As the production of Gold in West Africa grows, production is expected to reach approximately 9 moz by 2024, so says Turkish firm Hacıoğlu Gold Mining as it announced that it will start field research in addition to gold collection activities in the region.
After the strong growth in 2019, although the pandemic had a significant impact mainly in Q2 of 2020, gold mining activities in West Africa continue unabated. Gold mining activities, which are developing under the leadership of Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali, which are among the leading markets of the continent, are increasing day by day. According to research data, gold production in West Africa’s three leading markets is expected to reach 8.4 million ounces (moz) in 2024.
Hacıoğlu Gold Mining CEO Yasin Hacıoğlu
Commenting on the gold mining market in the region, Hacıoğlu Gold Mining CEO Yasin Hacıoğlu said, “West Africa is one of the most important regions with strong gold mining activities. Keeping this in mind, we as a company that has increased its capital to more than TL 2.4 billion in Turkey, carry out gold mining activities in many continents, especially in Africa.”
“Africa is one of the most important markets in gold mining”
Stating that they have achieved significant success in Africa since 2011, “As Hacıoğlu Gold Mining, we were entitled to receive the mining award for Africa within the scope of an international award given in 2018. Our work in Africa, one of the world’s most important markets for gold mining, continues at full speed. Finally, we initiated gold collection in West Africa,” Yasin Hacıoğlu said.
Saying that they aim to become a world brand, while enhancing activities in the gold sector day by day, Yasin Hacıoğlu said, “We aim to export 1 ton of gold from West Africa to Turkey by 2023 within our gold collection operations. We believe that other companies will be born that will represent our country in global markets by catching a successful kick-off in the mining sector, which is on the rise in Turkey.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
One of South Africa’s leading financial powerhouse, FNB has announced that it has partnered with AURA, a safety marketplace platform that uses smart auto-dispatch technology, to add GuardMe to its banking app. FNB banking customers can now access instant emergency response services, anywhere, anytime via the FNB banking app.
Powered by South Africa’s leading security and medical response marketplace, AURA, the in-app panic button, GuardMe, is available to all FNB customers who register for the service.
AURA Founder and CEO Warren Myers
This technology solution allows FNB customers to immediately request rapid mobile emergency responses in the event of an emergency or the threat of a crime such as theft or hijacking. As soon as the panic button is activated, the AURA-powered platform auto-dispatches the closest armed response vehicle to the customer’s location throughout South Africa.
AURA was selected to roll out the service to FNB customers following a successful pilot project as a staff benefit. Founder and CEO Warren Myers says AURA’s technology will ensure FNB customers get the fastest response to an emergency.
The FNB GuardMe emergency button instantly connects users to AURA’s nationwide network of thousands of armed responders and dispatches the closest vehicle to a distress call,” Myers says.
“What this means is that AURA has distributed thousands of devices which are embedded into the emergency responder’s vehicles. This eliminates the requirements for human operators to find and dispatch a response vehicle to their location. Responders are dispatched and navigated to a customer’s location in an ‘Uberised’ fashion,” Myers explains.
“Currently +-95% of South Africans cannot access effective emergency services. Millions of people suffer crime-related traumas every day and are unable to get the help they need. GuardMe enables anyone with a connected device to access private security wherever they are. In short, we democratise access to emergency services,” he says.
“The safety and security of our customers remains a priority and we are delighted to partner with like-minded organisations that can enable our customers to protect themselves by using the power of our integrated platform,” CEO of FNB eBucks, Johan Moolman, says, commenting on the successful collaboration.
FNB and RMB Private Bank customers can register to gain access to 250 armed-response service providers, 2 500 armed-response vehicles, and over 5 000 armed-response personnel via the FNB or RMB Private Bank App. FNB and RMB customers can also sign-up friends and family that don’t bank with FNB/RMB. Customers can use the FNB or RMB Private Bank App to activate a distress panic button in an emergency without logging in.
This service is free for the first three months and thereafter will cost R 19.90 ($1.36) per month per user. Customers can sign up additional family members and friends as they choose. Additionally, customers can earn up to 100% of their subscription fees back in eBucks (limited to 6 members per month).
Furthermore, customers can activate this service by selecting the “GuardMe” icon via eBucks on the FNB or RMB Private Bank App.
AURA plans to enhance its service offering with a physical button, so users can activate the service via the app and a button and reduce its response times from an average of five minutes to two or three minutes.
“AURA’s technology aims to make being a criminal extremely difficult. In the very near future, predicting crime will become a reality. By using big data sets, we plan to start proactively moving the response network to deter crime and make impactful arrests,” notes Myers.
FNB customers can register for the GuardMe service via their FNB banking app and will receive the first three months free of charge, after which a nominal monthly fee of R19.00 ($1.30) will apply.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Nigerian airlines have warned that their survival may be at risk if the Nigerian government fails to aid them. Airlines in Nigeria are contending with multiple problems, including high fuel prices and exchange rate fluctuations, forcing them to raise airfares to offset increased operating costs.
