Cashless Banking in Africa: How we’re creating payment solutions with technology and innovation
African economies are well positioned to benefit from rapidly accelerating technological change if they can harness the current open landscape for innovation. East Africa is already a global leader in mobile payments, while mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa are on an upward charge. Apart from being able to leapfrog the limitations and costs of physical infrastructure, the continent stands to benefit from having the youngest, tech-savvy workforce in the world in the next decade. Africa’s working age population is expected to grow by 450 million people by 2035. According to the World Bank and the continent is projected to have the largest working population of 1.1 billion by 2034, notes the World Economic Forum on Africa. Recent GSMA data shows that mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa are up 18.4% between 2016-17 to 33.8m registered accounts. [bctt tweet=”Banking in a cashless society will require African solutions for African problems – @nnamdi_oranye” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] However, we cannot wait 12-15 years before adequate job creating initiatives and policies are unlocked. The answer lies in harnessing the power of the digital economy today to create African solutions for African problems. An important part of this will require promoting and partnering with African innovators to unlock sustainable growth. We are already witnessing the significant potential of digital innovation in the remittance and mobile wallet space. Penetration of smartphones is expected to hit at least the 50% mark in 2020 from only 2% in 2010, according to the World Economic Forum, offering the continent a clean canvas for tech-based innovation. It is an opportunity we must not miss. These are exciting times and are forcing us to think differently to come up with true Pan African innovation and development. MFS Africa is a good example of how carefully harnessed and supported technological innovation can have ripple effects through the continent. It now operates the largest digital payments network in Africa and connects over 170m mobile wallets through 100+ partners, including Airtel, Ecobank, MTN, Orange and Vodafone across 55 markets. It has about 15% of the African population connected to a platform. M-Pesa, launched in Kenya in 2007, is an often-touted example of African technology making waves even outside its own borders. After capturing the local market for cash transfers it has spread to three continents and 10 countries. MicroEnsure, meanwhile continues on the path of developing pioneering insurance solutions for low-income people like micro-health, crop, and mobile insurance. These are solutions directly aimed at emerging customers and it is little surprise the company continues new customers by cleverly partnering with telcos. Access.mobile is another major success story, testing and growing its health innovation offerings for seven years in East Africa. The company works with health systems to hone their communications with patients in lower-income but also in growing areas and it hopped the pond in the opposite direction from most smaller startups and landed one of its first American clients. [bctt tweet=”Standard Bank, as Africa’s largest bank by assets, hopes to support even more start-up and tech initiatives across the continent” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital, a Los Angeles facility that works largely with lower-income Hispanics, was looking for ways to use health data to achieve better outcomes within its population. These are examples of the role models that will inspire our next generation of innovators. We need more and tech-savvy banks to need to continue supporting them as they grasp future opportunities. Just consider that Findex data shows that sub-Saharan Africa is home to all eight economies where 20 percent or more of adults use only a mobile money account: Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Opportunities, therefore, abound to increase account ownership up to 95 million unbanked adults in the region receive cash payments for agricultural products, and roughly 65 million save using semiformal methods. Standard Bank, as Africa’s largest bank by assets, hopes to support even more start-up and tech initiatives across the continent to ensure these opportunities are not lost. [bctt tweet=”We are setting a new standard in digital payments with the launch of Africa’s first prepaid virtual cards ecosystem, among many other digital innovations – @nnamdi_oranye” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] We are therefore innovating ourselves at a rapid pace to harness the benefits of the digital age to drive financial services inclusion. Mobile payment solutions like Snapscan is now available at over 25,000 merchants and a vast user network across South Africa. We are setting a new standard in digital payments with the launch of Africa’s first prepaid virtual cards ecosystem, among many other digital innovations. The future will be about solving genuine customer problems rather than putting a band aid on them. One area in urgent need of change, for instance, is remittances, where Africa is still one of the costliest places in the world to remit payments – fees as high as 10% to 20% are still endured. We need to harness technology to genuinely solve this problem. Sometimes when we talk about banking in cashless society we look too far out – but we don’t have the luxury of time. Knowing your customer (KYC) is about understanding what they need today based on their culture and context and then unlocking the already available data to provide the solution. Technology, for instance, can solve the unbanked problem on the continent. However, this does not mean you can “plug and play” by taking something that works in one country and expecting it to work in another. Success will increasingly be centered on having a Pan African view of the problem, but local implementation. The future is certainly bright for Africa as exponential innovation continues to drive change across the continent we call home, disrupts industries and replace legacy technology. It is now time to grasp this opportunity with both hands before the innovation wave passes us by. Article By Nnamdi Oranye, Fintech Author and International Remittances Lead at Standard Bank Group. October 2018 Sponsored Post.
