Africa needs a financial system unable to be controlled by outside (Western) powers and this is in line with Africa achieving true independence whilst ending the economic hitman jobs of USAID, IMF and WorldBank
By H.E. Hon. Ebube Ebisike George
The patent is www.ericmasaba.com/patent
In November 2016 a partner at a top international law firm offered Eric Matthew Masaba GBP£140m for a buyout without telling him who the counterparty was nor sharing any paperwork. Eric worked out that it was an attempt by Facebook now parented by “Meta” or Google now evolved to “Alphabet” who wanted to get him to sign a retrospective agreement thereby giving up his rights to a patent that has now revolutionized the ride-sharing and road spectrum infrastructure/industry, precision of drone strike technology and Smart City ecosystem.
If paperwork had been presented by the law firm, Eric may have gone with it. What happened next was a complete destruction of his life and proof that racism in the Technology Development Industrial Complex (TDIC) is a team sports. If the patent was worthless, would this have happened? Eric Masaba’s Patent US11586699 was blocked for 12 more years than it should have been. There is no doubt that Eric Masaba’s inalienable right is for justice to be served for the African born, black British scientist, aviator, inventor and polymath whose only infraction against the global technology elite and Bigtech is his moonshot moment of genius which long before today should have earned him international plaudits, awards and patent earnings in nine figures. This dream has long been to plow some of these funds into Africa’s developmental footprint especially in education, research and the technology sector.
Eric Masaba in 2003, as a 29 year old hedge fund quantitative analyst (or quant) set out to build a system to predict credit defaults. He was definitely unaware at the time, that his work would be the start of a global technology altering experience and odyssey which would yield all the ride hailing start-ups but also take on the global financial crisis, whilst providing a reapproach to drone strikes in the “war on terror”, shape predictive analytics and the corrupting all pervasive power of BigTech. Certainly, BigTech as it would turn out has a reputation inadvertently for infringing on user’s rights as per improper use and sale of their personal data (case of now defuncted Cambridge Analytica comes to mind) and some of this has bordered on blocking free speech, some would argue differently.
The case of President Trump’s infringement made headlines, wherein a settlement of $25Million has been agreed to be paid to him by Facebook. Conversely a few days back, Elon Musk voiced the burden of uncouth remarks he receives on his X (formerly Twitter) platform from people who see his handling of social media giant as an enboldening of voices that need be moderated. Elon’s new role under President Trump heading the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which has unearthed a monumental streak of malfeasance and questionably covert practices in the over $22 trillion economy orchestrated in Government spending over the years. There are questions to be answered by the Obama and Biden administration in the context of the above.
One of the most bizarre things about the Eric Masaba story is he happens to be from Liverpool, UK which is home of the “Beatles” and he is black. Eric Masaba represents the most unusual type of start-up founder when psychoanalyzed by BigTech or the intelligence community. In what can only be described as the flipside to the con-artist narrative, this is the story of a legitimate inventor who has been through the mill of disbelief and suspicion for over 18 years and this has had very unsavory implications for his mental health and wellbeing. It definitely sounds too unbelievable to be true, but this is the verifiable story of Eric Masaba.
There was one moment, realised only in hindsight, where the culmination of decades of his experiences coalesces into an impromptu Eureka! moment. For Eric, it was one night in December 2003 after several weeks of pondering how to explain the system he had just built to the President of the Hedge Fund that, after twelve grueling months of toing and froing had finally offered him a position as a quantitative analyst. His realisation was that companies could be considered to be people in a social network with very tight connections to some other companies and barely perceptible connections to others. In structural engineering, the behaviour of forces in constructions is handled in the same way: matrices representing the connectivity of the structure are created and forces are modelled.
This meant that if a company entered default (bankruptcy) there was now a way to model the cascade of consequences from this event and steal a market timing advantage by trading in the secondary and tertiary effects. The credit ratings industry (prior to the Global Financial Crisis) did not take into account the social network character of companies. A large and perfectly viable company could be at far more risk than its credit rating signalled based on its susceptibility to a large customer or trading partner going into default. The easiest of these to model was the Ford Motor Company, whose giant scale and network of suppliers spanned many industries.
Many of its suppliers were rated AAA yet Ford itself was circling a downgrade at this time. While explaining this to the President of the hedge fund, Eric used an analogy of neighbours who did not know one another having almost exactly coincident transport needs, but perhaps separated by 10 minutes or so, such that they never met. If a system could group up and rationalise this “coincidence of wants” a lot of transport resources could be saved. The same was true for choosing which trades to invest in, such that foreknowledge of the companies’ social graph would get better returns. As an interesting side project Eric decided to calculate the market size for ride-sharing at scale and was surprised to continually get a figure in the trillions of dollars per annum. This was an even juicier opportunity than the capital structure arbitrage he had been hired to code. And thus Transit Exchange for the XXI Century of Texxi was born, this is what most of you know as “UBER”.