Nigerian domestic aviation in trouble
The Nigerian domestic aviation industry could be in serious jeopardy should current trends continue. Industry insiders have warned that rising fuel prices and a lack of responsible government oversight could lead to many Nigerian carriers going defunct.
Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, Chairman of United Nigeria Airlines
Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, Chairman of United Nigeria Airlines, said, “The aviation industry will collapse. The airline business is the live wire of the entire aviation value chain. If airlines don’t fly or the airlines are in comatose, NAMA (Nigerian Airspace Management Agency), NCAA (Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority) and FAAN (Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria) will not get the required revenue to run their operations.”
On top of dealing with COVID-related problems, Nigerian carriers have witnessed a steep rise in the price of aviation fuel. Prices have more than doubled in the space of a year, shooting up from N180 ($0.43) per liter in February 2021 to N400 ($0.96) today.
Fluctuating exchange rates
Volatile exchange rates have hit the aviation industry hard as airlines and aviation authorities rely heavily on the US Dollar. The Nigerian Naira hit record-lows at the turn of the year and has progressively weakened
every year since 2012.
Captain Shehu Usman Iyal, former Special Adviser to the President on Aviation, said, “There is not a single bolt that you put in an airplane that you manufacture in Nigeria; you will have to buy abroad in dollars. Even the charges being paid to the government have to be a bit high because the government also buys airport equipment using the dollar.”
Industry professionals have called upon the government to assist the aviation industry, which contributes around 4% of Nigeria’s GDP.
Airfares on the rise
Domestic fares have been rising as Nigerian airlines clamber to make up for their high operating costs. In November 2021, fares were up by 20-40 % compared to the previous month on many major domestic routes. Airlines fear that raising their fares even more will discourage customers from flying.
Dr. Okonkwo added,”From the ticket, salaries paid to staff have increased, costs have increased but tickets have not increased that much compared to the cost of operations. Operators are looking for solutions to many of these things. We can’t talk about safety without looking at rising costs.”
Nigerian startups haven’t had the desired effect on airfares.
Steeper prices are a reality despite several new entrants, such as Ibom Air and Green Africa Airline, to the domestic aviation scene in recent years. Fares were expected to drop with more competition but this hasn’t happened.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Uganda’s Numida knew nothing would ever stop it from implementing its business model. It had secured partnership deals with microfinance institutions in the East African country, and was supplying data on a regular basis about small and medium scale businesses desiring to obtain credit from the institutions. At first, it was a smooth sail, but not until nine months into the deals. The microfinance institutions froze their communication channels with Numida, placing them incommunicado for countless days. Piles of new loan applications and data points were mounting, and Numida’s life was hanging on a cliff.
The issue was simple: there was no confidence that the loan applicants could pay back. Their books had all the facts to support that, against whatever data Numida was throwing about. The businesses simply lacked sufficient collateral and carried with them huge credit risks. As a result, Numida had to take the most significant detour since its inception: becoming a microfinance bank itself.
“…we thought among ourselves that if our mission is to unlock access to resources that these mom and pop shops need in order to grow their businesses, we’re not going to do that by partnering with these traditional MFIs; we had to do that ourselves,” said Mina Shalid, Numida’s co-founder.
After multiple revisions, the firm went live in October 2019, with the CEO claiming that startup’s lending had increased by 6x. To date, it has disbursed about $250,000 a month of unsecured credit to 3,000 micro and small enterprises in Uganda, totaling more than $2 million (the CEO explained that this is due to outstanding collections, repayment rates, and customer retention.)
From Numida to Nigerian ride-hailing startup MAX, pivot is usually the most critical point in a startup’s history, because it could as well signal the very end of the startup’s entire journey.
Before altering the business line, the startup had been into transport operation in Rwanda since 2014, operating a commercial motorcycle business called SafeMotos.
The pivot — or change in the company’s business model — in September of 2019 meant that it became a taxi-moto hailing company stretching operations to Kinshasa instead of a bike-hailing platform.
The result of this move was completing 500,000 trips in Kigali, even when industry giants such as Uber were already on ground.
In simple and clearer terms, CanGo changed its business strategy to meet the ends — leaving the rags behind and “bootstrapping with a brand new pivot”, but the results were not favorable.
We dig deeper below, identifying and analyzing some of the most successful pivots in the African startup ecosystem, as well as the lessons learned from them.
Pivot By African Startups Is In Most Cases Inspired By Learnings From Existing Products
Unlike in most cases where changes in business models were forced by government policies or certain unforeseeable events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, most pivots by African startups stemmed out of natural learnings by startup teams.
