…Hindenburg Faces Tingo Group After Raising False Alarm Against Jumia, OPay, Adani Group, To Harm Their Operations

I have read with utter disgust but not with total disappointment how a supposed forensic financial research firm which goes by the name Hindenburg Research goes about tarnishing hard-earned images of rising business interest, especially those with African, Asian and Middle Eastern ownership.

It goes about acting like a colonial master, seeking to conquer and cower African businesses to subservience. Many companies on the continent have been victims of its character assassination and malicious damage for a reason one can hardly decipher. Not everyone is surprised that Tingo Group, one of Nigeria’s leading aggro-tech and fin-tech companies has come come under Hindenburg Research’s criticism that is not short of anything but poorly conducted hatchet job with a nefarious intention. The recent publication of Hindenburg against Tingo Group, where is alleged that the Nigerian-owned firm parades inaccurate accounting record is most disappointing and nauseating.

As a South African that has lived in Nigeria in the past seven years, I have not heard about anything that excites farmers more than the advent of Tingo Group.

Hindenburg Research claimed to have reached out to some persons in Nigeria and they were told there are no farming cooperatives in Nigeria and where one exists, they are less than 100. Really? In a country of 36 states where farming is arguably the largest provider of employment across the country’s various regions?

Hindenburg Research’s blackmail packaged in form of “investment research” should just have been ignored and not attract any response for what it is — fact twisting and outright falsehood.

One would have imagined that in the 21st century when the world knows better, Hindenburg would do itself the favour of not misleading people with malicious publications like it has done in the past just to thwart peoples efforts for its own advantages.

It still carries on with the hangover of the colonial mentality where it believes that nothing good can come out of Africa and anything with African or Asian signature, that will challenge the existing status quo of over-dependence in the West is a “fraud”.

It is really shocking and most appalling that frantic efforts being made by Tingo Group to mop of the agriculture value chain especially in Nigeria is being called out in a negative light in a desperate effort to to plummet its market strength. The age-long obnoxious notion that “as far as it’s black, it’s evil” has continued to becloud Hindenburg.

To tell you their track record of notoriety and deception, Hindenburg published a report alleging that Jumia Group, an e-commerce platform that operates in Africa and the Middle East was a “fraudulent scheme”, accusing it of inflated sales and customer numbers. On the account of this unfounded information which Jumia denied, its stock plummeted by 50% on the New York Stock Exchange.

That is not all, Adani Group, one of India’s largest multinational conglomerates lost $70 billion in market value after this same Hindenburg accused it of manipulating its stock price and falsifying its accounts.

Just in case Hindenburg needs to be tutored, Nigeria has a robust agricultural potentials which has not been fully harnessed over the decades and that is the gap Tingo Group through its Tingo Mobile has come to fill. There are dozens of farmers associations in Nigeria but the mother of them all is All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) which recently reached a multibillion Naira deal with Tingo on supply and storage of agro produce, particularly rice and wheat.

This deal is targeted at ensuring that farmers do not have a lot of produce that end up a waste in their homes due to lack of storage facility. The deal is to give them value for their efforts and ensure that the rhetoric about food security is not only heard but seen. Apart from targeting adequate supply to under-served regions, Tingo Group has also reached an advanced stage in discourse to supply foreign markets with Nigerian agro products. Where is the fraud Hindenburg is alleging in all these?

A short-sighted imaginary investment research firm like Hindenburg that goes about twisting facts achieved its nefarious aim when the shares of the Tingo Group dropped by 82.85 percent to close at $0.06 on Tuesday after its false claim against the company.

Who would want his country to suffer acute food shortage in the midst of plenty? The Russia-Ukraine war exposed how vulnerable Africa is to food insecurity and it is the same gap that the United States where Hindenburg operates from always exploits, masquerading as saviour of Africa while indeed it is not.

In January 2020, Hindenburg Research released a report about OPay, Opera’s financial services operating in Nigeria and Kenya. Hindenburg’s report suggested that Opera’s U.S.-listed stock was grossly overvalued.

Since the allegation, OPay has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding while also ramping up customers. The fact that Tingo Group is also working towards bridging the gap of financial inclusion leaves much to be desired about Hindenburg’s outburst. Does it benefit from the widening financial exclusion in Africa?

The accusation of financial inaccuracy again Tingo Group is nothing short of the figment of the imagination of Hindenburg and its sponsors. Africa has numerous problems which Tingo Group is making frantic efforts to bring solutions to. Hindenburg is comfortable with over-reliance of Africa in the western system which at the end of the day leave the continent exploited and cheated.

Hindenburg should focus on the problems bedevilling the West such as organised crimes, gun, drugs, internet fraud and more. Tingo Group is a brand of pride Africa is proud of and should be spared unnecessary vilification and targeted antagonism.