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Tagged ‘Internet of Things‘

Did Wrongdoings in Africa Force M-Kopa Solar to Rebrand? [B Team Africa, Gates, Generation Investment]

Cyprian Nyakundi

December 24, 2020

 

 

“The financial industry is undergoing rapid technological change… The increase in demand for digital services triggered by COVID-19 is turbo-charging this transformation.”

 

“Fintech’s potential to reach out to over a billion unbanked people around the world, and the changes in the financial system structure that this can induce, can be revolutionary.”

 

December 17, 2020, What is Really New in Fintech, IMF Blog

 

“Upon first glance, a person would assume this business is the selling of solar. Yet this assumption would be a mistake. The product is finance: “About a quarter of those who pay off their first purchase move on to others, the company says.” This is colonization in a 21st century new form. Colonization via debt made possible by the selling of Western values. Other vultures exploiting the impoverished and vulnerable under the guise of green and “clean energy for all” include iniquitous organizations, such as the Gates Foundation and Mastercard.”

 

January 28, 2019: An Inconvenient Case Study: M-Kopa Solar, Africa, [The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Most Inconvenient Truth: “Capitalism is in Danger of Falling Apart”, ACT III]

 

 

US President Barack Obama visits M-KOPA stand at the UNEP offices in 2015

US President Barack Obama visits M-KOPA stand at the UNEP offices in 2015

 

B Team Africa's Jesse Moore, Photo by World Economic Forum

B Team Africa’s Jesse Moore, Photo by World Economic Forum

 

The B Team continues to grow and expand its coalition of corporate executives. In 2018, Indra Nooyi, chairman and former CEO of PepsiCo, joined the coalition. More recently, The B Team welcomed Ajay Banga, president and CEO of MasterCard. Another B Team leader is Andrew Liveris, chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical Company. Liveris also serves as a member of The Nature Conservancy’s Latin America Conservation Council, and the Concordia Leadership Council. ”

 

September 17, 2019, We Mean Business Co-founder – The B Team [The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: They Mean Business, Volume II, Act IV]

 

Blacklock’s Reporter is a subscription service that monitors corruption in Canada and in the light of the WE Charity scandals, it has been one of the sites that has continued to give timely briefs.

The site has made a link between Jesse Moore, CEO of M-Kopa and Craig Kielburger, CEO of We Charity, another organization accused of siphoning off Canada taxpayer money in Kenya.

M-Kopa is described as a ‘money-losing door-to-door sales company in Nairobi that received millions in federal funding’ (funded by Canadian taxpayers).

Jesse Moore, a former Toronto child activist, earlier served in a youth leaders’ group with WE Charity co-founder Craig Kielburger.

WE Charity Scandal in Kenya

  1. We Charity forces whistle-blower to recant evidence of mistreatment
  2. WE Charity suspicious activities that should get the attention of Kenyan authorities
  3. We Charity shuts down Canadian operations after scandal

The link between We Charity’s Craig Kielburger and M-Kopa’s Jesse Moore

The issue was picked up by a Canadian MP in an interview with a Toronto radio station last Thursday (Last week) and it’s becoming an emerging scandal in Canada.

 

Kampala, Uganda – October 25, 2018 – “Mastercard in partnership with M-KOPA Solar and Centenary Bank, celebrated the first ‘pay-as-you-go’ QR transaction this week, officially launching the initiative, which provides a simple and inexpensive way to power the homes and businesses of Ugandans.”

"Pay-As-You-Go and the Internet of Things: Driving a New Wave of Financial Inclusion in the Developing World"

“Pay-As-You-Go and the Internet of Things: Driving a New Wave of Financial Inclusion in the Developing World”

 

January 22, 2020, World Economic Forum, Davos: "How are the pioneers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution shaping the future of society?"

January 22, 2020, World Economic Forum, Davos: “How are the pioneers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution shaping the future of society?”

 

Jesse Moore, CEO of M-Kopa. Moore is a shareholder and chief executive of M-Kopa Holdings Ltd., a Kenyan firm that sells home appliances, cellphones and household loans on the installment plan. M-Kopa was the first recipient of FinDev funding on a promise of “creating good quality jobs in East Africa.” M-Kopa laid off 150 employees two days after FinDev announced its initial share purchase in 2018. The company lost $51 million (Sh5.5 billion) over two years as taxpayer funds were spent on the company, according to financial records.

Also FinDev admitted giving another US$ 2 million (Sh218 million) in 2019, after the firing of the 150 software developers became public news.
In the past, FinDev, a federal agency bought $15.4 million (Sh1.7 billion) in shares in M-Kopa Holdings Limited.

FinDev has confirmed it was aware Moore held shares in the company. The agency has an observer on the M-Kopa board, but would not comment on salary and benefits approved for the chief executive.

“FinDev has an observer status that allows us to be informed about M-Kopa’s business developments,” said Shelley Maclean, a spokesperson for the agency. “Following its investment in M-Kopa, in January FinDev was made aware of certain employee share purchases that took place.”

Moore is a former director with CARE Canada and a 2006 Fellow at Action Canada, a federally-subsidized “leadership development” program for students. Kielburger was also a 2006 Fellow in the program.

In the article, the predatory M-Kopa is refusing to cooperate.

On other note, M-Kopa has told staff it is exiting the solar business in Uganda and will focus on its 26,899/- A11 phones (https://m-kopa.com/kenya/products/) on an extreme high-interest payment plan ( you can get same phone on Jumia for 13,500 ).