This is central to the pivot experienced by Ugandan asset financing startup Asaak, which recently closed a $30 million pre-Series A loan and equity capital from Resolute Ventures (USA), Social Capital (California, USA), HOF Capital (New York, USA), Founders Factory Africa (South Africa), End Poverty Make Trillions (California, USA) , Decentralized VC, and a number of angel investors.
Asaak’s original lending model focused mostly on farmers and SMEs. However, the firm eventually pivoted its focus to motorbike finance in 2019.
The company’s co-founder and chief business officer Dylan Terrill said by financing these types of assets, Asaak is not just creating a pathway to vehicle ownership, which is good in itself, but also creating a stable source of income because of the reliance of drivers throughout the countries that the firm is in.
Since the pivot in 2019, Asaak has financed the acquisition of 5,000 motorcycles and has begun supplying the operators with smartphones and fuel funding. This is perhaps what convinced the investors more to throw their weights behind the six-year-old firm.
However, sometimes the learnings may take place in an organized, learning environment. This is the case with Nigerian e-pharmacy DrugStoc, which pivoted immediately a year after its incubation at Stanford’s Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies.
Prior to that, DrugStoc’s business model was built only around the concept of a tech-based platform that connects manufacturers and distributors. The pivot meant that DrugStoc had to be a distributor itself.
“I think we came out of Stanford with a better understanding of business modeling and value chains than we understood it as a pilot phase,” said co-founder Adham Yehiaon the incubation program.
“We decided we need to get a distribution license, and to do this the pharmaceutical way. And to do this the proper way, we needed to buy directly from the manufacturers and create the value chains internally,” he said.
The pivot into building an independent distribution network gave DrugStoc an edge. Barely five years after the pivot, DrugStoc connects 400 manufacturers with 3,200 doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. The platform’s monthly sales have also increased by over 1,500 percent in the last three years.
The team at DrugStoc. Image credits: DrugStoc
African Startup Pivots Almost Always Follow Funding
The general rule appears to be that pivots usually precede funding, and must be supported by traction, but in order to shore up the uncertainties associated with pivots, some startups in Africa have preferred major product pivots to immediately follow funding rounds.
Perhaps this is why it is still contentious that startups such as CanGo could not have failed if its pivot had come after funding. CanGo, for instance, pivoted into a taxi-moto hailing company, stretching operations to Kinshasa instead of its original bike-hailing model.
The startup raised $1.1 million to support its delivery business from inception in 2015 up until it shut down in 2019.
Therefore, its sudden transition into ride-hailing in an uncertain environment like the Central African markets, where the likes of Uber were already on ground, further put a major strain on the company’s resources.
Barrett Nash, CanGo’s co-founder, admitted this in his farewell address, stating that “tectonics in venture capital investing change quickly.” “While investor enthusiasm and interest has been high, it has not translated to checks being written,’’ he said.
One good example of this nature of pivot is that of Egypt’s food ordering platform Elmenus. The startup changed gears from food discovery to online food ordering and delivery services after it raised a $1.5 million Series A round led by Algebra Ventures in 2017.
However, it must be noted that this is more prevalent with startups looking at making vertical integrations within the same industry. This explains why it was relatively easier for Elmenus and Uganda’s gnuGrid to effect such pivots.
gnuGrid’s pivot was inspired by insights its gleaned from its solar energy business. The gnuGrid solar energy hardware is bundled with digital payments, predictive analytics, and so it was reasonable that the company had to make a seamless switch into a licensed credit reference bureau on the back of its $612,000 seed round.
In most cases, investors may, however, be wary of investing in startups that have not gained considerable traction from their pivots. This is especially true if the startup is moving entirely into a new industry. When this happens, the pivots must almost always be backed by investors, because their funds may be exposed to too many risks. A good example of this is Nigeria’s Crowdyvest which moved away from its original model of allowing users to sponsor high-impact opportunities with high yields to a digital savings model. The change in the business model followed a new investment and support by the investors for the startup to pivot.
Zambian fintech startup Zazu’s pivot in 2017 also followed a similar pattern. Before raising its last round of US$1.4 million, the startup made sure it altered its business model, entirely from that of an agritech firmallowing Zambian farmers with extra produce to connect with new markets, to that of a digital banking platform. Following the alteration in the business model, the startup’s fintech platform was used by over 1.1 million people prior to the investment.
More Pivots Have Happened Within Than Outside The Same Industry
It is usually very common for startups in Africa to pivot within the same industry than to move 360 degrees out of the industry.
In most cases, startups have often relied on pivots to expand the categories of product offerings available to them, such as South Africa’s Carry1st, which pivoted from being a game studio to a full-stack game publishing, distribution, marketing, and operations solution; as well as Stockup, which moved from an online platform for the purchase and delivery of beverages to an on-demand delivery solution in order to expand the categories of its product offering beyond just alcohol.
The table below shows that a majority of changes in the business models of African startups have happened within the same industries.
