Kenya has transformed itself from a leading tourist destination to an innovation hub resulting in an entrepreneurial tech revolution and earning the name “Silicon Savannah”. I hosted leading photographer, Lou Jones in Kenya to capture incredible images that depict this transition as part of the panAFRICAproject. The project’s mission is to create a contemporary, visual …
On the 1st of March, South Africa based cryptocurrency exchange, VALR announced their $50M series B raise at a $240M valuation led by Pantera Capital. On that same day, Africa’s leading mobile operator MTN announced their purchase of 144 plots of virtual land in Africarare – the first African virtual reality metaverse featuring digital land. …
On 12th January 2022, Warner Music Group (WMG) announced their majority acquisition of Africori – the first major acquisition of the year in the entertainment industry. Momentum has been building toward this as WMG first invested in Africori in April 2020 at the height of the pandemic, followed in December 2020, with Africori signing a …
The global pandemic has had the unintended consequence of speeding up Africa’s digital economy. The transition to digital services and the adoption of transformative mobile technologies have been rapid in the last two years with e-commerce being the biggest beneficiary. This digital transformation has been driven by home grown solutions – some of which are …
When I first coined the KINGS (Kenya, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa) term in September 2013, Cote d’Ivoire also known as Ivory Coast was a small “i” in the KiNGS. The country was just emerging from a tumultuous civil unrest that followed a disputed election in 2010 that ousted then incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo …
Mergers and acquisitions worth US$52B were completed in South Africa during the first half of 2021, with the value of deals growing by 958% from 2020 with the tech sector in the lead according to Refinitiv Data that provides financial markets and infrastructure data. According to Digest Africa, the value of mergers and acquisitions in …
Nairobi is the leading Fintech ecosystem city in Africa according to the 2021 Global Fintech Rankings published on 8th July 2021 in which it jumped 26 places to the 37th position globally beating both Lagos and Accra. Kenya’s President, His Excellency Uhuru Kenyatta stated at a UK summit that “Nairobi International Financial Centre (NIFC) has …
Three leading Ghanaian fintechs; Hubtel, ExpressPay and IT Consortium joined forces to build Ghana government’s portal https://www.ghana.gov.gh – a digital services and payment platform for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Startups and citizens to access government services at the click of a button. Despite being competitors, these tech ventures saw the need to collaborate as a …
Fintechs, SMEs and Digitization in Africa – Ghana leads the charge Read More »
Africa’s leading Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), MTN, Vodacom and Safaricom, have recently made bold plans to venture into the increasingly dynamic world of fintech. On 23rd June 2021, Safaricom launched its super app, which creates an ecosystem of mini apps from the network operator as well as third party apps that feed off the super …
I ended my May 2021 essay with the hypothesis “…leading fintechs might turn around and start acquiring the banks” and, sure enough, on the 12th of May 2021, the Competition Authority of Kenya in a gazette notice approved the acquisition of 84.89% stake in Century Microfinance Bank by Branch International Limited – a leading global …