Mimiano

Lamudi, the real-estate classifieds platform, has launched in three more countries in Africa; Gabon, Angola and the Republic of Congo. This brings up the total number of countries on Lamudi’s international network to 52 spread across Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East. Lamudi says the property sectors in the countries are beginning to make the online switch, creating demand for property listing services like one offered by Lamudi. Co-founder and Managing Director, Kian Moini is upbeat about the firm’s progress. “Since we launched in late 2013, Lamudi has grown at breathtaking speed. The website is now available in more than 30 countries in the emerging markets, offering house-hunters from Mozambique to Mexico access to over 800,000 global property listings,” he says. Lamudi is part of the Africa Internet Holding – supported by Rocket Internet, MTN and Millicom – same group behind Jumia, Jovago, Easy Taxi and 2 other startups.

A pple grossed $74.6bn in revenue, and $18bn in profit in the first quarter of 2015, the highest ever in corporate history, smashing a record previously held by Russia’s Gazprom with $16.2bn. According to a statement on Apple’s website, the results were fueled by all-time record revenue from iPhone and Mac sales as well as record performance of the App Store. Apple sold 74.5 million units of iPhone in the last quarter of 2014. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO who himself earned 40% more in the past year says, “Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.” Apparently, it’s been a good year at Apple despite 22% drop in iPad sales. Apple will ship its new Apple Watch wearable device in April of this year. This may nudge up its revenue even further in the new quarter even as concerns are rife that it’s high-end price may not be able to woo more than the Apple faithful.

MTN Group yesterday, in Johannesburg, South Africa, announced it would be the first African company to offer Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect to business customers across multiple countries on the continent. The new service will leverage the extensive footprint of MTN’s Global MPLS network, to provide customers with connectivity between their data centres or businesses and the AWS EU Ireland region. This will give enterprises across Africa a dedicated link with which they can access the flexible, scalable and reliable AWS cloud. “The relationship with Amazon Web Services is an important step in our plans to address the needs of enterprise customers in emerging markets, particularly Africa,” says MTN Group Chief Enterprise Officer, Mteto Nyati. “As MTN Business, our purpose is to enable and inspire growth on the continent. We believe that by working with a global technology leader such as Amazon Web Services, MTN will be better placed to enable customers

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday disowned former Minister Labaran Maku, who claimed his support for dumping the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), saying he cannot be involved in anti-party activities. Maku contested for the governorship candidature in Nasarawa State last year, but lost The President said he had at no time had any discussion or encourage him to join another party. He said in Lafia, Nasarawa State yesterday that the PDP does not encourage anti-party activities and he would never flout the party’s rules and regulations as the leader of the party, insisting Maku was on his own. He thanked the crowd that welcomed him at the Lafia Township Stadium for believing in him. He assured that the mineral resources in the state would be tapped amid dwindling oil prices and in line with the administration’s policy to diversify the economy, adding that Nasarawa will be one of the areas the central government will w

For anyone who has not read Professor Charles Soludo’s article in the Vanguard (online version) on January 25 2015, I would encourage them to do so. It is littered with abusive and unbecoming language. It shows how an embittered loser in the Nigerian political space can get so derailed that they commit intellectual harakiri by deliberately misquoting economic facts and maliciously turning statistics on their head to justify a hatchet job. We hope all the intellectuals in the international circles in which Professor Soludo has told us he flies around in will read what a Professor of Economics has chosen to do with his intellect. In this one article Soludo has shamelessly pandered to so many past leaders that Nigerians are asking one more time – what position is Soludo gunning for now? He claims in his article that he has had his own share of public service, yet he has failed twice in his attempts to be Governor of Anambra State and Vice Presidential candidate of v