I have been writing on cross border mobile financial flows across the African continent since early 2015, when the partnerships and agreements made between African telcos to provide interoperability between their mobile money services first began to hit the headlines. In my last post back in August 2016, I asked if Cross Border Mobile Money… Read More »
For the past 15 years, Africa watchers have been waiting for her mobile phone industry to reach a critical landmark – almost full saturation of the market. This milestone may be close at hand, as recent news and data show. In June 2018, Kenyan mobile subscriptions reached 98% penetration, a 13% jump over the previous… Read More »
As we prepare to start work for our third African fintech client, I thought it was time to quickly and briefly introduce the opportunity space and clear up some misunderstandings around fintech in Africa. The first point is the common confusion between Fintech and financial inclusion. Investopedia’s definition of Fintech says financial inclusion, that is,… Read More »
While East Africa has tended to grab the headlines as the mover and shaker in mobile platform innovation, there’s an imminent boom due to emerge in West Africa. The GSMA’s most recent report on the West African mobile ecosystem contains all the signals of this happening within the next 3 or so years. Even in… Read More »
Around 2 and a half years ago, I was on a short visit to Abidjan, the capital of Cote D’Ivoire as a guest of the African Development Bank. They were holding an innovation weekend for young women and men in the Francophone West African region who were interested in becoming entrepreneurs. David O. Capo Chichi,… Read More »
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… Read More »
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… Read More »
Unusually, for a global retail brand like the French Carrefour chain, their range of products in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire include numerous locally sourced products. News has it that they signed as many as 170 different supplier agreements in their bid to source indigenously. …local products like pineapple from Bonoua (south-east), yam from Bondoukou (east), rice… Read More »
Bacely Yorubi frames the opportunity space for local app design and development in The Toronto Star: “Lots of young Africans who’ve studied elsewhere and returned home have expectations of mobile services that don’t yet exist,” said Bacely Yorobi, an app developer from Ivory Coast. “So they’re the ones coding and putting new African-made apps out… Read More »
Analysis Mason has an excellent article on the next big thing in mobile money across the African continent – cross border payments. I covered the emergence of these services, through regional operators as well as partnerships based on interoperability earlier. This is what I asked for: Mapping it all I’d love it if someone could… Read More »