Senegal Launches A New Electronic Currency

Senegal is now the second African country after Tunisia to adopt an electronic currency. eCFA is equivalent in value to the country’s physical tender and will be available on all mobile money and e-wallet platforms. This development has led to e-money proponents speculating which African country might be next to adopt electronic money. Zimbabwe, perhaps?

It’s popularly been argued that given the persistent economic troubles that have dogged the country, Zimbabwe might very well be the continent’s best use case for the adoption of virtual currency. But for the time being, Zimbabweans will have to be content with the country’s newest currency– bond notes, which the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe started rolling out on Monday, December 28th, 2016.

This week’s African Tech Round-up features a lively chat Andile Masuku had with Dr Vukosi Marivate, a Data Scientist and Senior Researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). They speak about the trend towards countries around the world passing laws that require the personal information of their citizens to be hosted on servers within their borders. We reached out to Vukosi after having some insightful engagement with him on Twitter last week; following our coverage of Russia blocking LinkedIn for flouting data security regulations.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Barclays Africa’s Blockchain Transaction A World First

It’s been a busy week for the continent’s fintech scene.

The past week saw MTN South Africa announce that it would be discontinuing its mobile money service due to “a lack of commercial viability”. This revelation comes just months after Vodacom South Africa ended its catastrophic attempt at copying and pasting Kenya’s M-Pesa magic.

Meanwhile, Madagascar became only the second African country after Tanzania to to roll out mobile money interoperability across the country’s mobile networks.

But easily one of the catchiest headline stories of the past week was about Barclays Africa’s involvement in what’s being celebrated as the very first blockchain verified financial transaction in the world by a major banking institution. The pilot deal between The Seychelles Trading Company Ltd. and Ornua saw the two companies harness a blockchain platform developed by Wave to trade a letter of credit. This transaction has to be Barclays’ most overt show of confidence in the potential of blockchain technology to deliver improved efficiencies in international trade.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up is a discussion I had with the Kenyan journalist, Eric Mugendi. Eric is Editor-at-large at iAfrikan.com, and also writes for his Tumbler called Kenyan Longreads. Eric joined me on the show to discuss the controversy that unfolded on Twitter around the African Tech Summit happening in London on September 29th. The event’s conspicuously mostly male, non-black/non-African speaker list included folks many people in the Twitterverse did not feel were representative of Africa’s tech ecosystem, and also managed to leave out many worthy participants. Eric and I went about unpacking the issues at play.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Afrimarket Lands €10 Million To Deploy E-commerce Platform Across Francophone Africa

The French e-commerce startup, Afrimarket has raised €10 million from the Global Innovation Fund and the private sector arm of the French Development Agency (AFD), Proparco, as well as from a handful of individual investors such as the co-founder of PriceMinister, Olivier Mathiot, who’s been granted a seat on Afrimarket’s board.

At a glance, the company seems to have it made– except that growth within the e-commerce sector across the continent has consistently failed to meet expectations, and foreign-owned, foreigner-run e-commerce copy-cat plays backed by the likes of Rocket Internet continue to have precious little to show in terms of solid success.

The bottom line is that this is Africa, and Afrimarket’s founder and CEO, Rania Belkahia, better have a few good tricks up her sleeve, including a tonne of patience and access to a lot more cash, if her company is to achieve its ambitious aspiration of dominating the French-speaking West African e-commerce market.

Then, in this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up, we share a conversation I had with Ernesto Spruyt, the founder of Tunga, an online market network that provides international clients access to African coding talent. He also happens to serve as Chief Mentor for Telegraph Media Group’s DigitalX accelerator program in Amsterdam.

Ernesto speaks on what prompted him to come to Africa looking for coding talent, and shares some of key things African coders who aspire to having international careers ought to be keeping top of mind.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Naspers Wilting In The Heat + DEMO Africa 2016 Highlights

The gravy train may well be over at Africa’s largest tech company (by market value)— Naspers.

Naspers CEO, Koos Bekker, told investors last Friday that the coming year is going to be a trying one. At this point, the company has only one card up its sleeve, and it’s called Tencent Holdings. After all, Naspers’ 33 percent stake in Chinese technology company currently accounts for almost half its revenue, and its internet and pay-tv businesses are stalling at a time when they desperately need growth to keep competitors like Google, Facebook and Amazon at bay.

Bekker’s cautionary statements led to a .3% decline in the firm’s share price, which seems like a tame reaction considering that S&P Global Ratings had already changing its outlook on Naspers’ credit rating to BBB-, which is only one step up from junk status. In short, it’s rough in these streets.

