When Nissan made its first investment towards Africa’s growth sixty years ago with Datsun’s presence in Zimbabwe and the Nissan Motor Company Limited, opening its Rosslyn operations, it was the humble, but bold start of a journey.

With a firm belief in the opportunities that lie on the African continent, the group furthered its investments in 2000, when it purchased a 37 percent stake from Sanlam Group; opened an assembly facility in Egypt; and became the first overseas auto manufacturer to begin local assembly in Nigeria in 2014.

In 2019, Nissan continued its commitment to the continent, making a R3 billion investment announcement to facilitate the local production of the Nissan Navara pickup.

The bold investment spoke to the Navara rolling off the production line alongside the popular NP200 half-ton pickup, and NP300 one-ton Hardbody that are already produced at the South African plant.

The impact of the Navara production announcement has been substantial, extending from the Nissan facility to its people and the communities in which Nissan operates.

The modernised Rosslyn plant now has a new, flexible production line and additional facilities. R190 million has already been invested in re-skilling and training Nissan South Africa’s employees to expand their expertise in preparation for the Navara’s local production the company’s production trial engineers, for example, spent three months receiving virtual training (due to COVID-19 travel restrictions) from Nissan trainers in Japan on implementing the model in South Africa.

Nissan South Africa has also incubated eight new component manufacturers and related companies, from their BBBEE start-up programme, and identified a further 15 who can assist with components for the new Navara.

The installation of the necessary machinery, including robots, meanwhile, and new press machines, were completed during lock-down by highly skilled local engineers under the “virtual” online guidance of Japanese, technicians  sitting at home in their respective countries as everyone came to grips with the global pandemic.

Investing in an opportunity-filled market                                                        

This journey demonstrates just how critical Africa has been for Nissan, and today, the continent is one of the company’s fastest growing territories in terms of Total Industry Volume (TIV).

The company has a 20 percent market share in a number of Sub-Saharan markets and holds 4th position with nine percent market-share in South Africa.

As the operational hub for Regional Business Unit South, Nissan South Africa serves the Group’s key Sub-Saharan markets- South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Mauritius, Angola, Zimbabwe, which have been labelled as opportunity markets by the Group. Nissan believes the business will be able to achieve sustainable, profitable growth, and maximise their competitive advantage as a low-cost manufacturing base in these markets.

Geared for growth

The journey does not stop here. With its commitment to build the new Navara in South Africa, Nissan continues to show its commitment to the continent and is aligning with the Nissan Next Transformation Plan to increase its passenger/crossover market presence, and to become the LCV production hub for its regional markets.

In addition to this, Nissan has also entered automotive policy discussions with the Kenyan government, with the vision to invest in manufacturing plants in these countries.

Taking investment action a step further in Ghana, Nissan recently appointed long-time partner Japan Motors Trading Co. as to develop its new vehicle assembly facility in Accra, Ghana.

The first model to be assembled at the new facility will be the all-new Nissan Navara. This comes as a result of the 2018 memorandum of understanding between Nissan and the government of Ghana to lay the foundation for a sustainable automotive manufacturing industry in the country.

According to Nissan’s Africa Regional Business Unit, Managing Director, Mike Whitfield,  Nissan will continue to develop regional hubs.

“South Africa remains a pivotal market, first for the access that it grants Nissan to the continent and secondly as a light commercial vehicle hub for the Nissan group." he said .

Adding "We have a specific team working on potential opportunities in East, West, and Central Africa. This includes investigating options for local assembly, consolidating and strengthening our National Sales Companies in Sub-Sahara, and working with local governments to develop their industrial policies.”

By James Gachie

In Kenya, as in much of the rest of the East African region, customer satisfaction in the banking and insurance space is becoming increasingly dependent on the quality of engagement between consumers and brands, rather than based on the differentiation offered by products and services.

Customers are expecting interactions that are informed by insights into their preferences and behaviour, meaning that they are demanding customisation and context to significantly shape customer engagement.

According to a report by Capgemini, about 81% of consumers would be willing to pay more for a better Customer Experience (CX), as they have been left frustrated by organisations that do not listen to their feedback or reward their loyalty.

East African banks are responding to this by employing new data-driven personalisation strategies, allowing them to combine customisation and context. These strategies are cross-channel, leverage customer profiles, context, history and behaviour data to tailor experiences to a customer’s specific needs.

Big Data and data analytics play a pivotal role in personalisation strategies, whether it is in terms of CX, internal communications and/or other stakeholder communications. Data-driven customer engagements allow banks and insurance companies, as well as enterprises in other verticals, to address customer-specific needs.

