Technology
HP Extends Digital Partner Programme to Global Retailers
By Adedapo Adesanya
HP Incorporated has announced the extension of HP Amplify, a first-of-its-kind global channel programme, to its vast ecosystem of more than 1,350 retail partners.
Launched in the fall of 2020 to commercial partners, the new partner programme, built on a single, integrated structure provides the insights, capabilities and collaboration tools needed to drive digital transformation and growth as consumer buying behaviours continue to evolve.
HP will begin to transition retail partners to the HP Amplify program beginning August 2, 2021, and continue through the calendar year.
Built on a simplified and easy-to-navigate structure with two distinct retail tracks (Synergy and Power including Power CDR Retail targeted at retail sub-distributors), HP Amplify is designed from the ground up to turn data analytics into insights that spark new strategies, steer innovation and reward partners for performance, collaboration and capabilities while accelerating digital transformation with insights, building a data-driven culture and augmenting common knowledge with collaboration tools.
Speaking on this, Mr Christoph Schell, Chief Commercial Officer, HP Incorporated said, “For the IT industry overall, and the retail channel specifically, it is clear that business as usual is no longer an option. HP Amplify not only makes it easier for retail partners to do business with HP, but it also provides a clear path, built on a proven framework, to transform their business for today while enabling long-term sustained growth in the future.
“Together with our partner community, we are reinventing how consumers experience our products and services, by investing in our shared capabilities while developing new areas of strength to remain competitive.”
Spurred by rising demand for work, learn and entertain at home products accelerated by the pandemic, the retail industry has experienced an accelerated pace of change.
Capitalizing on the momentum of transformational experiences will be critical to building and maintaining the flexibility that is demanded of doing business today. For the foreseeable future, changes in consumer behaviour will have a greater impact on value in retail than any other single factor.
While in-store traffic decreased, e-commerce sales grew by more than 27 per cent in 2020 and is expected to account for 40 per cent of total sales for consumer-packaged goods by 2025. Trends such as hybrid work, the emergence of the prosumer and continued e-commerce growth are making collaborative partnerships in the retail industry more essential than ever.
With the introduction of HP Amplify, HP is empowering retailers to capitalize on these shifts, arming partners to deliver superior customer experiences and drive future growth.
“Customers are requesting a closer and more personalized relationship with brands,” said Mr Quentin Duminy, Global Buyer at Group Auchan, a leading retailer based in France.
“We will increase our common knowledge of the consumption patterns using data analytics in order to redesign the customer journey, improving experiences online and in-store through HP’s Amplify for Retail program,” he added.
HP Amplify offers a common platform designed to enable progressive go-to-market strategies focused on three core pillars: performance, capabilities, and collaboration.
Building on the success of the HP Amplify framework while addressing the unique needs of retailers, the new program rewards partners for a variety of performance indicators tied to portfolio sell-through and revenue. A structured compensation framework, sales boosters, and other tools help retail partners to assess performance and actions providing clear indicators of success.
Beyond sales revenue alone, HP Amplify measures reward based on new capabilities such as driving data insights, service models, consistent online and in-store experiences.
Strengthening and developing of new capabilities are supported by online digital assessments and recommendations based on core capabilities, consumer trends, benchmarking, and best practices. HP Amplify rewards partners who invest in the capabilities to compete – and win – in a world dominated by e-commerce and digital-led customer journeys.
Transformational change requires collaborative partnerships. Companies that regularly collaborate with suppliers can demonstrate higher growth, lower operating costs, and greater profitability than their industry peers.
Partners that report data will be able to anticipate and enable more positive customer outcomes, ultimately driving sales conversions and maximizing average baskets. HP will collaborate closely with partners to optimize sales through store-level assortment tools and cross-category recommendations to unlock opportunity diversification.
The HP Amplify partner program also provides partners with an optional path to a more sustainable future. Launched earlier this year to commercial partners, HP Amplify Impact is an industry-first partner assessment, resource and training program aimed at driving meaningful change across HP’s three Sustainable Impact pillars – Planet, with an emphasis on climate action; People with an emphasis on human rights and social justice; and Community with an emphasis on digital equity.
The HP Amplify Impact program helps to empower partners to set bold, long-term objectives to drive positive impact. Partners that pledge to join the HP Amplify Impact program will work with HP to assess their own practices while tapping into the company’s extensive investments and initiatives.
Recognized as one of the world’s most sustainable companies, HP has enrolled more than 1,000 partners worldwide in the HP Amplify Impact program, representing a major step forward in the company’s ambitious goal to become the most sustainable and just technology company by 2030.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
An additional $200,000 will be invested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) media literacy initiatives across Sub-Saharan Africa, TikTok announced during its third annual Sub-Saharan Africa Safer Internet Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.
The platform hosted government officials, regulators, online safety partners and industry leaders for the event, reinforcing its commitment to collaborative approaches to online safety.
The funds will be provided in ad credits to help support local organisations in the region to expand AI media literacy.
This investment builds on the company’s initial $2 million AI Literacy Fund, launched in November 2025, which awarded 20 global non-profits to create content that boosts public understanding of AI.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, TikTok initially supported three organisations to advance digital literacy and combat misinformation.
“With the rapid advancement of AI, we are committed to educating our community online, so they feel empowered to have responsible experiences with AI, whether that’s as viewers or creators.
