesses.

Three Generations of Vanilla Expertise

Malagasy Vanilla traces its roots to three generations of the Rabenandrasana family in Madagascar’s vanilla industry.

Belinda’s grandfather began trading vanilla locally, while her father expanded operations across Madagascar. She launched the company’s international business in 2017, supplying premium Madagascan vanilla to European restaurants, pastry shops and food wholesalers before establishing operations in Belgium in 2023.

The company partners with growers and producer associations in Madagascar, where between 20 and 40 workers oversee the six- to 10-month curing process that transforms green vanilla pods into premium black vanilla.

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Operations in Belgium focus on packaging, quality assurance and distribution.

Customer Reviews Drive Growth

Under its Lavani brand, Malagasy Vanilla sells gourmet-grade whole vanilla pods targeted at both professional chefs and home baking enthusiasts.

Rather than relying heavily on paid advertising, the company has benefited from Temu’s product discovery tools and customer reviews, helping the niche brand gain visibility organically.

According to Rabenandrasana, strong customer feedback has played a significant role in increasing traffic and boosting sales.

The brand currently maintains a customer review rating exceeding 99 per cent on the platform.

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Future Plans

Looking ahead, Malagasy Vanilla plans to expand its European footprint further by establishing a warehouse in France and increasing sales across the continent.

The company is also developing new products, including vanilla extract and vanilla sugar, while planning to open a physical retail and production facility in Belgium later this year.

In addition, it intends to launch a social-impact initiative aimed at supporting vanilla-growing communities in Madagascar.

Reflecting on the company’s evolution, Rabenandrasana said the business continues to build on her family’s legacy.

“My grandfather worked locally, my father expanded nationally, and now we are building internationally,” she said.

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Stakeholders in Nigeria’s digital economy have urged the Federal Government to review its partnership with global recruitment platform Hello.cv under the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme, citing concerns over data security, digital sovereignty and the country’s “Nigeria First” policy.

3MTT

The concerns follow the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy’s announcement on May 6 of a 10 million-dollar partnership with Hello.cv aimed at increasing the global visibility of Nigerian technology professionals.

Under the initiative, 20,000 selected 3MTT fellows will receive a global professional profile package, including an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered job search agent, a professional curriculum vitae (CV) writer and a personal .cv domain, valued at 500 dollars per participant.

While stakeholders acknowledged the programme’s potential to improve global employment opportunities for Nigerian tech talent, they expressed concerns about the implications of hosting participants’ digital identities and data on a foreign domain.

Chief Executive Officer of Cyberchain and Global Digital Economy Strategist, Engr. Jude Ozinegbe, said the arrangement raised important questions about data ownership and jurisdiction.

According to him, registering domains under an entity outside Nigeria gives that entity a degree of control over activities associated with the domain.

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“When you register your domain under a different entity outside your jurisdiction, that entity will have access to whatever is happening within that domain.

“In the long run, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) may have to examine the agreement and assess the security implications of such domain ownership,” he said.

Ozinegbe urged the NDPC to review the security protocols employed by Hello.cv to ensure compliance with Nigeria’s data protection regulations.

Also speaking, Ugonma Egwuatu of ECAM Global Services, an information and communications technology and data protection firm, said the security of data belonging to 20,000 fellows should be of significant interest to regulators.

She noted that while the ministry had the authority to determine how the programme was implemented, there was a need for greater transparency regarding the handling of participants’ personal information.

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“The NDPC requires its registered Data Protection Compliance Organisations (DPCOs) to subscribe to the .ng domain.

“If a government ministry permits trainees to operate on a foreign domain, then the commission should examine the arrangement because we are dealing with the data of 20,000 Nigerians,” she said.

Egwuatu also called for clarity on how data generated through the platform would be processed, stored and protected.

“There should be explanations regarding the backend. What are they doing with the data of people who visit these sites? Why use a foreign domain instead of the .ng domain? These are legitimate questions that deserve answers,” she said.

She added that government should ensure appropriate third-party agreements and safeguards were in place before implementing such initiatives.

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On his part, Chief Executive Officer of DNS Africa, Dr. Adebunmi Adeola Akinbo, said the objectives of the programme could still have been achieved while leveraging Nigeria’s country code top-level domain.

According to him, Hello.cv could have registered a hello.cv.ng or hellocv.ng domain in collaboration with the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA).

“The .ng domain can conveniently accommodate such a platform. If Hello.cv intends to onboard millions of Nigerians, it can work with NiRA to create a local domain structure.

“That way, the investment remains within Nigeria, strengthens the digital economy and supports local internet infrastructure,” he said.

Akinbo argued that excluding the .ng domain from the initiative undermined Nigeria’s digital identity and sovereignty.

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“As good as the programme may sound, leaving the .ng domain outside this engagement and taking Nigerian data outside the country’s digital jurisdiction is not the best approach,” he said.

