Author: ITPulse

By Olumide Balogun Black Friday falls on 27 November, and Detty December follows right behind it. Together they are the busiest selling weeks of the Nigerian year, and the businesses that do best usually get ready in September and October. Last week in Cologne, at a global marketing event called DMEXCO, Google’s Vice President of Global Ads made a simple point. The old way of advertising on Search, where you guess a short list of keywords and hope customers type them, no longer matches how people search. Nigerian shoppers show this every day. We ask long questions, speak into our…

By Abigail Mbah A UK government-backed initiative has supported 23 Nigerian businesses in securing more than $630 million in investment, with the potential to create or safeguard over 21,400 direct jobs. The figures were announced this week in Lagos at an event marking six years of the Manufacturing Africa programme. British High Commissioner Pete Vowles and Deputy High Commissioner Jonny Baxter joined business leaders, investors and government representatives for the occasion. Manufacturing Africa, funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, was set up in 2019 to help African companies attract capital, expand operations and generate employment. In Nigeria…

Nigeria is positioning its growing technology talent pool for a bigger share of the global digital services market, with the Federal Government pushing an AI-driven “Hire from Nigeria” strategy to create higher-value jobs and attract international businesses. Director-General and CEO of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, made the case during a high-level “Hire from Nigeria” session held on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81) in New York. The session, organised by the Nigeria Economic and Trade Advancement Programme (NATEP), brought together government leaders and stakeholders to discuss impact sourcing, global trade,…

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has described digital identity as the trust layer of Nigeria’s digital economy, warning that the country must now move from simply registering identities to turning them into usable digital infrastructure. Inuwa spoke at a high-level panel, “Identity in Action and Access to the Digital Economy,” convened by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) during discussions on “The Digital Public Ecosystem: Identity, Trust & Inclusive Access” at the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81). He joined Senator Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President; Aderemi Adebowale,…

Konga, a member of the Zinox Group, has partnered with the Defence Headquarters to launch a technology-enabled Defence Discount Scheme (DDS) aimed at improving access to essential goods and services for serving and retired Nigerian Armed Forces personnel and their families. The scheme, which goes live on October 1, 2026, will give eligible military personnel access to discounted products across Konga’s online platform, covering fast-moving consumer goods, smartphones, computers, home and kitchen appliances, automobiles, renewable energy products, food and beverages, among other categories. The partnership was unveiled in Abuja at an event attended by the Chief of Defence Staff, General…

By Joseph Omotayo For the Nigerian weather, whenever it rains, it pours. And whenever it pours, the national grid collapses. It is no news that as much as Nigerians believe national electricity shortage happens during the heat season when people need power the most, they fear heavy thunderstorms always influence how distribution companies regulate power. This fear is rooted in the havoc rainstorms could wreak on poles and power lines, causing ripped wires and in some cases sparks that result in blackout for days. To keep navigating this natural challenge during the season, is running a generator the way out…

By Abigail Mbah Stakeholders from Nigeria’s telecoms, technology and infrastructure sectors are set to gather in Lagos next month for the RuralConnect Summit 2.0, where they will confront the stubborn reality that more than 23 million Nigerians still lack meaningful internet access. The second edition of the Rural Connectivity Summit, organised by Business Metrics Limited, takes place on Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at the Providence Hotel on Oba Akinjobi Way in GRA Ikeja. The theme of this year is “Rural Inclusion at Scale: Connecting the Next 25 Million Users for Frontier Market Growth.” Industry figures put the number of people…

By Kerissa Varma The defining cybersecurity challenge of the AI era is not intelligence, but autonomy. As African organisations embrace agentic AI, assumptions that have shaped security strategies for decades are beginning to break down. Security teams have traditionally defended against attacks powered by human decision-making and speed. But AI agents can reason, adapt and act independently. In a world where cyberthreats operate at machine speed, organisations must rethink not only what they protect, but how they protect it. For African businesses, autonomous AI is no longer a distant prospect. Agents are proliferating in sectors such as financial services and…

By Abigail Mbah A fibre cut on the Backbone Connectivity Network (BCN) in Abuja Municipal Area Council has left parts of the Federal Capital Territory grappling with degraded data and internet services, the latest reminder of a much larger problem. Subscribers, businesses, government offices and financial service providers reported slow speeds, intermittent connections and outright dropouts. Online transactions stalled. VoIP calls failed. Cloud apps became unreliable. Streaming and everyday digital platforms stuttered. For companies whose daily operations run on stable connectivity, the disruption meant delayed service delivery and broken customer channels. This single incident sits inside a national pattern that…

A new Google Ads report puts the full customer journey on one screen, and AI Brief expands to give advertisers more say in how their ads behave, just as businesses gear up for Black Friday. Google has announced two new features for AI Max for Search, giving Nigerian businesses a clearer view of what their Search ads deliver and more control over how those ads behave. Unveiled at DMEXCO in Cologne, Germany, one of the world’s largest digital marketing events, the updates are a new reporting feature in Google Ads and an expansion of AI Brief, a tool built with…