The East African Community is a hidden gem
Even as headlines shriek about “Africa”s economy undergoing some form of turmoil or the other, increasingly, indepth focused reports point out that the East African Community is performing exceedingly well. “Africa”, it turns out, is a vast and diverse continent made up of more than 50 countries. The IMF said: …the multi-speed growth in the […]
Mobile Money in South Africa: The nature of the beast by Flo Mosoane
The 2015 State Of The Industry Report (SOTIR) for Mobile Money published by GSMA, reveals a picture of a service that continues to change the landscape of financial inclusion in developing and poor countries across the globe. In December of 2015, the industry processed transactions in excess of a billion, most of which were in […]
Lowering the barriers to effective communication is the key to sustainable development
One of the challenges that we discovered during our multistakeholder workshop in The Hague a few years ago was that people tended to fall back on their expertise when faced with the discomfort of empathizing with farmer’s needs. Particularly so when the farmers in question were from Africa, and not from their own regions. Our […]
Design of Digital Financial Services for Inclusion Needs More Respect and Humility to Succeed
In the past week alone, I’ve seen three glaring cases of unquestioned assumptions around the design and implementation of Digital Financial Service (DFS) particularly for financial inclusion, but also otherwise. This gives rise to the question whether the industry is prepared to undertake the mission they have set for themselves. The first is that their […]
Le commerce direct des produits fabriqués en Chine est-il susceptible de perturber le marché des consommateurs africains?
This article has been translated into the French by Yacine Bio-Tchané La première plateforme d’e-commerce spécialisée dans la vente directe des produits fabriqués en Chine vient d’être lancée au Togo, un pays de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Coincé tout comme la République du Bénin entre deux grands pays davantage connus, le Nigeria et le Ghana,le Togo […]
Will Cross Border Mobile Money Boost intra African Trade and Regional Integration?
Over the past 18 months, since I started tracking the spread of cross border mobile money payments across the African continent, there has been visible progress in leaps and bounds, as documented by the GSMA. In fact, back then, I’d written: Top down reportage on banking and interoperability seems to focus only on the customer’s […]
Will Direct Access to China-made Goods Disrupt Trade in West Africa’s Consumer Market?
The first e-commerce platform for direct trade of China made products has just been launched in the West African country of Togo. Squeezed together with the Benin Republic between the larger, and better known countries of Nigeria and Ghana, Togo is a small francophone country of around 7 million people. Per the article: “We want […]
The 5C’s of Cashless
The Reserve Bank of India has unveiled their Vision 2018, an ambitious plan to shove the juggernaut into a cashless future. Here are their pithy yet to the point 5C’s, which focus the framework on a set of objectives. Coverage – by enabling wider access to a variety of electronic payment services Convenience – by […]
Platforms that aggregate small businesses can integrate the informal with the formal economy
Continuing my thoughts on Nilekani’s vision introduced in the previous post, I want to use this post to focus on the key element of what captured my imagination from his article “The New Road to Nirvana“: So manufacturing is squeezed on one side by Chinese overcapacity and on the other side by extreme automation. So […]
Digital literacy plus “sharing economy” platforms can offer formal employment for African youth
Back in February of this year, I made a note on the inherent potential of Uber (and related apps) to deliver the data necessary for the informal taxi sector in Kenya to clamber onto the path to formalization. Today, I came across an article reflecting on the potential for formalization in India that quotes Nandan […]