S/N
Startup
Year Founded
Sector
Base Country of Operations
Year of Pivot
Nature of Pivot
Reasons for Pivot
How Brand Was Managed After Pivot
1
Asaak
2016
Asset Financing
Uganda
2019
From lending to farmers and SMEs to financing motorbikes
Revenue from motorbikes riders more stable.
–
2
MVX Nigeria
2019
Shipping
Nigeria
2020
From digital vessel marketplace to digital freight booking, fintech.
Uncertainty in oil price and COVID-19 pandemic.
Changed name from MVXchange to MVXtransit
3
Elmenus
2011
Food & Delivery
Egypt
2018
From food discovery to online food ordering and delivery services.
Pivot followed after a $1.5 million Series A led by Algebra Venturesin 2017. Pivot was necessary to expand the company’s market size.
4
WaystoCap
2017
Marketplace
Morocco
2020
From cross-border marketplace to local marketplaces in Morocco, Ivory Coast, and Togo focused on retailers
WaystoCap noted that pure cross-border marketplace was not best for servicing SMEs needs in Africa, because it created than eliminated more middlemen.
5
mPedigree
2007
Anti-counter-feiting
Ghana
2013
From certification service for organically grown fruits and vegetables from Africa to an anti-counterfeit product verification service.
Previous products relied on in-kind investments and so could not generate revenue.
Rebranded from Wospro to mPedigree following the pivot.
6
mPharma
2013
Healthcare supply chain
Ghana
2019
From building software solutions for healthcare to a more comprehensive coverage of the entire African healthcare through QualityRx franchise, Bloom, etc.
To expand market opportunities.
Retained mPharma brand, but created product suites under the brand.
7
Diool
2015
Fintech
Cameroon
2017
From mobile recharge retailer to payments solutions for customers and their suppliers.
Pivot followed discovery that financial services access was the pain point of its target users in Cameroon
8
Zeew
2017
software-as-a-service (SaaS)
Egypt
2020
From delivery of goods and foods to a software supplier in the food and beverage (F&B) market.
Necessitated by the COVID-10 pandemic.
9
MAX
2015
Mobility
Nigeria
2019
From bike-hailing to logistics.
Government ban on bike-hailing in Lagos, Nigeria.
Retained name.
10
Traindemy
2018
Edtech
Nigeria
2019
From consulting to a digital platform for vocational skills.
Pivoted after taking part in the Injini ed-tech accelerator in Cape Town, SA.
11
MarketForce
2018
Retail-tech
Kenya
2018
From software company to retail-tech, although both are still running simultaneously
The company ‘s CEOTesh Mbaabu thinks there are more opportunities with its retail-tech model.
13
Koko Networks
2013
FMCG
Kenya
2022
From a biofuel supplier to selling FMCG products through a new tech platform.
To leverage its existing penetration of low income consumers in Kenya.
Pivoted under a new name Koko Club.
14
BitSika
2019
Blockchain/Cryptocurrency
Ghana
2019
From donation crowdfunding platform to cross-border crypto remittance
Necessitated by the need to tap into the new crypto industry.
Retained name.
15
Rensource
2016
Solar Energy
Nigeria
–
From focus on residential buildings to larger systems that power urban centers
Need to expand market
Retained name
16
Zazu
2015
Fintech
Zambia
2017
From agritech allowing farmers with extra produce to connect with new markets to digital banking
CEO Perseus Mlambo said Zazu was hired by a client to move money for them on a regular basis, and while researching the banking industry, they developed Zazu Pay, a better offering.
Name altered to Zazu Pay
17
SAMA
2015
Artificial Intelligence
Kenya
2016
From non-profit to profit
Demonstrated need to generate revenue
Name retained
18
Yellow Card
2016
Blockchain/Cryptocurrency
Nigeria
2019
From the original bitcoin gift card model to a crypto-based agency banking firm
Founders were inspired by a man they at a Wells Fargo who was trying to send $200 dollars to his family in Nigeria
Name retained
19
PAPS
2016
Logistics
Senegal
–
From a consumer-to-consumer logistics model to a business-to-business mode
The customer to customer model made it difficult to accurately estimate the delivery flows in the space.
Name retained
20
Gozem
2018
Mobility
Togo
2021
Moved vertically from core mobility to e-commerce, fintech and logistics
Compelled by the COVID-19 to alter its business model
Name retained.
21
DrugStoc
2015
E-pharmacy
Nigeria
2017
From a tech-based platform that connects manufacturers and distributors to becoming a distributor itself.
Pivot came after a year of incubation at Stanford’s Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies.
Name retained.
21
Frain Technologies
2021
Saas
Nigeria
2021
From offering APIs to businesses to offering webhooks infrastructure to developers
API business lacked economic feasibility. The team discovered that webhooks were a common issue among startups looking to establish APIs.
Launched a flagship product “Convoy” in response to the new business model.
