GRTech
African Payroll & HR Management Company Bento Expands to Ghana, Kenya & Rwanda


Bento, a pan-African digital payroll and HR Management (HRM) platform, has today announced its launch into three new markets, establishing a presence in Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda to grow the company’s reach across the continent.
The payroll and HR Management market in Africa is a huge untapped opportunity with over 400 million people in the labour force. African businesses have remained largely analogue up until now, using spreadsheets and bulk upload on bank portals, bank transfers, cheques, and even cash. Bento is bringing African payroll and HRM into the digital age and ensuring that different market participants are communicating and leveraging data to help unlock credit solutions.
Founded in Nigeria in 2019, Bento addresses many of the challenges African businesses face by automating salary payments, tax, pensions and other statutory remittances. Through its cloud-based platform, Bento empowers African businesses and gives them peace of mind by streamlining many of their processes with a single click. For employees, the platform offers access to third-party services such as credit solutions – which include the ability to pay school fees and rent monthly rather than yearly – unemployment insurance, savings, investments and much more, all at no cost to employers.
Having obtained full operating licenses in each market, Bento is building local teams in Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda and will adapt its products for local cultural and financial nuances. In Nigeria, Bento has stood at the forefront of payroll and HRM, serving over 900 active Nigerian businesses across all sectors, including some of the largest Healthcare and Financial Services companies in the country such as Hygeia and Tangerine Africa, as well as many Y Combinator-backed firms including Paystack, Kobo360, Branch, Helium Health, and LORI Systems.
The company is targeting further rapid growth across the continent, and will launch in Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Angola and Senegal by the end of 2022.
”Seeing so many companies using analogue methods to manage their workforce is simultaneously frustrating and exciting for us. Employers don’t have access to locally customised, world-class payroll and HRM tools, and employees can’t easily access third-party services to help make life easier,” said Ebun Okubanjo, Co-Founder and CEO at Bento. “When you think about it, your salary powers your life, so we’re building the operating system that will have a profound impact on the African continent for generations to come.”
While solving the missing piece of the B2B payroll and HRM puzzle, Bento is also enabling employees to access credit solutions and other third party products and services. Around 95% of African consumers have never had access to formal credit and rely on informal lenders and savings schemes. To further illustrate this point, in Africa on average 4.5% of people have access to a credit card compared with 65% in the US. Bento’s proprietary credit engine, built in partnership with Tarya, Israel’s largest P2P lending firm, ensures the company can offer significantly better rates than traditional retail lenders and disburse within minutes rather than days.
“We’re starting with payroll and HRM, but moving rapidly towards Salary 2.0, where we redefine the intersection of work and life and transform the way people earn, spend and borrow on the continent,” added Chidozie David Okonkwo, Co-Founder and COO at Bento. “Having successfully established product-market fit in Nigeria, one of the most difficult markets to penetrate in Africa, we’re excited to roll out across the continent and solve the real problems we know millions of employers and employees face on a daily basis.”
Bento can be accessed by employers through its secure, cloud-based web platform and through its mobile app for employees, available on the iOS App Store and Google Play.
GRTech
The Economics of Product Decisions: Applying Behavioural Economics and Game Theory in PM