Last week saw DEMO Africa hosted in Southern Africa for the first time in its five year history. DEMO Africa 2016 went down in Sandton, Johannesburg late last week, and I’m pleased to say that it exceeded my expectations in almost every way. The conference brought together 27 startups from across Africa, angel investors, VCs, enterprise representatives and public officials all under one roof fto engage in dialogue and to witness adjudicated pitching sessions.

What was most impressive, though, was the Pan-African crowd and the quality of the engagement I saw taking place. In this episode of the African Tech Round-up I share snippets of great conversations I had with power players who are intricately involved with the continent’s tech ecosystem.

Tune in for insights from Angel Investor and Founding President of the African Business Angels Network, Tomi Davies, Microsoft’s Director for Venture Capital & Start-ups, Africa Initiatives, Amrote Abdella, the City of Joburg’s Director of Economic Development Facilitation, Tsholo Mogotsi, Angel Investor, Farouk Jivani, and Managing Partner of the Lions @frica initiative, Stephen Ozoigbo.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Not-so-little Trademark Faux Pas Leaves Safaricom and Craft Silicon Red-faced

Safaricom and Craft Silicon both took an “L” this past week.

As it turns out, they neglected to trademark the Little Cabs brand name before launching their ride-sharing service some weeks ago. And now,  they’ve had to drop the word “Cab” from their brand after the “Little Cab” trademark-holder went to court to defend his right to use that name. From now on, whey are to be known as Little.

The whole situation is embarrassing to say the least, and reminds me of the wisdom Alpesh Patel shared with me in a taped conversation I had with him some months ago, about how important it is to “dot the i’s and cross the t’s” when it comes to securing one’s commercial intellectual property. Nevertheless, I’m sure the folks at Safaricom and Craft Silicon learned their lesson.

This week’s African Tech Round-up also features a chat I had with Brendan Horan. Brendan is an executive vice president of MiX Telematics— a fleet and mobile asset management solutions business that’s listed on both the Johannesburg and the New York Stock Exchanges, as well as the Managing Director of MiX Telematics’ African business.

Listen in to hear how Brendan’s company goes about applying a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model to deliver solutions to customers in more than 120 countries around the world, how the global AI and machine learning trend is impacting their corporate’s strategy, and how Brendan deals with the challenge of growing the firm’s African business in hugely varied markets across the continent.

MTN Group Reports Losses In Mid-Year Results For 2016

MTN Group’s warning that their interim financial results for the period ending June 30th 2016 would be unpleasant did a lot to absorb the shock when reality struck last Friday— the day the report eventually dropped.

Despite revenue for the interim period improving by ±$5.7 billion, MTN reported an after tax loss attributable to equity holders of just over $401 thousand. That translates to a headline loss per share of nearly $0.20. Compare that with 2015’s headline earnings of just under $0.48 per share, and it’s sobering to see how humbling this must be Africa’s largest mobile service provider.

As expected, the mobile telco has put forward a long list of explanations for what went wrong. One of the more interesting items on that list is what they are calling “short-term losses” they’ve sustained thanks to their significant investments in Middle East Internet Holdings and of course, the recently rebranded Africa Internet Group— which now goes by Jumia.

I wonder what’s going through the mind of MTN Group’s President and CEO-in-waiting, Rob Shuter, who will no doubt have his work cut out for him when he takes up the reins from Phuthuma Nhleko come July 2017.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, I share a chat I had with the Cape Town-based Zimbabwean digital all-rounder, Babusi Nyoni. Babusi is the Digital Creative Group Head at South Africa’s #1 ranked through-the-line agency, M&C SAATCHI Abel.

I caught up with Babusi to discuss an AI-enabled campaign he recently masterminded and executed for a global FMCG brand, and to chat about the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence in general. Tune in to hear him factor in on what the world might look and feel like when those technologies become common-place.

The Konga Conundrum: Is Nigeria’s E-Commerce Industry Stalling?

Who knew that a little quarterly update by a publicly-traded Swedish investment firm could get Nigeria’s e-commerce fraternity all worked up? Not me.

So, as Kinnevik was going about its business last week, the firm released its Second Quarter Report which detailed the performance of its subsidiaries around the world. That simple act of due diligence on Kinnevik’s part (which admittedly is something that happens every quarter without fail, but only garnered media attention in Nigeria this time round) allowed us all to get a sense of just how well Nigeria’s biggest e-commerce platform, Konga, is doing— which in turn fuelled speculation around the health of Nigeria’s e-commerce sector in general.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation contained in the report was that Konga only has 184,000 active customers— which translates to approximately 1.1% of the Nigerian population. In a word, that number is disappointing. It has lead to vigorous debate both on social media and in the blogosphere about why Nigeria’s e-commerce industry appears to be stalling, and what interventions may be required to turn the situation around.