At the same time it has taken the word “Solar” out of all of its brand identity- https://m-kopa.com/ does not have the old M-Kopa Solar logo anymore. In Kenya they are telling staff that solar will reduce as they become a pure predatory phone finance company.  https://androidkenya.com/2020/01/samsung-m-kopa-phone/  And they are only selling phones, not solar, in Nigeria and Ghana.

 

"Stay Entertained"

“Stay Entertained”

 

 

Resist the Fourth Industrial Repression!

Winter Oak

April 17, 2020

By Paul Cudenec

The First Industrial Repression saw us thrown off the land, forced into crowded towns and cities, used as human fodder for the dark satanic mills of the new steam-powered capitalist world.

The Second Industrial Repression electrified the rule of The Machine. New generations were born who had never tasted freedom. Their lives and their thinking were increasingly dominated by the rhythms of industrial mass production.

The Third Industrial Repression heralded the arrival of computers and robots. Human beings were now expected to meekly conform to these automated norms and functions.

And now we face the onset of the Fourth Industrial Repression (4IR), the most deathly repression of them all…

4IR Fourth industrial revolution on blockchain polygon world map

The 4IR wants to own, control and profit from everything that exists in this world.

Its Internet of Things aims to create a matrix of total connectivity, of which it is the owner.

You, your home, your family, your friends, your relationships and your activities will all belong to the 4IR.

Its technocrats regard you as nothing more than another piece of disposable fleshware, one unit among millions, just another figure on its global balance sheet of exploitation.

The 4IR will track you and always know where you are, whom you are with, what you are doing.

It demands your total obedience. You can have no values, ideals or dreams of your own, only the ones authorised by the system.

Disobedient units are unproductive units.

4IR

The 4IR will know how to spot you, if you even so much as consider stepping out of line. Its predictive policing will quickly identify you as an anti-social element, a pre-criminal, a thought criminal.

It will send out its robots and its drones to neutralise you and protect the safe functioning of the matrix.

Digital identity systems. Militarised 5G. Neuro-technological brain enhancements. Genetic editing.

Cybersecurity Macht Frei!

The 4IR will not tolerate any irresponsible words or behaviour that present a threat to health and safety, to law and order, to resilience and prosperity.

Submission. Sycophancy. Slavery. We’re all in it together, citizen!

Greta1The 4IR wants to scare us into its devouring jaws by pointing to impending disaster and claiming that nobody can save us but itself.

It shows us the misery and disease inflicted by the First, Second and Third Industrial Repressions and insists that the “solution” is a fourth dose of the same deadly industrial poison.

The intelligence of the 4IR is entirely artificial and its dead robot brain cannot smell what we smell, feel what we feel, love what we love.

It coldly ignores the timeless and vital value of people, animals, trees, plants and the whole organic reality of which these form part.

Instead it sees just raw material for its own profit.

It thirsts above all for data, endless floods of data to be collected, processed, sold and transformed into the wealth which buys its total control.

The Fourth Industrial Repression wants to replace everything true and authentic with its replicas, with a reality not so much virtual as entirely fake.

4IReAnd yet its forked robotic tongue tells us that this phoney reality is in fact an “enhanced” or “augmented” one.

The 4IR wants to abolish the lives we have known. It wants to microchip us, lock us up in little cages, and force-feed us chemical food substitutes, laced with feel-good soma.

It cannot tolerate the idea that we might enjoy anything for free, such as sunshine, fresh air and the wild outdoors.

It craves a total monopoly of our experience. Cut off from the real world, from authenticity and liberty, we will have no choice but to buy and consume the poisonous ersatz reality it has carefully manufactured.

The 4IR, like all the other repressions before it, is built on our separation from one another, the destruction of our communities and the undermining of our solidarities.

social_distancing

“Social distancing” is the prerequisite for its seizure of complete power.

The 4IR wants us all to be on our own, online and in line.

The 4IR empties everything of meaning, particularly words. It says “sustainable” when it means ecocidal. It says “development” when it means destruction. It says “basic universal income” when it means slavery.

When the 4IR talks about “social impact investing” it really means it wants to turn human beings into lucrative investment opportunities.

Human capital. Human cattle.

new deal for nature and people logoWhen the 4IR talks about “a new deal for nature” it really means it wants to privatise the whole living world so as to make the billionaire class even richer than it already is.

When the 4IR demands “biosecurity”, it means the security of its own systems of control against the threat from biological reality. From nature, from life, from us!

The 4IR thinks it is so smart. Its glossy propaganda promises us smart mobility in a smart economy, smart living and smart governance for the smart people of tomorrow.

The smart money is on the 4IR project. The smart money of the smart-arse smart set. Smart is the new smug.

The 4IR employs huge armies of professional liars and gullible fools to spread its  propaganda and scream abuse at all who dare challenge its fearmongering falsehoods.

The 4IR is a death cult which dreams of wiping out everything that is natural, everything that is wild, everything that is free.

Resist the Fourth Industrial Repression!

Fight the 4IR!

 

[Paul Cudenec is the author of The Anarchist Revelation; Antibodies, Anarchangels & Other Essays; The Stifled Soul of Humankind; Forms of Freedom; The Fakir of Florence; Nature, Essence & Anarchy and The Green One. All of these have been published by Winter Oak Press – www.winteroak.org.uk. He is also a member of Shoal Collective, a cooperative of independent writers and researchers, writing for social justice and a world beyond capitalism. He has contributed to publications such as Red Pepper, Green Anarchist and The Morning Star. His work has been described as “mind-expanding and well-written” by Permaculture magazine.]