22
Carry1st
2018
Gaming
South Africa
–
From game studio to a full-stack game publishing, distribution, marketing, and operations solution.
Need to expand market opportunities
–
23
SeamlessHR
2018
Recruitment
Nigeria
–
SeamlessHR was founded after the team launched numerous prototypes of Insidify, a job aggregator and company review site.
Insidify, according to the founder, was not profitable and did not have the flexibility to scale across Africa.
Name changed from Insidify to SeamlessHR
24
ANKA
2016
Ecommerce
Cote d’Ivoire
2021
Moved vertically from a marketplace for Africa-based and -inspired fashion, clothes, accessories, arts, and crafts to SaaS mobile infrastructure for monitoring sales and inventory, as well as making payments.
The founders discovered that merchants on the Afrikrea platform were also active on other platforms, including websites and social media. Hence it was only natural for them to create another platform, ANKA.
Changed name from Afrikrea to ANKA
25
Payourse
2019
Blockchain/cryptocurrency
Nigeria
2021
From a basic platform that collect wallet addresses and then generate shareable link to wallets, remittances, and liquidity
Arose from the learning that the company while creating infrastructures for shareable links, has also created infrastructures powerful and flexible enough for other businesses to incorporate, build, and prosper on.
All products consolidated under a parent company Payourse.
26
Lamma
2020
Ecommerce
Tunisia
2021
From ridesharing to ecommerce & logistics
Pivot after taking part in the Flat6Labs Tunis accelerator programme.
27
gnuGrid
2019
Solar Energy
Uganda
2021
From using AI-optimised sensors to monitor solar systems and collect data on power usageto a licensed credit reference bureau
Pivot came from insights gleaned from its solar business. gnuGrid’s hardware is bundled with digital payments, predictive analytics, customer profiling and data management, among others, to help solar companies operate more efficiently at lower cost.
Re-registered as gnuGrid CRB Limited
28
Numida
2017
Fintech
Uganda
2019
From enabling traditional MFIs to provide unsecured credit to semi-formal businesses to lending to micro and small businesses directly.
Although Numida’s database was valued by microfinance banks, Numida’s customers were turned down due to a lack of collateral. As a result, Numida stopped partnering with traditional MFIs and began doing it on its own.
–
29
Crowdyvest
2019
Wealth management
Nigeria
2021
From allowing users to sponsor high-impact opportunities with high yields to a digital savings model
Investors desired the company to become a digital savings company
–
30
Sabi
2020
B2B retail
Nigeria
2020
Spawned out of Rensource
Rensource was compelled to set up Sabi at the height of the COVID-19
–
31
Wallettec
2013
Sports betting
South Africa
2020
From a mobile money integration company to sports betting
The idea to pivot came from working with its gaming clients and local partners within each country, for whom they develop custom tools and payment channels.
32
Fastvan
2015
SaaS
South Africa
2018
From an e-courier platform targeted at individual consumers to an end-to-end, on-demand SaaS platform for logistics firms.
Based on its learning from learning a B2C logistics business
–
33
Stockup
2013
Ecommerce
South Africa
2017
From online purchase and delivery of beverages to on-demand delivery
To expand the categories of product offering beyond just alcohol.
–
34
The Student Hub
2015
E-learning
South Africa
2016
From a platform for the buying, selling, and renting textbooks to e-learning.
The Student Hub was revenue-making through its textbooks division, but decided to start afresh with e-learning.
Launched a new product, ERAOnline following pivot.
35
Bazar
2015
Retail Management
Nigeria
2016
From an online virtual marketplace to a provider of cloud-based retail management and PoS software for small businesses
Traction and feedback from Bazar’s customers. As a marketplace, Bazar struggled to compete with the likes of Jumia Marketplace and Konga Seller HQ.
–
36
Beam
2014
Fintech
Ghana
2015
From facilitating remittances via bitcoin to allowing Ghanaians abroad to pay for gifts and bill payments back home to
The assumption by Beam that its undercutting other remittance services would lead to large uptake of bitcoin across Africa forcing co-founders to scrap the bitcoin as a means of payment.
–
37
Safeboda
2017
Ride-hailing
Uganda
2022
Moved into fintech from ride-hailing
To expand market horizons
Operating new arm under the name Guinness Tech Uganda Limited
38
Swoove
2016
Logistics
Ghana
2021
From website building to delivery
After a year of working on the website building platform, the team realised that a major problem for the startup’s customers was delivery — it was expensive and not easily accessible, making the platform incredibly difficult to grow, the CEO Kwaku Tabiri said.
Name retained
39
Gokada
2017
Ride-hailing
Nigeria
2019
From ride-hailing to logistics and delivery
Following the ban on commercial motorcycles in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital
40
Gloo
2012
E-commerce grocery services
Nigeria
2017
From e-commerce grocery services to B2B e-procurement that supplies large and medium corporates everything from desks to toilet papers
Necessitated by the economic downturn at the time. Then, an e-procurement request by Unilever, an old client of Gloo cemented the pivoting idea in 2017.