“We are partnering with trusted local organisations that communities already know and rely on, because their expertise and deep local connections are essential to making AI literacy programs truly impactful,” the Global Head of Partnerships, Elections and Market Integrity at TikTok, Mr Valiant Richey, stated.
Earlier, the Head of Government Relations and Public Policy for Sub-Saharan Africa at TikTok, Ms Tokunbo Ibrahim, said, “As we host the 3rd Annual Safer Internet Summit here in Kenya, our mission is clear: to share learnings, insights, tackle common challenges and collaboratively advance actionable solutions that protect citizens online.
“By bringing together a diverse coalition of policymakers, tech innovators, and creators, we are ensuring that the conversations we have at this Summit are all-inclusive and lead to a more resilient digital landscape.”
The summit featured expert panels and discussions on critical topics, including TikTok’s Trust and Safety efforts, protecting young people online, and policy frameworks for responsible AI governance.
A key highlight of the event was showcasing how TikTok uses AI to transform how people share their creativity and discover new passions, while ensuring the community remains safe through transparent and responsible AI practices.
The platform also shared more about how recent advancements in AI are helping the platform moderate content faster and more consistently at scale, by improving automated moderation and empowering human teams with better moderation tools.
With over 100 million pieces of content uploaded daily to TikTok, these advances, which work alongside human moderation teams, are helping get violative content down faster, reducing the likelihood of the community seeing it.
According to the latest Community Guidelines Enforcement Q3 2025, TikTok removed over 14 million videos across Sub-Saharan Africa, with 96.7 per cent detected and removed proactively using automated technology, underscoring TikTok’s commitment to proactive moderation and swift action.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The winners of the Technovation 4.0 Hackathon, themed The Wicked Hackathon, organised by Interswitch, have been given N10 million in cash prizes for their efforts.
At the one-day finale event, which took place on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, at the Interswitch Innovation Lab and Co-Working Space, the money was shared among the top teams whose innovative solutions stood out during the rigorous multiple phases of the competition.
Team Quickteller Fashion emerged as the overall winner, securing the grand prize of N4 million for a solution that impressed judges with its originality, practicality, and strong strategic relevance. Team Kampe claimed second position with N2.5 million, while Team Stable placed third, receiving N1.5 million. Up to N300,000 worth of cash prizes were also awarded to the fourth, fifth and sixth qualifying teams.
For nine months, cross-functional teams from across the organisation collaborated to conceptualise, validate, develop, and refine solutions, moving from raw ideas to minimum viable products (MVPs) with ready-to-market potential and deployment across the business.
The atmosphere at the grand finale reflected that of preparation and anticipation as the top 9 teams presented their innovations through live demonstrations and detailed pitches, fielding questions from a distinguished panel of judges before the top three winners were selected. Each presentation highlighted rigorous validation processes, thoughtful market considerations, and a strong emphasis on measurable impact.
While many of the solutions remain confidential due to their strategic relevance, the diversity and depth of ideas showcased during the hackathon’s final underscored the organisation’s growing culture of intrapreneurship and structured innovation. The projects illustrated how technology-driven thinking can unlock efficiencies, strengthen operational capabilities, and open new pathways for growth across the digital payments and commerce ecosystem.
“Technovation continues to reflect who we are as an organisation, bold, forward-thinking, and deeply committed to building impactful solutions from within. Over the years, we have seen ideas conceived during this programme evolve into meaningful capabilities that strengthen our ecosystem.
“The passion, discipline, and ingenuity demonstrated by our teams this year reinforce our belief in the power of African innovation to solve complex challenges and shape the future of technology on the continent,” the Chief Innovation Officer for Interswitch, Ms Adaobi Okerekeocha, stated.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The language support for its AI Search features has been expanded by Google, with the inclusion of Yoruba and Hausa in Nigeria.
This is part of a broader effort to make AI more inclusive across the continent, with support now extending to a total of 13 African languages.
Under the AI Overviews and AI Mode, speakers of both Nigerian languages can utilise AI-powered Search experiences in their mother tongue for quick summaries and conversational exploration.
This means existing AI features in Google Search are now accessible to people like the student in Kano asking a question in Hausa, and the trader in Ibadan seeking advice in Yorùbá.
By addressing language barriers, this update ensures that technology reflects the identity and culture of the people it serves. With this expansion, more people can now use AI Mode to ask complex questions in their preferred language, while exploring the web more deeply and naturally through text or voice.
The 13 languages now supported across Africa include Afrikaans, Akan, Amharic, Hausa, Kinyarwanda, Afaan Oromoo, Somali, Sesotho, Kiswahili, Setswana, Wolof, Yorùbá, and isiZulu.
These languages were chosen based on the vibrant search activity across the continent, ensuring that our AI experiences reach the communities that need them most.
Commenting on the development, the Communications and Public Affairs Manager for Google in West Africa, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, said, “Building a truly global Search goes far beyond translation — it requires a nuanced understanding of local information.
“With the advanced multimodal and reasoning capabilities of our custom version of Gemini in Search, we’ve made huge strides in language understanding, so our most advanced AI search capabilities are locally relevant and useful in each new language we support.
“This is about ensuring Nigerians can converse with Search in their mother tongues, making information more helpful for everyone.”
To use AI Overviews and AI Mode in the local language, users must open the Google app on an Android or iOS device, or via the Web. They are required to tap on AI Mode within the Search experience. Thereafter, they can type or speak the question in their preferred language, such as Hausa or Yorùbá, and let the AI guide the journey.
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