Millions of phone users may be cut off in Nigeria crackdown
Nigeria’s telecommunications regulator has ordered mobile phone users to link their devices to their national identity numbers, raising the prospect of millions of lines being blocked.
Subscribers have until 31 December to comply with the requirement, the Nigerian Communications Commission said in a statement on Tuesday on its website. Failure to do so will result in their phone lines being cut off in January, it said.
Nigeria had about 196 million active phone lines as of June 2020, NCC data shows. At the same time, only 41.5 million Nigerians had the required identity numbers, according to information on the website of the National Identity Management Commission, which is in charge of registrations.
Jumia Technologies is looking beyond an immediate target of generating a profit from its pioneering African e-commerce business, laying out longer-term plans to spin off divisions and enter new countries.
The question of when the Berlin-based company will become profitable has hung over the group since a high-profile New York listing in 2019. And while Jumia has been careful in recent months not to set itself a deadline, co-CEO Sacha Poignonnec said it’s time to lay the groundwork for the next phase of growth.
That will partly focus on Jumia’s division that helps transport goods between buyers and sellers in 11 African countries, including Nigeria, Egypt and Uganda, and the payments business that allows them to settle transactions. The company may eventually look to spin them both off into separate entities, Poignonnec said in an interview.