Changed brand name to Gloopro.
41
RideLink
2017
Transport and logistics
Uganda
2018
From business-to-customer (B2C), pivoted to business-to-business (B2B)
According to CEO Daniel Mukisa,the B2C customer acquisition costs were “quite high”. This, he explained, was further compounded by the fact that the RideLink had “a lot of competition” from already established ride-hailing platforms.
–
How African Startups Handle Brand Configuration After Pivots
In most cases, startups after pivots, have had to introduce new product suites to reflect the changes.
Immediately after pivot, Nigeria’s Crowdyvest, for example, introduced new products such as Flex Savings, Vault Savings, Pace Savings, Flex Dollar Savings. In majority of the cases, startups relaunch under different names.
However, where the new industry the startup is exploring requires a new operational license, the startup may bear a different name entirely. This is the case with Ugandan ride-hailing startup Safeboda which recently acquired a fintech license under a new name Guinness Tech Uganda Limited.
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning writer
Pressure from the global COVID pandemic has forced businesses to embrace bold changes. Currently, digital transformation has a significant impact on organisations. A recent forecast shows the digital transformation market will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 19.1% by 2026.
“Data is the backbone of digital transformation. As organisations manage larger and larger data sets, the chances of security breaches and losses increase. However, digital transformation will continue as the benefits outweigh the risks,” says Business Analyst at LAWtrust, Riaan de Villiers.
According to research conducted by the Finances Online Reviews for Business Research Centre, 27% of the companies surveyed felt that implementing digital transformation initiatives is a matter of survival in their respective industries.
Growing inclination to digital transformation technologies could also mean a rise in cybersecurity concerns. Therefore, businesses should adapt to these emerging technological trends while taking safety measures.
Here are five emerging tech trends businesses should watch for in 2022
Cybersecurity
The pandemic has been a boon for cybercriminals. The rapid adoption of technology in every area of our lives has made us vulnerable on more than one front: phishers, hackers, scammers, and extortionists are all lurking about, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.
Ransomware attacks are the number one threat for many organisations. According to PwC, 61% of tech executives predict an increase in these attacks in 2022. Furthermore, in the first quarter of 2021alone, ransomware attacks tripled. As a result, cybersecurity is now more important than ever.
Companies who invest in cybersecurity tools and strategies will not only save money that can be utilised for other business projects, but they will also avoid paying out large sums of money in retaliation after an assault.
Digital Signing
Modern businesses are embracing new technology systems that allow them to decentralise operations. Digital signatures are essential to that work-from-anywhere toolbox. According to DocuSign’s 2021 research, 95% of organisations currently use or plan to adopt digital signatures. Two-thirds have adopted this technology during the pandemic.
In addition, Market Watch estimates that The global Digital Signature Market size will grow from 1.1 Billion dollars in 2019 to 7.99 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 28.9% in the forecast period, clearly showing that this trend is here to stay.
With digital signatures becoming commonplace, organisations should extend their usability to gain a competitive advantage. For example, adding more tools to your signature stack will provide a better customer and staff experience. Use integrations to fill in agreement details automatically rather than electronic signatures. To avoid redundancy, use templates instead of generating contracts from scratch.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence is becoming a critical part of many organisations’ operations, increasing the demand for expertise. 2022 could be an important year for AI as companies rely on it to handle data; many experts predict profits, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency gains.
Beyond operations, AI will also prove essential in the fight against cybercrime thanks to its ability to detect patterns and predict behaviours.
Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT is another developing trend that businesses should watch. With so many companies adjusting to working remotely, having internet connectivity is becoming increasingly important. It could improve customer service. As the number of devices connected to corporate networks grows, the need to carefully manage identities will grow.
Trust and identities
Cybersecurity is an important issue, and top management is becoming more sensitive to the rise of cybercrime. Therefore, mitigating risk must be a top priority for board members. To protect organisations, innovative new approaches to identity management such as the zero-trust model and identity first will probably gain much attention during 2022.
“As more and more enterprises see digital transformation as a critical component to increase competitiveness, cybersecurity remains a concern. Businesses should adapt to these emerging technological trends while taking safety measures. This is the right time to focus on cybersecurity and make it part of your corporate culture,” concludes de Villiers.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
With digital transformation picking up faster than ever before in the business landscape, most organisations today employ a mix of business tools to run their operations across sales, marketing, finance, HR, etc. More often than not, all of these tools include a reporting module that displays department-specific data records and statements. However, stand-alone data like sales figures, lead numbers, email open rates, and the like, can only tell you so much about customer behaviour.
