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.

Vodacom Admits That M-Pesa Roll-out In South Africa Flopped (feat. Dominique Collett)

So, Vodacom is finally pulling the plug on their disastrous six-year attempt to roll out M-Pesa in South Africa. (The service will be shut down on June 30th 2016.)

Funny thing is, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub has blamed his company’s diabolical failure to meet their target of enlisting at least 10 million active users on South Africa’s relatively well-established banking industry. (By the end of 2015 they had only managed to onboard a paltry 76,000 active users.)

However, Joosub’s assertion does not sit well with our guest on this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up— the brilliant and insightful, Dominique Collett.

Dominique knows a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t in terms of mobile money innovation on the continent. Following a successful exit at the incredibly successful fintech startup she co-founded– Tyme (acquired by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia for a rumoured ±USD30 million), Dominique has gone on to become a financial services investor and innovation architect who is now a Senior Investment Executive at Rand Merchant Insurance Holdings (RMI), as well as the Head of Alpha Code, RMI’s nippy financial services incubator/accelerator.

Listen in to this week’s discussion to hear Tefo Mohapi, Dominique and I ponder what lies ahead for Africa’s mobile money scene.

Netflix & Buffering (featuring Emeka Okoye and Aaron Fu)

The team at the  African Tech Round-up is just loving this trend of brilliant Africans crashing our podcast recordings. The last time that happened we had a total blast with Rebecca Enonchong, Mark Kaigwa and Thebe Ikalafeng. In case you missed it, check out that episode here.

This week, Nigerian software engineering heavyweight, Emeka Okoye, literally walked into the room as Tefo Mohapi and I were chatting about about how Africa seemed to be responding to Netflix’s surprise roll-out of its service to pretty much every corner of the planet. Be sure to listen in to hear him share his thoughts on the impact (or lack thereof) that Neflix’s entry into the Nigerian video-on-demand market is likely to have.

Then, in place of our regular discussion segment this week, we’ll be sharing an interesting chat I had with Aaron Fu, Managing Partner (Africa) at NEST— recorded when we hung out with him during his first proper visit to Johannesburg recently. We talked about everything from what he’s personally looking forward to in 2016 to what strikes his fancy in his professional capacity as the head of a leading VC firm on the continent.

Safaricom Becomes The Latest Mobile Service Provider To Be Sued

I’m still buzzing from the great time we had at The Annual Round-up 2015, that Tefo Mohapi and I hosted at The Wanderers Club in Johannesburg last week.

Many thanks to those of you who made it out on Thursday morning, and a big thank you to our incredibly generous and insightful guest panelists and speakers. Also, big up to our event partners, Opera Africa, Stuff magazine, and iAfrikan.com.

It was a chilled morning of intelligent, retrospective conversations – which took stock of the state of Africa’s tech scene. The programme featured three keynote talks and three lively interactive panel discussions covering Enterprise, Startups and, Gadgets & Apps.

Seriously, though, the good news is that we’ll be sharing the conversations we had at the Annual Round-up in place of the African Tech Round-up podcast starting on Monday, December 14th, 2015 — to hold you down till the show returns in mid-January 2016. There’ll also be plenty of cool extras we’ll be sharing exclusively on our Soundcloud account and via Facebook, Twitterand Instagram, so do follow us, do.

In the meantime, enjoy Episode 33 of the African Tech Round-up. Listen in to find out why two Kenyan mobile money service providers are suing Safaricom. This is definitely on trend. The last quarter of 2015 is proving to be quite trying time for Africa’s mobile operators.

Does Africa Need More Cheap Smartphones?

For many recently married couples, the diamond engagement ring is one of their biggest assets— albeit an emotional asset, symbolising love and lifelong commitment. In financial terms it isn’t an asset at all, considering the fact that it loses at least 50% of it’s retail value the moment you leave the jewellery store. Rough, isn’t it?

And yet still we feel compelled to buy diamonds for our loved ones, and continue to fuel a global billion-dollar industry. One has to admire the ingenious marketing strategy drafted and executed by the N.W. Ayer ad agency in the early 1900s for their client, De Beers, which resulted in the world attaching value to a commodity that’s not nearly as rare (or as necessary) as we were led to believe.

In this week’s African Tech Round-up, Tefo Mohapi and I discuss the the implications of low-cost smartphone penetration on the continent. The increase in internet use via mobile devices has undoubtedly delivered certain advantages. But when you consider how issues like the prevalence of preventable diseases, hunger and limited access to basic education continue to be a daily reality faced by many Africans, the importance of whether or not you have a smartphone might be in question.

So, just how important and necessary is this so-called “mass exodus” from feature phones to smartphones, and could the Android-brigade (led by Google and its mobile device manufacturing homies) be stimulating the demand for the smartphone the way De Beers did for diamonds near the turn of the century?

Also in this week’s episode, all the biggest digital, tech and innovation news from across Africa:

• Vodacom South Africa rolls out voice-over-WiFi calling,
• The Nigerian Communications Commission poised to deactivate 10.7 million mobile lines over various networks,
• Kenyan banks are finally getting in on the mobile money craze in a big way,
• Uber Kenya sees their user numbers triple following the introduction of Uber Cash,
• The embattled Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa is reeling following a train crash,
• Thousands of South Africans reportedly implicated in the Ashley Madison data dump, and
• Google rolls out its Android One programme is Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco.

Uber Kenya: Everyone’s (Not So Favourite) Driver

Uber’s Roman-style campaign to achieve utter and complete worldwide domination has encountered a teeny tiny setback in Kenya. Much to the surprise of many, the company is yet to enjoy the runaway success it has become accustomed to.

In last week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up we reported Uber Kenya’s plans to run a limited experiment to allow its Kenyan customers to pay for trips using cash and M-Pesa. This followed claims made by the company that the slow adoption of their service in Kenya was due to the fact that many Kenyans are unbanked and do not possess credit and debit cards.

In this week’s show, my guest co-host, Vouchercloud South Africa MD, Lyndon Munetsi and I discuss the challenges that Uber might be facing in rolling out its hugely successful business model in Kenya– especially given the company’s well-documented zero-quibbles approach to taking on new territories. In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether their latest attempts to woo Kenyan users will prove to be effective.

Also, be sure to stay up to date with all the week’s biggest news from across the African continent:

• Find out why African seed fund and accelerator 88mph is taking a break from investing in African startups,
• Get details on how tech education innovators Andela and WeThinkCode_ are poised to disrupt tech talent development on the continent,
• Learn why Ad Dynamo is giving up its reputable contextual ad network business to concentrate on servicing Twitter,
• Get the low-low on the launch of a new Kenyan laptop brand called Taifa, and 
• Discover which major African capital city is set to get free movies and calls via WiFi.