Product managers often need to make a clear-cut decision: what should we build next? But the decisions which hold real importance go beyond adding features.
It’s about getting what makes people tick.
It goes way beyond what you would expect, getting into how people behave and using game theory.
These areas give insight into how users decide and how a product’s design can improve growth and keep people interested.
This is what Amarachi Nnochiri excels at. She is a senior product manager that knows how to use economics and psychology in her job.
She goes beyond simply managing product tasks; she develops whole product systems based on how users think, feel, and use a service. Her background shows how understanding human psychology and behaviour can give you a significant advantage in the competition.
One idea Amarachi uses is “loss aversion.” In this scenario, people feel worse about losing something than they feel good about gaining something of equal value.
She uses this when designing her products, mostly when it comes to pricing and getting people to try new strategies. For example, instead of giving a free trial, she might use a freemium setup where users get some stuff for free but could lose it if they don’t buy an upgrade. This pushes them to pay.
She might also use progress bars or streak counters, since losing progress gets people to keep using the product.
Amarachi also uses ideas from “game theory” to get how users act and change their behavior. She realizes that users are doing more than operating a product, but are playing a game with other users or with the product itself. She designs things that use ideas like “Nash equilibrium,” where nobody can do better by changing what they’re doing. For a social product, this could mean creating a system where doing something good for yourself (like inviting friends) also helps everyone else. This makes the whole thing stable and positive.
Her know-how in game theory also applies to making strong “network effects.” This means making stuff that gets better as more people use it.
A good example is a social network where each new user makes the product more helpful for everyone else. Amarachi endeavours to make things go viral on purpose, not just by luck.
She might use “commitment devices,” which are things that make a user stick with a behaviour by making them depend on it socially or functionally. For example, inviting team members to a tool makes the user stick with the platform and makes the product’s network stronger.
This way of thinking is better than just following the usual steps. By using these economic and psychological tricks, Amarachi develops competitive advantages which are difficult to replicate.
She knows that a company’s best thing is not just a simple interface, but a product that’s designed to sync with how people behave.
Her product choices aren’t just about the needs of users, but equally focus on motivating them to like the product, use it, and stick with it.
In her work, choosing a subscription price isn’t just a business thing; it’s about behaviour. Designing a social feed isn’t just about the content; it’s about balancing what people want and watching how they interact. Amarachi knows extensively about the economics of product decisions. This makes her products innovative and appealing to human behaviour, which leads to more use, keeps people around, and helps the product grow. She’s a leader in product management, where identifying customer desires is backed by understanding human motivation.


Technology Company, Globacom, has announced significant reductions in its International Direct Dialing (IDD) rates, making international calls more affordable for its existing and new customers across Nigeria.
Effective August 10, the new rates began applying to over 15 popular international destinations, including United States which will has moved to ₦30 per minute, down from ₦35, United Kingdom is now N350 from ₦400, while India also moved down to ₦40 from N45.
The rates for China, Saudi Arabia and Cameroon however recorded major reduction moving to N75, N300 and ₦700 respectively.
The reduction was also extended to African countries including Benin Republic which goes for ₦650 per minute, Niger Republic ₦750, Ghana ₦500, and Togo ₦650. United Arab Emirates also moved from ₦450 to ₦325, Germany to ₦550, Côte d’Ivoire ₦700, Libya ₦700, while calls to Malawi is now N1,100 from ₦1,200.
Glo aims to provide more value for its customers through these revised rates, encouraging them to make Glo their preferred network for international calls. New IDD bundles will also be introduced, offering frequent international callers even more attractive deals.
Globacom, which remained optimistic that frequent international callers will benefit immensely from the reductions in IDD bundles, enjoined customers to take advantage of the new rates to stay connected with friends and business associates across the globe.
GRTech
Oil subsidy removal freed up resources for infrastructure – Enugu Governor
By Orji Israel, South East Correspondent


The Executive Governor of Enugu State, Peter Mbah, has attributed the financing of numerous infrastructure projects embarked by the state government to the oil subsidy removal policy of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration.
He made this declaration at the Govermment House, Enugu, during a courtesy visit by a delegation of federal government led by Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, as part of activities lined up for the 2-day Citizens’ Engagement Series in the South East geo-political zone.
“For us in Enugu, we are able to accomplish all we promised our people during the campaign, thanks to the bold decision taken by President Bola Tinubu, which has freed up resources needed to execute humongous capital projects,” said Governor, while listing ongoing projects in the state, which include the construction of 7,000 classrooms, 3,300 hospital beds and 2,000-hectare of 260 farm estates across the 260 wards of the state.
Governor Mbah also pledged more support for the policies of the federal government, saying they are in the best interest of the people of the state.
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