Also commenting, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Precise Financial Systems Ltd., Yele Okeremi, stressed the importance of ensuring that investments in Nigeria’s digital economy create long-term domestic value.

According to him, building a sustainable technology ecosystem requires more than developing skilled professionals.

“Investment, particularly in technology and the knowledge economy, is not just about having smart people.

“It is also about who owns the infrastructure and who ultimately benefits from the value created. Nigeria must ensure it retains as much of that value as possible,” he said.

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Similarly, Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), Muhammed Rudman, described the use of foreign domains for a government-sponsored initiative as inconsistent with efforts to promote Nigeria’s digital economy.

“I don’t know where this idea came from, but it is unpatriotic for Nigerian companies funded by Nigerian resources to adopt .cv domains instead of .ng.

“Global companies such as Google register country-specific domains like google.ng when operating locally. Registering 20,000 additional .ng domains would improve Nigeria’s online visibility and strengthen the local internet ecosystem,” he said.

Rudman urged the Federal Government to support indigenous digital infrastructure by encouraging the use of the .ng domain.

The 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme is a flagship initiative of the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy aimed at equipping Nigerians with globally relevant digital skills.

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The programme provides free training in areas including software development, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity, data analytics, machine learning, animation, DevOps and user interface/user experience design through a hybrid learning model.

Stakeholders maintained that while the partnership with Hello.cv could expand international employment opportunities for Nigerian technology professionals, greater attention should be paid to safeguarding the country’s digital assets, promoting local internet infrastructure and ensuring compliance with Nigeria’s data protection framework.

Kaspersky’s Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) reveals key cyber threat trends for the first half of 2026 at the recent Cyber Security Weekend for the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa region (META).

As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, cyberthreats are becoming increasingly diverse and sophisticated. The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), coupled with ongoing geopolitical and economic instability, is contributing to the rise of cybercrime and the growing complexity of cyberattacks.

According to Kaspersky’s telemetry, online threats exploiting vulnerabilities in websites, emails and web services continued to affect millions of users across the META region during the first half of 2026.

Specifically, Kaspersky detection systems stopped 1,6M attacks from various online resources in Nigeria. Turkiye recorded the highest percentage of users affected by web-based threats at 22.8%, followed by Kenya (21.2%), Qatar (19.3%), Nigeria (18.4%) and South Africa (17.2%). In contrast, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan registered the lowest share of users targeted by web-borne attacks in the region.

AI is transforming attacker operations

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Kaspersky experts report that threat actors are increasingly integrating AI into different stages of their operations. Large language models are already being used to generate phishing emails, malicious code and supporting operational content.

AI is also beginning to play a larger role in malware development. Modern language models are capable of generating substantial portions of malicious software, from initial code scaffolding to functional modules.

Researchers have already observed AI-assisted malware development in campaigns linked to the FunkSec group, which deployed Rust-based malware capable of data theft, encryption and process manipulation. Similarly, during the RevengeHotels campaign in 2025, threat actors used large language models to generate portions of the infector and downloader code.

“We expect AI to remain one of the key factors shaping the threat landscape in 2026, as we already see how it is reshaping attacker workflows and accelerating their operations,” said Sergey Lozhkin, Head of Global Research and Analysis Team in APAC and META regions at Kaspersky. “By lowering the time and cost required to develop and adapt malicious tools, AI allows threat actors to iterate faster and scale their efforts. Defenders should be prepared for quicker shifts in tactics.”

Emerging trends shaping the cyber threat landscape

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In addition to the growing use of AI by cybercriminals, Kaspersky experts identified several trends that organisations should monitor closely:

• AI-driven malware evolution: generative models can rewrite malware in different languages or architectures, making malicious code harder to detect, and faster to deploy at scale.
• Cloud-based data exfiltration: attackers increasingly route stolen data through legitimate cloud and file-sharing services to blend in with normal traffic.
• Ransomware targeting operations: some groups disrupt production and business processes, not just encrypt data, to increase pressure for payment.
• AI agents as persistence mechanisms: some AI agent solutions are granted broad or even full system access. If compromised, attackers could modify the system prompt or the agent’s configuration, for example, causing it to download a payload on every startup.
• Malicious AI skills become a new attack vector: as AI agents gain broader access to enterprise systems, attackers start to exploit compromised skills to manipulate agent behaviour, steal sensitive data, execute unauthorised actions, and establish persistent access. This creates a new layer of risk where trusted AI tools can be turned into powerful mechanisms for cyberattacks.

As cyberthreats continue to evolve alongside emerging technologies, Kaspersky recommends that organisations strengthen their cybersecurity posture through continuous vulnerability management, timely patching, employee awareness training, threat intelligence, and advanced security solutions like Kaspersky Next, capable of detecting sophisticated and AI-assisted attacks.