Telecom
Telcos May Replace Call Centre Staff with IBM’s Watson

For obvious reasons of high cost of executing business, shortage of experts, and other issues in Nigeria, telecommunication operators, banking, healthcare, e-commerce and other service providers, might replace their call centre management staff with Wastson, an International Business Machine (IBM)-powered supercomputer.
Contact centres can overcome some of the challenges they face by tapping into the power of Watson, emphasized Debbie Botha, senior managing consultant at IBM, who was speaking at ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit 2015 in Midrand.
Watson is an artificially intelligent computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language.
In January, 2014, IBM launched the IBM Watson Group, ten months later the Group announced the availability of the cognitive-infused Watson Explorer, which has provides organizations the ability to quickly use natural language processing capabilities and data exploration to discover valuable business information in both structured and unstructured data.
According to Botha, Watson presents opportunity for contact centres in a world where clients are sharing more information on social media platforms.
“Clients expect to be served wherever, whenever and however they choose to interact, and they are growing frustrated with the lack of personalised interaction from contact centres, yet companies are still struggling to take advantage of the changing opportunities presented by big data.”
Traditional approaches to engaging with customers come up short today, said Botha, adding globally 270 billion calls are made annually to call centres, costing $600 billion.
Speaking to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek on the capabilities of the system, Muyiwa Moyela, external relations leader, Central & West Africa at IBM, said that unlike traditional search solutions that fail to provide context, trends and relationships, Watson Explorer can help professionals find and understand the information they need to work more efficiently, gain more insights from their unstructured content and realize their objectives of improving business outcomes.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek inquiries shows that, a company like MTN Nigeria with call centres on 180 located in Ilorin, Kano, Victoria Island and Mayfair; it has no less than seven (7) shifts per day.
Muyiwa also said that in the present world of cognitive computing, Watson can act as an expert next to the call centre agent all the time with a 360-degree view of the customer.
“The world of cognitive computing cuts across health sector, weather information management, telecoms, among others, but I don’t know at the moment what telcos in Africa are thinking about call centre management.
“Over there in Europe, they are actually machines that coordinate call centre management”.
Telecom
MTN Says New N6.98 USSD Charge Won’t Affect Airtime Recharge

Lynda Saint-Nwafor, chief Enterprise business officer, MTN Nigeria, has assured the network subscribers that the new end-user billing system for the use of USSD services will jot affect them.
USSD, otherwise Unstructured Supplementary Service Data codes are commonly used for banking transactions, airtime recharges, and other mobile services.
The telco said that there is no significant impact or change other than the fact that they will now pay the same N6.98 per session (120 seconds) with their airtime instead of direct bank debit.
Saint-Nwafor, said this during a chat with MTN MIP fellows, explaining that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) have ordered telecom operators to ensure that the new billing model resolves trust issues and ensures transparency in the billing process.
“Our regulator insisted that at the end of every month, we are going to be providing history and statistics on the performance of the service across the board”, she explained.
Saint-Nwafor added that the new billing model has standardized messaging across all operators and ensures consistent communication with customers.
“We will take all the error codes and map them into messages that are standardised across the board. So, if you initiate a transaction, you will know if it is failing. And, when the transaction fails, you will know if it is from your bank or the telco,” she explained.
Telecom
Crypto Scam Unmasked: U.S. Recovers Record $225m in Global Fraud Bust

The U.S. government has recovered $225 million in what is now the largest seizure of funds linked to a cryptocurrency investment scam.
In a statement released Wednesday, June 18, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said the recovery followed an extensive investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, using blockchain analysis and other forensic tools. The statement did not confirm whether any arrests had been made.
According to the authorities, the stolen funds originated from fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes that tricked victims into believing they were making legitimate investments. More than 400 individuals around the world, including dozens in the United States, were reportedly affected.
The operation involved a sophisticated money laundering network that carried out hundreds of thousands of blockchain transactions to obscure the source and ownership of the stolen assets.
“These scams prey on trust, often resulting in extreme financial hardship for the victims,” said Shawn Bradstreet, Special Agent in Charge at the U.S. Secret Service office in San Francisco.
Bradstreet added that U.S. officials hope the recovered funds can eventually be returned to the rightful victims.
Cryptocurrency investment fraud accounted for over $5.8 billion in reported losses in 2024 alone, according to the statement.
Telecom
Nnaemeka Ani Calls on African Techies to Rewrite the Narrative

In a rousing declaration that is electrifying minds across the continent, Hon. Nnaemeka Ani, Special Adviser on ICT to Enugu State Governor, Dr. Peter Mbah, has called for a homegrown digital revolution under the banner “Africa Will Rise: By Code, By Courage, By Us.”

Hon. Nnaemeka Ani
The message, part challenge, part philosophical—seeks to galvanize African innovators to move beyond buzzwords and build technology with impact and legacy in mind.
“Let’s stop building for hype. Let’s start building for legacy,” Ani urged while speaking to ICT journalists over the weekend. “Let’s stop waiting for someone else. Let’s start creating the future—on our own terms.”
At the heart of Ani’s vision is a shift from tech consumerism to tech authorship. With innovation hubs sprouting across cities like Enugu, Lagos, Kigali, Jo’Burg, and Nairobi, and a growing community of developers, engineers, and entrepreneurs determined to solve Africa’s unique challenges, the movement is already taking shape.
Ani emphasized that Africa’s future lies not in flashy apps or international admiration but in persistent, intentional solutions that uplift communities—solutions that digitize public services, bridge rural-urban divides, empower women and youth, and build resilience in food and climate systems.
“We have the talent,” he said. “Now it’s time to harness it—to stop building for likes and start building for lasting impact.”
With support from leaders like Ani and rising momentum in Africa’s tech corridors, it seems that a new chapter is being written—one line of code at a time.
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