Building profiles

These institutions typically build vast profiles of their customers based on data collected about their shopping and spending habits, employment and personal lifestyles. Armed with this data, enterprises can target customers with the right products and services.

Customer data profiles also allow organisations to personalise conversations and provide context within those customer interactions. In addition, financial institutions can set behavioural triggers, that collect data about when and how customers use their apps, visit their websites or enter a physical branch.

In this way, they can monitor the dynamic behaviour of their customers and identify behavioural outliers, as well as patterns and the context of interactions. Similarly, data is also key to identifying patterns among various customer demographic groups, enabling enterprises to determine the context for interaction with specific subsets of customers.

Thus, banking and insurance companies in the East African region are increasingly using a combination of data and analytics to inform their business-to-customer communication strategies, which – when coupled with technology-based communication channel solutions – allows them to engage with customers in real-time.

Omnichannel smart contact centre solutions give businesses the power to personalise customer interactions and offer intelligent recommendations on products and services. This is based on the historical context of interactions that inform the context of current engagements.

Empowering agents

Smart contact centres are, therefore, key to providing data on historical behaviour patterns to agents handling customer interactions, empowering the agents to make informed decisions when communicating with customers.

Also, deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) -driven chatbots in a smart contact centre allows enterprises to do high personalisation at a very large scale, giving organisations access to vast and unconstrained markets.

For example, this is especially important for institutions such as regional banks that could have a client base of 20-25 million. Chatbots are not bound by the same physical constraints as human contact centre agents and are thus able to provide hyper-personalisation at scale.

However, it is important to note that even as AI-powered chatbots are becoming ubiquitous across the world, with this trend also growing across the East African region, customers still have the option to request human engagement at any time during the interaction.

 In this modern era, businesses must realise that a solid CX strategy is one of their biggest assets, and customers are increasingly using technology as a means to communicate with brands. Organisations must, therefore, place a higher emphasis on digital communication channels in response to customer demands and in that way improve CX.

James Gachie, Senior Manager – SaaS Sales, at Infobip Kenya

Mombasa businessman- cum - politician Suleiman has called on Kenyans to support the local music industry.

In an opinion piece published on the Standard, Shahbal said the industry is currently facing alot of challenges with lack of support being one of them.

In a bid to understand the industry better, he had a meeting with Akothee and Tanasha who highlighted him more about the industry.

Below is a copy of his opinion titled 'Give music industry boost to create jobs' , which he has also published on facebook.

Kenyan Rapper Amstardaph has dropped the visuals to his new single - Pesa Kidogo, which is the first track off his debut mixtape title Fom Ni Gani.

Watch "Pesa Kidogo" here: https://youtu.be/xr5Z_-Jg7cg 

About The Song

"The song is about a phrase, “PESA KIDOGO” that went viral, about how people conduct themselves when they come about some money. They start acting in a way that they are not accustomed to. Mostly it is Gengetone artistes who do this type of songs so I decided to give a fresh spin with a trap version” - AmstarDaph.

About AmstarDaph

When a “strange” disease was discovered in Wuhan, China, the World never anticipated that the said disease would bring the world to a standstill.

But when the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic, it was evident that the world was about to take a break from its “busy schedule”.

One by one, countries started locking down their borders and putting restrictions on its citizens.

With borders closed, first casualties to suffer the effects of the newly declared pandemic were international airlines and the tourism sector.

Here in Kenya, as the government put up a strong face against fears of importation of the virus by guests arriving in the country, Kenyans remained prayerful that the virus will not make its way to the country.

On March 12, all fears were confirmed as the Kenya announced its first case.

The confirmation came with fairly restrictions but as the cases rose, stringent measures were put in place.

Effects on Kenya’s tourism industry

Kenya like most countries in the world suspended international air-travel, and due to the interlinking nature of sectors, freezing of international travel led to mass cancelations of hotel bookings.

Most of the industry players could not keep their businesses open and preferred shutting down thus rendering thousands of their employees jobless.

Some opted to downsizing its staff and remain with the most critical staff as a way of cutting down their cost.

Venant Ndambo, the proprietor of Keron tours and safaris had to send home his entire team of staff as he could not sustain the wage bill.

Ndambo said that their situation was worsened by the fact that they had to either refund their clients while few guests requested the postponement of the safaris instead of refund.

“For close to 10 years I have been in this business, we have withered all the challenges. But Coronavirus brought us to our knees and it will take years to rise to where we are,” he said.

Ndambo however said that 2021 looks promising and is hopeful that the government will complement tourist’s stakeholder’s efforts to ensure normalcy returns to the industry.

Several World class hotels such as Intercontinental hotel closed down their hotels and were even considering permanently closing business in Kenya.

