Business News
New NERC Chairman says his first mission is to change MYTO Software
The new Chairman of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Prof James Momoh, has stated his resolve to revoke the country’s current electricity metering software MYTO.
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Chairman NERC/CEO, Prof. James Momoh
Momoh made this known yesterday in Abuja during an interview with The Nation, during which he disclosed that his reason for abandoning the software is because of his lack of belief in its workability.
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He also spoke about the need to checkmate corruption as yet another reason for his decision to dump MYTO. According to him, possibilities abound that MYTO might have facilitated the duping of consumers through false computations.
In his words:
Worldwide, it is not easy to calculate what it costs to produce one kilowatt of power. But we are not going to use somebody’s software that is passed on to us in NERC: they call it MYTO software. No! I am not going to believe that because I am a programmer. I develop programmes. I calculate things. I develop software packages in America for energies for the power sector. -Momoh
He further argued that it has become imperative to develop a unique software for the regulation of electricity costs in Nigeria. This, he said, is necessary just in cases of errors occurring, “our staff here will find out how to do it and they will modify the calculation and come with a better way. The idea is to make sure that we are not being cheated as customers.”
MYTO, which stands for which stands for Multi-Year Tariff Order, regulates the costs of electricity in the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry. It is said to be set cost-reflective tariffs which will allow the power sector to be properly funded and functional. Professor Momoh, however, disagrees.
Note that he, Momoh, has not stated with definition what the replacement for MYTO will be. But he noted that he has constituted a team “whose job is to sit down quietly with me and unbundle the cost of one kilowatt of power, all the way from the gas supply to the GenCos through the transmission line to the DisCos to the customer’s end of it.”
He also claimed that he and his team know exactly how much it would cost to produce, process it and distribute it.
Profiles
Atsu Davoh is building ways for Africans to easily acquire and spend cryptocurrency
Atsu Davoh has gone from failed projects to running one of Ghana’s most innovative startups.
In recent times, the tech space in Africa has experienced immense growth, with the introduction of several key players and disruptors across various sectors. One sector that is also rising is the cryptocurrency space with Africa experiencing greater crypto ownership and trade volume.
The number of Bitcoins processed on a single day reached its highest value at the beginning of 2021, as more people displayed interest in the cryptocurrency. Due to its fast adoption, more fintech players have created platforms that have made trading with cryptocurrency easier. One of such players is Atsu Davoh who calls himself the “product guy.”
Atsu Davoh dropped out of college (Carleton College) in the United States and moved back to Ghana to help innovate on Africa’s financial infrastructure. Atsu first discovered Bitcoin in 2017 during the first boom when it became mainstream. Before then, he and his co-founder Samuel Baohen had been involved in many failed projects.
He developed a USSD system where people could buy bitcoin through their phone numbers, like tying crypto to phone numbers in a native way. This was one of the first iterations of Bitsika.
Atsu was invited to Join Binance Labs Incubator by Yele Bademosi where he got $150,000 after graduating from the incubator. Bitsika went on to raise around $900,000 from investors. This brought the total seed raised to $1,050,000.
This USSD system worked in Ghana but didn’t work in Nigeria. Atsu and his team then pivoted the platform to a donation crowdfunding platform, which allowed people living in other countries to send donations to African nationals in need of the funds before finally building it into a cross-border crypto remittance platform.
Bitsika users can deposit and remit money across multiple currencies using the app, with all monies deposited in Bitsika stored in USD credits or stable-coin.
Bitsika has over 50,000+ downloads on Playstore and processed nearly $40 million in 2020 with $18,872,474 in deposits, $17,890,807 in payouts (withdrawals), and $3,189,834 in internal peer-to-peer transfers.
Despite a few unfavourable regulations surrounding cryptocurrency in Africa, the market has shown no signs of slowing down as more people are building products that will make trading seamless.
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