This week’s African Tech Round-up features a chat I had with Nigerian angel investor and economics commentator, Eloho Omame, whose eloquent blog post on Medium entitled Thoughts around Kinnevik’s half year report and the e-commerce industry in Nigeria has to be one of the more balanced and constructive reviews of the current state of play in Nigeria’s e-commerce scene.

Listen in to hear Eloho unpack the insights laid out in her blog post, and explain why she believes that capital, capital and more capital might be just the thing to help Nigeria’s e-commerce industry live up to the great expectations currently placed upon it.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Telkom South Africa In The Lead With Game Changing Mobile Packages

Data costs need to come down significantly if Africa is ever going to realise the dream of making access to the internet available to every single person living on the continent.

As things stand, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, an estimated 590 million Africans still do not have access to electricity, to say nothing of reliable web access.

However, South Africa’s largest telecoms operator, the government-owned Telkom, has announced some game-changing 4G/LTE data-led mobile packages that may signal the beginning of the end of exorbitantly high data prices in that country.

Aside from throwing down the gauntlet towards its rivals, Telkom seems to be committing to a business model that seeks to sign up the masses and incentivise them to consume ever increasing amounts of data, as opposed to attempting to profiteer in the short to medium term. What’s not to love about that?

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, I speak to Frank Schutte, the former Retail Product & Marketing Managing Director of South Africa’s largest life insurer— Liberty, to found a startup called MobiLife, which is “Africa’s first 100% mobile insurance offering” that aims to transform micro-insurance in South Africa.

Listen in to find out what would possess Frank to take on the well-heeled incumbents who currently dominate South Africa’s highly-competitive multi-billion dollar life insurance industry.

Will Facebook’s OpenCellular Crush BRCK?

Ever since my in-depth conversation with Barclays Africa’s Stephen van Coller some weeks back, I’ve been both fascinated and frustrated by his view that the likelihood of big players like financial institutions, mobile telcos and digital media giants being completely disrupted by smaller, innovative startups is low because of the extent to which the incumbents operate at such massive scale and possess well-protected access to markets.

Last week, the global digital behemoth that is Facebook announced that they’ll be rolling out the OpenCellular system worldwide. OpenCellular is said to be an inexpensive, weather-resistant and fully customisable platform that will be able to serve as a wireless access point for connecting devices using 2G, LTE or even Wi-Fi.

While this move by Facebook is no doubt just a footnote in the company’s playbook for achieving complete digital dominance, one wonders if this could signal the beginning of the end for the likes of Kenya’s BRCK— a home-grown system designed to do exactly what OpenCellular promises to do, perhaps less reliably.

One wonders if there is any chance that a minnow like BRCK can stand up to the fire and might of a beast like Facebook? It seems unlikely that BRCK has captured enough of the affordable WiFi deployment market to develop a legitimate first-mover advantage, and it’s equally unlikely that anyone over at Facebook is losing any sleep worrying about their plans being disrupted by smaller players.

Also in this week’s show, we share a snippet from a conversation I had with Gareth Cliff— the controversial South African Radio DJ, Idols South Africa judge, and Co-founder & President of Africa’s largest podcast producer, CliffCentral.com. Listen in to hear Gareth’s candid take on why he quit one of South Africa’s most lucrative radio gigs to found a platform that now boasts over 40 podcast titles and garners over 140,000 downloads per week.

African Spirit, American Spin

The USA celebrates its Independence this week, and in honour of the fact that our biggest audience outside of Africa is based in the USA, we’ve given this week’s African Tech Round-up episode a decidedly American spin.

Playing guest-host in this instalment is very good friend of the show, aka “The American Homie”, Trevor Wolfe— Co-founder and CEO of Delvv.io.

Trevor is fresh off a plane from Europe and the States where he’s successfully closed a round of funding for his crowdsourced research startup. In addition to factoring in on the week’s headlines, Trevor shares some interesting insights on what it takes to launch and operate a tech startup on the continent, while maintaining a global outlook. But that’s not all, folks…

This week’s show also features two US-based personalities who are extremely active on Africa’s tech scene— namely, Maya Horgan Famodu, Founder and CEO of Ingressive, and Toro Orero, Co-founder and Managing Partner, at DraperDarkFlow.

Listen in to hear Maya share some of what she’s observed while leading high profile investor tours to Africa, and explaining what operating in Silicon Valley is like on the day-to-day.

Then tune in to listen to Toro share what he and Tim Draper look for in startups they hope to invest in, as well as dish on the pros and cons of running an Africa-focussed VC firm that’s headquartered in Silicon Valley.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.