Fairmont hotels also closed its Norfolk and Mara Safari club hotels and fired all their employees.

According to tourism minister Najib Balala, by July, the sector had lost some 81.8 billion shillings (about 770 million U.S. dollars) since March, which is about 50 percent of its average annual revenue.

The pandemic had literally grounded the industry to a halt, with over 2.3 million employees sent home, a majority on unpaid leave while the lucky ones on half-pay.

Kenya’s tourism sector is not only a major employer but also linked to others sectors such as energy, agriculture and manufacturing.

Suppliers of services and goods used within the tourism industry experienced low demand for services such as travel and food.

The reduction in tourism had a spatial unemployment effect because major tourism sites are at the coast of Kenya and a few other areas.

Journey to recovery

Some of the hotels have recalled their staffs, while some opted to permanently downsize its staffs meaning the hotels are operating on half of its staff.

However, the just concluded festive season came as a booster as most of the hotels recorded at least 65 percent bed occupancy.

The hotels have to adhere to the measures put in place by the ministry of government.

Hotels and tour companies have put in strategies to compliment government’s efforts in luring back international tourists.

The stakeholders are also packaging themselves to attract local tourists and guests from neighboring countries.

However, Sam Ikwaya of Kenya association of hotel keepers and caterers said the situation is still unpredictable due to the ongoing pandemic.

Ikwaya said the situation is also worse due to lockdown of Kenya’s source market such as United Kingdom.

He further said that the political temperature which are already high due to BBI and the oncoming general elections is also scaring tourists

“Investors are also afraid of pumping their money to the industry due to such uncertainties,” he said.

Ikwaya said that the political class needs to tone down the political temperature or the sector risks counting more loses.

He further noted that the  government needs to support investors and ease some of the business restrictions in order to attract more investors.

Kenyan singer Victoria Kimani has for a very long time now been complaining that her fellow compatriots aren’t supportive of her and her musical talents.

The singer has been taking to social media especially twitter to express her anger.

Just last week she publicly disowned Kenya for Ghana.

"Kenyans will never cease to amaze me in every possible way. F*k it, I’m from Ghana now … from the Ashanti region." She tweeted.

Adding "What part of support your own don't you mofo's get? Gademmit! Ooh yay. Kenyan's silver lining.''

She has also been sharing photos of herself having some good times while visiting some tourist attraction sites in Ghana and enjoying game drives and safari.

Victoria has always insisted that she receives alot of support from West Africa countries than in Kenya, stating that the fact she cannot speak swahili is the reason why her songs are in english.

“I think a lot of Kenyans don't do that (migrate to overseas). And so having to go back and explain this is the reason why I don't speak Swahili. This is the reason why I identify so much with West Africa because they are an English-speaking country,” she said in a previous interview.

In the interview Victoria also revealed that her family left the US when she was 14 and went to live in Nigeria where she was introduced to African music.

Some of the hits she has released so far includes China Love, Mtoto, Sexy and Prokoto ft Ommy Dimpoz and Diamond Platnmuz among others.

Some of her albums includes Safari released in 2016, Afropolitan (2018) and Afreaka (2020)

An inspirational, emotion-tinged electro-acoustic jam with a signature Black Coffee groove, ‘Never Gonna Forget’ pairs delicate guitar strings with the soaring, pitch-perfect vocals of Grammy-nominee Elderbrook.

It marks the sixth and final single release from Black Coffee’s highly anticipated forthcoming album, following collaborations with musical superstar Pharrell Williams, UK singer-songwriter Celeste, chart-topper Sabrina Claudio and R&B icon Usher.

Titled Subconsciously, the 12-track LP is set for release on February 5th, with pre-orders now available here.

Establishing himself as one of the biggest stars of the global electronic music scene, Black Coffee’s diverse production style has gained him recognition across the world.

His penchant for production and vast musical knowledge jump-started the South African DJ scene and brought his cultural perspective to clubs and festivals around the globe.

After releasing his multi-award winning debut album Pieces Of Me, his profile continued to grow as he found himself collaborating with the likes of Drake, Alicia Keys and Usher.

Over the years, Black Coffee has also asserted himself as a proud philanthropist and businessman, recently sharing his Africa Is Not A Jungle initiative on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Born Thomas Wesley Pentz, Diplo is one of the most dynamic forces in music today, having worked with the likes of Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Turnstile and many more.