As businesses continue to go digital and become increasingly data-driven, it’s imperative for them to include a holistic business intelligence (BI) programme in their technology strategy. A comprehensive BI programme helps combine various data points from multiple sources, perform cross-functional analysis, and bring out intuitive insights like inspirations behind seasonal customer trends, reasons for supply-chain gaps, sales funnel pain points gathered from customer feedback, productivity drops due to employee attrition, future trend predictions, and whatnot. Powerful information like this can enable organisations to adopt a culture of smart, evidence-based decision-making and gain a true competitive edge.
Hyther Nizam is the President – MEA, Zoho Corp
Getting started with a business analytics and intelligence program
Provided that your organisation has the necessary funding and resources to implement a central BI programme, the first natural step is to identify the key business metrics you want to compute and track.
As pointed out here, once you have identified the goals, the next step is defining a data strategy. You need to go about defining your data strategy for key focus areas and then identify and align its data sources with that strategy. From there, it should be relatively simple for the organisation to build a data pipeline and prepare the data for analysis.
Building a robust, unified data pipeline from disparate sources
Prepping the data pipeline is one of the biggest challenges organisations face while implementing their BI programme. Using a mixed toolset offered by different vendors translates to disparate data sets that need to first be integrated, blended, and unified to enable a(n) smoother as well as accurate analysis procedure. In fact, it’s been noted that 80% of analysis time is spent on data preparation as poor quality data often results in untrustworthy business insights.
This is where BI tools that include data preparation provisions come in handy. Be it a custom-built BI program or a bespoke tool, it’s important that your option incorporates data-prepping and blending capabilities, i.e., ability to connect to different sources (legacy or cloud app) and port data in different formats, clean and remove duplicates, blend the data into a single data warehouse, and improve the overall data quality. This helps ensure robust, error-free data pipelines, in turn assuring reliable business intel.
Updating your privacy practices and official policy
With a BI programme, your obligation as a company to protect customer data becomes greater. Some privacy practices to keep in mind include, (1) masking critical user data, i.e., removing personally identifiable information from all data sets using anonymization methods, before feeding them into the BI data pipeline, (2) collecting explicit consent from the data subjects (customers and employees) to use their anonymized data for BI analysis, (3) ensuring that your data sources are also subject to stringent privacy standards, and finally, (4) updating your organisation’s customer privacy policy straight away to include required details about your BI programme.
Integrating your BI program with internal collaboration platforms
Despite setting up a cost-intensive, comprehensive BI programme, many organisations struggle to drive adoption among their teams and prompt necessary action or decision-making. One way to solve this is to integrate the BI system widely and deeply across internal communication and collaboration platforms used by employees such as email, chat, intranet forums, project management avenues, etc. The BI dashboards must allow executives to blend and visually analyse data for cross-functional insights, fashion the insights into easily understandable and interactive reports, decide the next course of action, and subsequently share the information with the teams or individuals concerned in real time.
Staying future-ready – leave room for innovation
As you implement modern technologies and boost your operational efficiencies, running a future-ready business also includes being constantly on the lookout for innovation, and ensuring that the business systems and processes are elastic enough to absorb the change. Similarly, your BI programme should have enough legroom to experiment and capitalise on emerging opportunities like AI-powered voice analytics and RPA/business analytics integration. For instance, current AI trends have made it possible for users to hold conversations with AI assistants to generate automated BI insights with a single click, predict future trends, conduct as well as visualise cognitive and what-if analyses, and much more.
If the events of the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that things can change incredibly quickly and it’s vital to be flexible. Cloud-based BI tools enable business owners to look at real-time data from across departments. to make quick decisions. This helps businesses stay nimble during unprecedented times.
Hyther Nizam is the President – MEA, Zoho Corp
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Twitter has launched ‘Tips’ , a feature that allows users to send bitcoin or cash tips after it was announced in early September. It begins with iOS users with Android coming soon. Its also planning support for non-fungible token (NFT) authentication. Twitter announced the bitcoin tipping feature starting with iOS users. The company tweeted: “Tested the Tips feature, turns out people love money. Rolling out on iOS with Android coming soon.”
Jack Dorsey, founder and CEO of Twitter
Tips allow you to send bitcoin or cash tips depending on how you configure your Tips settings and the regional availability of third-party payment providers.
The tweet explained how to use the new tipping feature. “Looking to get a little support with Tips? Tips are now rolling out to everyone (18+) on iOS. Add the Tips icon to your profile from the ‘Edit profile button.”
Twitter’s Product Manager, Esther Crawford has turned on Tips, the Tips icon to appear on the profile page. She emphasizes “Tap the icon, and you’ll see a list of payment services or platforms that the account has enabled, and you can select whichever you prefer,”
Crawford added “In addition to the services currently enabled through Tips, people can now seamlessly tip with bitcoin using Strike — a payments application built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network that allows people to send and receive bitcoin. Strike offers instant and free payments globally.”
IN U.S, a strike is available excluding Hawaii and New York, as well as in El Salvador. Along the U.S dollar Bitcoin is now legal tender. Eligible markets users can sign up for a Strike account and add their Strike username to receive bitcoin tips over the Lightning Network.