Unbeknown to Eric at that time, certain foreign intelligence agencies were using the same process to locate targets for assassination via drone strike. The idea is simple. A target is never going to carry a locator beacon for fear of being tracked and killed. However, the same target can be tracked if one knows the social graph of this person. In fact, it is remarkable to the extent with which the accuracy can be ascertained. This is exactly the kind of systematic operational methodology and strategic planning required by the Nigeria security forces and particularly the Air Force so as to reduce collateral damage on civilians in their bombing raids on the new group Lakurawa, Boko Haram insurgents and bandits in the Northern region which is hugely burdened with insecurity. The Nigeria Airforce have made many mistakes amounting to collateral damage in the conflict theatre which has cost innocent lives and property destruction as well as displacement of citizens in a worsening IDP phenomena and there have been consistent denials to this effect by the leadership of the security forces.
Eric Masaba’s patent means uncovering terrorist networks and thus shares all the same basic similarities and machinery as finding credit default cascades in a network of companies. As if that was not enough, even more coincidence was to come. One of Eric Masaba’s friends from a year in industry placement 13 years prior, had begun working for JP Morgan as a senior credit trader. Sam Ramesh Chandarana had also decided to invest in Texxi and asked Eric how he had come up with the idea. When Eric told him about the credit cascade idea, he had become agitated and asked Eric to come over to his workplace to see his boss – the European Head of credit trading. And so in early January 2006, a series of meetings occurred at 125 London Wall, City of London where Eric outlined the risks of a large scale credit default. This was later immortalised in the film “Margin Call”, where trader “Sam”, lawyer “Ramesh” and the aeronautical engineering protege “Eric the risk manager” discuss the impending crash. All the rest is history as the global patent rights system continues to enable infringement and the theft of a blackman’s creative power for others of a more superior skin hue to profit off.
This indeed is disturbingly sad and unacceptable and it would be right up the ally of President Trump, Elon Musk and European Union (EU) to intervene and negotiate a settlement with America’s BigTech for this near two decades long patent infringement to ensure the arch of moral justice naturally curves towards Eric Masaba for the good of posterity. This negotiated settlement will provide funding for all parties including the EU who already seek money to increase their socioeconomic spend and defense budgets. This is especially key in the wake of the Russia Vs Ukraine negotiations midwifed seemingly in favour of Putin and along the lines of President Trump’s change in foreign policy termed a “European diveroce process”.
Conclusively, its important to express that in the wake of Elon Musk not considering to acquire Eric Masaba’s patent, the MTN Group, Africa Energy Fund (AEF) or any of the large telecom players would be highly logical contenders to make a bid to license patent US11586699 for the African markets. As the ride-sharing market and it’s intersections are a multibillion dollar industry. Furthermore, in periscoping the global economy in an AI driven world, Africa’s potential value lies in its emerging markets, growing urban populations, and increasing mobile internet adoption, however, infrastructure development, lower current GDP contributions, and receding market maturity compared to other regions might lower its valuation relative to Europe, North America, and Asia. The Africa valuation for Eric’s patent would be in the region of £50Billion to £100 Billion and this figure reflects its growth potential while acknowledging current market constraints. There is no doubt that the African diaspora which remit over $70Billion need to be part of this unique opportunity.
Further to Eric Masaba’s advice on where Africa needs to be in terms of reforming its financial systems, he believes first and foremost Africa needs a financial system unable to be controlled by outside (Western) powers and this is in line with Africa achieving true independence whilst ending the economic hitman jobs of USAID, IMF and WorldBank as well as completely eradicating economic colonialism in all its spectrums and guise. It will be recalled that on February 13, a US Congressman, Scott Perry, accused USAID of funding terrorist groups, including Boko Haram amongst others. Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, made this claim during the inaugural hearing of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, but then this was dismissed by the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Richard Mills.
But knowing America’s history with the CIA funding and arming of the mujahideen recruited in Pakistan to fight Russia’s encroachment into Afghanistan in the 80s, which had unintended consequences of birtheing Al’Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, there are also other tales of America’s Media and Military Industrial Complex (MMIC) activities which enabled the exploitative globalisation of the petrodollar and powdered covert operations which perpetuated her hegemony and unipolarity doctrine across Africa and other parts of the world till date. In effect your summation is as good as mine.
In a nutshell Eric Masaba is of the view that Africa needs a trust-less, decentralised computational currency as the way to shape her future industrialisation fortunes especially as her population grows with Nigeria leading the surge in the wake of 2100, when she posted to be the third motst populated country in the world.
Lately, Eric advices Africa also needs to maintain her own controlled informational borders, as modern warfare is now primarily informational as psychological operations remain a dire clear and present danger for Africa’s tangible hopes of competitiveness and survival. This is especially important in many levels such as ex-Military (IBB) President Ibrahim B. Babangida’s attempts via autobiography “A Journey In Service” desperately to interject on historic events known within the public domain like clearing the air on the long standing cliche and claim that the 1967 coup was an “Igbo coup” resulting in genocide by Gowon and confessing that Prof. Humphrey Nwosu was hero at NEC by quoting the true voter figures which meant MKO Abiola won the 1993 elections which he IBB annulled.
