+Pricey Chocolates
MTN Explains Downtime
A significant service outage on Wednesday prevented 87 million MTN Nigeria subscribers from making calls or connecting to the internet. According to a corporate statement from the Telecoms company, the four-hour interruption was caused by multiple fibre cuts.
MTN has 87,038,768 subscribers as of December 2023, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), representing 38.79% of the total market share, the largest in the country by any licenced Mobile Network Operator (MNO).
According to Downdetector, disruptions in MTN’s network operating conditions was above the normal threshold between 1 pm and 9 pm on February 28. This further explains that events and alerts generated during this period were unusual.
The survey from DownDetector also shows that 43% of MTN users complained of “No Signal” alerts, 35% complained of “No mobile internet” and 21% experienced “total blackout.”
This power outage encouraged speculations that Telcos had barred all subscribers who were not linked to their National Identification Numbers (NIN). The NCC gave a directive to Telcos for this to take effect with February 28, 2024 as the deadline.
MTN responded to this on Wednesday night, describing the network problem as a “major service outage caused by multiple fibre cuts, affecting voice and data services.”
“A fibre optic cable cut refers to a complete or partial severing of the thin glass fibres that make up a fibre optic cable. These cables transmit data over long distances using light pulses.” a report by TechCabal clarified.
Road construction and vandalism are key causes of fibre cuts in places like Lagos.
Airtel and 9mobile subscribers also reported network outages at noon on the same day. However, the telco companies did not admit the outage or provide an explanation for the supposed outage.
Pricey Chocolates
The price of a unit of chocolate in Nigeria has increased in the past six years. This is partly due to the fall in cocoa production in the country.
Also, cocoa prices globally have skyrocketed due to low supply from major cocoa producing countries like Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, Nairametrics reported.
As the world grapples with the price of cocoa, Nigeria’s output and value for output have decreased over the last 8 years, from $302,066 in 2015 to $28,000 in 2022.
Cocoa’s global price is normally decided using the London Cocoa Futures contract.
The price per unit of chocolate in Nigeria increased from $10.48 in 2018 to $17.08 in 2023.
Since January 2015, worldwide cocoa prices have changed, beginning at $2,946.82 per tonne, and the most current price of $4,452.60 in January 2024 which is the highest amount cocoa has ever been sold for, according to a review of the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) cocoa price data.
Since 2015, the total production of cocoa in Nigeria remained below 300,000 tonnes, except for 2020 where it increased to 357,608.24 tonnes.
Similar to the total production of cocoa in Nigeria, the quantity of cocoa exported did not exceed 300,000 tonnes except in 2019 and 2021 where it exported 300,518 and 344,659 tonnes respectively.