Riding the Wave of Mobile Money in Africa

Kenya practically invented it all and now it is universal.  So i am a little surprised that large parts of Africa remains so unbanked.  At least they do mostly have cell phone comms.

That is actually good enough as you can react directly to all markets and simply plan delivery.  Understand that the cell phone sharing of knowhow has made every farmer a follower of best practise everywhere.  That matters.

As usual the political types are dragging their feet for advantage and large capital is necesaary, but that should come from the banks.

Recall banks make their money lending out their free capital several times and charging for it and not just interest.  they need a massive deposite base in order to do this.  That is why i have full electronic access with zero fees.  This needs to be standard world wide.

Riding the Wave of Mobile Money in Africa

Illustration: (Alex Citrin-Safadi)

Around 350 million adults are still unbanked in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank. Mobile money is expected to help bridge this gap by enabling people to send and receive funds through their phones.

Mobile money exploded in East Africa through the launch of M-Pesa, a phone-based money transfer service founded in Kenya fifteen years ago.

Despite policy and funding challenges, markets in West Africa such as Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire now seem poised to experience their own boom through wider mobile money adoption.

In tomorrow’s Quartz Africa Member Brief, we look at fintech startups providing services to the unbanked and examine the region that could be the next digital money giant in Africa.

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Here’s the cheat sheet:

💡 The Opportunity: Mobile money has been growing in double digits every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. West African Francophone populations account for around 22% of the total number of active mobile money accounts in Africa.

🤔 The Challenge: The authorities of most countries are still wary of granting licenses to startups in the fintech sector and a huge volume of capital is needed to float such companies.

🗺️ The Roadmap: New contenders need to come up with products backed by simple technology, which can be easily adopted by users as well as meet their aspirations.

💰 The Stakeholders: Mobile money companies, users, legislators, governments.