Lynda Aphing-Kouassi: I have brought back with me this mindset of a winner and the power of excellence
[bctt tweet=”If you want a career that fulfils you, you need to focus on your interests rather than your qualifications -Lynda Aphing-Kouassi” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] Lynda Aphing-Kouassi is a former banker and Founder and Director of Kaizene, a firm specializing in training, coaching and networking conferences. The process of creating African leaders and encouraging the inclusion of women is the core of her business which she tries to achieve by her coaching and training sessions. Passionate and rigorous, Lynda has extensive experience in the management of companies and employees in the following sectors, portfolio management; training, coaching, and seminars; conferences organization for more than a decade. For Lynda, the biggest resource a successful company should rely on is its workforce. Not being visible on the balance sheets it’s often relegated to the bottom rank. Via its various initiatives on leadership and training seminars organized, Kaizene accompanies multinationals and SME’s by reminding them of the best leadership techniques to use in order to enhance the skills, inspire the employees, create partnerships and synergies and ensure a stable and sustainable development. “Our beautiful Africa is full of leaders we just have to accompany them to the best of our abilities, mentor them, remind them of their potential and reiterate to them the soundness of excellent leadership in order to give back to Africa the place that it should have: “the provider of excellence”. You spent 19 years abroad, fill us in on your experience in a foreign land. As a French speaker who disliked English at the time, living in London was a most difficult experience. My sister who was married to an Englishman lived in London already and they kindly allowed me to live with them. I soon found I could express my fears and got to speak English more often. My brother-in-law’s help was tremendous because he was patient and understanding despite the many mistakes that I made. I then started uni and work during which I experienced a lot of setbacks and a feeling of non-belonging as far as the lifestyle was concerned. It is at that time I realised that to belong you had to embrace the new culture. But I could see that others embraced it to the point of forgetting their own! I then decided that the authenticity of my culture would take me far. So, while learning and understanding the lifestyle in the UK I was also bringing my own to the table. For example, I would make my country’s food during parties and lunches and wear my African print dresses as often as possible. I became an object of curiosity which brought people near me to try and understand where I was from and slowly the feeling of not belonging disappeared. I started to make real friends and began to really enjoy and understand the country. The UK became my home. At work in a FTSE 100 company and being a black person, you can imagine that every disagreement or difference of opinion may well be perceived as aggression. I considered this as a form of bullying and refused to be bullied. I worked hard and developed this mindset of a winner where nothing was good enough until it was excellent. Also, I made sure that I was going to be accepted, not just tolerated. This is what you can do if you value and believe in yourself. I learnt from this experience that only you have the answer to your own doubts and that the only judge is God. So, I have brought back with me this mindset of a winner and the power of excellence. My dream is to influence my peers with this belief so we can be proud individuals, strong, developed and authentic and to then become an example to others. I believe we can and will, with our young population and this mindset of confidence and excellence, have a better Africa. Awesome! So what did you experience in terms of mindset and lifestyle that you wish to bring to your own country or Africa as a whole? During my time in Europe, I found the development of infrastructure so important that it created a great communication between companies and people. The buildings are often rehabilitated and well maintained, communities put themselves together to ensure development and the cleanliness of their spaces in order to have a decent living environment. Technology is well advanced allowing sustainable environment and every child understands the value of a prosperous technology. I truly wish we have the same type of developed infrastructure in Africa, and I am sure we will get there. All services ( water, electricity, transport etc) go through the infrastructure and ensure the development of the community. This prompted me to plan the organisation of a conference on infrastructure in October this year to discuss our lack of infrastructures and how to ensure a sustainable development for Sub-Saharan Africa. [bctt tweet=”Africans have all the necessary tools to be excellent – Lynda Aphing-Kouassi” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] What does a better Africa look like to you? A better Africa to me is a stable Africa where we understand politics and don’t use it against ourselves. It is one where we realise that Africans have all the necessary tools to be excellent and should therefore collaborate. A better Africa is one where Africans can freely travel across Africa and use our own products, learn to transform our raw materials and understand our values. A better Africa is one where one African can’t tolerate seeing another one begging but where possible help others and grow together. And most of all where we do not envy Europe and strive to be the best. Walk us through the journey of starting up Kaizene. Kaizene is a baby that was born on the underground in London whilst talking to a friend about setting a business. Then the idea was put to bed. I had a job opportunity in Abidjan and although I had never experienced the working life in Abidjan, I