With six total Grammy nominations including a 2021 nod for his recent SIDEPIECE collaboration “On My Mind”released via Higher Ground, a house imprint on his celebrated record label Mad Decent Diplo is a founding member of the legendary Major Lazer, psychedelic supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth whose debut album has been streamed over 1 billion times, and Silk City with Mark Ronson whose Platinum-certified ‘Electricity’ with Dua Lipa topped charts worldwide and won a Grammy Award for ‘Best Dance Recording.’

In 2020, Diplo further expanded his multi-genre influence, releasing his first official country album, Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley Chapter 1: Snake Oil, as well as his first ambient album, MMXX.

A live phenomenon, self-taught multi-instrumentalist, producer and singer-songwriter, Elderbrook arrived on the global stage in 2017, lending his vocals and co-writing the Grammy-nominated, platinum-selling smash ‘Cola’ with Camelphat.

Other collaborations with Rudimental, Martin Garrix and Diplo himself soon followed. In September, he dropped his debut album Why Do We Shake In The Cold? which has already amassed over 100 million streams.

The sixth star-studded Black Coffee single in quick succession, ‘Never Gonna Forget’ is the final track to be released ahead of the long-awaited Subconsciously drop on February 5th.

Showmax on Wednesday released the teaser for Monica S3, premiering on Showmax on 21 January 2021.

Picked up by Showmax for a third season in October 2020, the Kenyan drama series follows Brenda Wairimu (Subira, Disconnect) in the titular role of Monica, an ambitious social climber from the ghetto who will do anything to become part of the elite.

The teaser offers a sneak-peek into Monica’s ‘perfect’ life as a woman on top of the world, juggling two romances, before her love life and career begins to crumble. 

Also returning for the new season alongside Brenda is Raymond Ofula (Queen Sono, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind), Fidel Maithya (Selina, A Beautiful Disaster), Ephy Saint (Tahidi High), Joyce Maina (Aisha, Neophobia), Sam Komora (Aziza), Rosemary Waweru (Tabasamu, Pray and Prey), and Kauthar Kang’ethe (Midlife Crisis, Machachari). 

Monica is the third collaboration between producer Scolly Cheruto and director Neil Schell, who’ve worked together on another Kenyan drama, Twisted, and Kenya’s first animated superhero series, Machismo.

Schell has also previously directed other local favourites like Saints, which was Kenya’s first medical drama series, High Learning, and Rush.

Watch the teaser below..

Apple Music just announced the latest featured artist in its Africa Rising artist development program as Ghanian singer-songwriter and producer, Amaarae (real name Ama Serwah Genfi).

“It’s amazing to be selected by Apple Music as their Africa Rising artist. The love and support the album has received from the Apple Music family has been incredible to say the least." she said.

Adding "I am truly honored and can’t wait to share this milestone with my Angel Army, who I know, will be just as elated as I am. I look forward to a successful campaign!” 

Raised between Ghana, Georgia, and New Jersey, Amaarae’s cross-cultural experience is the driving force behind her deeply experimental ethos and emotive writing style, with her West African heritage at the core of the music she makes.

 After dropping her scene-changing, self-released EP, Passionfruit Summers (2017), Amaarae capitalised on her burgeoning success with the rip-roaring “Spend Some Time” which featured Wande Coal and the sleeper hit “Like It”, that established her as a social media trendsetter.

Her recently released 14-track debut album, THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW draws on a myriad of genres from Afro-fusion to pop-punk to progressive house to neo-R&B, and garnered global recognition from publications like Pitchfork, The Guardian, The New Yorker and CLASH Magazine because of its unique vision.

The latest music from Amaarae, along with the next generation of African superstars is available now on the Apple Music Africa Rising playlist https://apple.co/3bhTtwT Apple Music’s Africa Rising, is an exclusive artist development programme and companion playlist geared towards identifying, showcasing and elevating rising talent and introducing the next generation of African superstars.

Africa Rising will see Apple Music select six artists every year who will each receive a minimum of two months of editorial support across the Apple Music platform including the new Apple Music 1 radio station.

Previous Africa Rising artists are Omah Lay, Manu WorldStar and Tems. Africa Rising is the latest of many Apple Music initiatives aimed at taking African talent to the world.

Now available in 33 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Apple Music 1 is home to Africa Now Radio with host Cuppy which has featured interviews with some of the continent’s hottest artists such as Tiwa Savage, Davido, Sho Madjozi, Yemi Alade, Cassper Nyovest, Fireboy DML, Omah Lay, Mr Eazi, Patoranking, Rayvanny, Adekunle Gold and Master KG.

Apple Music also selected Nigerian Afro-popstar Rema as one of it’s 2020 Up Next artists, following the addition of Burna Boy to the roster in 2019 and Mr Eazi back in 2017. Up Next is Apple Music’s global emerging artist program.