The product manager explained that “You can use any Bitcoin Lightning wallet to send tips to someone’s Strike account.”
She noted that “When you enable Tips on your profile, you can now also add your bitcoin address. People can copy your address and paste it into a bitcoin wallet of their choice to send you a payment directly.”
Other payment platforms apart from the strike are Bandcamp, Cash App, Chipper, Gofundme, Patreon, Picpay, Razorpay, Wealthsimple Cash, and Paypal’s Venmo.
Twitter also announced its arrangement to support authentication for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Crawford said, “We’re excited to soon explore NFT authentication.
It’s a way to support creators making this art with a stamp to demonstrate authenticity. By allowing people to directly connect their crypto wallets, they can track and showcase their NFT ownership on Twitter.”
She also said: “We’re interested in basically just making it visually clear that this is an authenticated avatar and then give you some interesting info and insight about the provenance of that NFT.”
A spokesperson from Twitter said: “NFT authentication will come in the form of a badge, shown on profile pictures, marking the owner’s NFT as authentic.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Where he was seated in his office in Cape Town, Katlego Maphai, had several things running through his mind. Peeping through his email, there were endless threads of messages sent across to investors which had not been replied. His startup company, an SMEs-focused mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) business he founded alongside Bradley Wattrus, Carl Wazen and Lungisa Matshoba, was sitting on the brink of death. Its account statements with South African banks showed they barely had a month’s working capital left. Red is the perfect description; and if none of the investors expressed interests in the coming months, the deal of death would have been certain and sealed, and Maphai would have had to go back to Delta Partners Group, where he was previously a consultant.
Katlego Maphai
But the unexpected usually happens; and so the company which is located within the Cape Town City Center, is still very much active eight years after, even announcing, most recently, a $83m Series C fund-raise.
“If I go back to this period, the 2015 period, we were just taking fund raising meetings. It was not working out,” Maphai said. “We were getting rejections. If we weren’t getting rejections, we were getting really nasty pricing on our (funding) round.”
To date the startup has raised more than $106m in funding, including from top venture capital firms such as Dragoneer Investment Group, Partech, FMO, Quona Capital, Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures, Orange Ventures, among others.
Here are a few lessons from the startup’s chequered life:
In A Highly Regulated Ecosystem, Both Investors And Regulators Are Wary Of ‘Inexperienced’ Startup Founders
Although Yoco’s early years were spent iterating and finding its footing, trust in the capacity of startup founders to execute what they say they would is a major investment variable for both investors and regulators.
To be able to provide financial services in South Africa, there is a long list of requirements. For instance, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority requires that financial services providers in South African must have key persons who are adequate, appropriate and have relevant skills, knowledge and expertise in respect of the financial services, products and functions that they perform.
And so, because Yoco’s founders came from telecommunications backgrounds, they had a hard time convincing the regulator.
“We knew shit about the payments industry when we started,” said Maphai, about this lack of experience.
But his team was able to overcome that barrier by understanding the importance of building relationships early enough with experts in the industry.
“We spent most of the early days identifying experts within the industry, finding them and taking (them for) coffee, building up those relationships,” he said.
And so when the time came to convince the regulator once again, it became relatively easy because Yoco now had an advisory board.
“There were no ways we would have gotten that license to operate without that,” he said. “They weren’t even looking at us. They were looking at our advisors and the fact that the advisors said ‘these guys know what they are doing.”
Maphai’s views about the license being instrumental to the eventual successful fundraising campaigns of the company was corroborated by another co-founder Carl Wazen, who noted the apparent difficulty the startup encountered sourcing the fintech license because there was a heavy doubt about the capacity of a team which lacks experience in the payments space.
“You really need to prove yourself,” he said, while adding, however, that they had an edge because people saw Yoco as potentially bringing innovation.
“So once we secured the license, which was about 2013 or so, we started raising some seed financing and building the platform and product,” he added.
Today, Yoco uses South Africa’s sub-acquiring license which was introduced in 2012. The license only allows Yoco to operate under a bank’s license and cater to the small business payments market, and but does not allow it to directly access the country’s national payment system.
Only Startup Founders With Heavy Pockets As Yoco’s Would Most Likely Have Replicated The Financing Drama The Startup Experienced During Its Early Days
This could be the only truth for startup founders that had navigated their first two years with funding substantially coming from their pockets.
From all ramifications, Yoco’s founders could qualify for a conventional venture capital firm given the strong financial backgrounds they came from.
At the time of the launch, Maphai was fresh out of a management consulting job, including stints as a venture builder with Rocket Internet. Bradley Wattrus, another co-founder worked with him at Rocket Internet. Carl Wazen was his former consultancy colleague, and Lungisa Matshoba studied with him.
These backgrounds therefore greatly assisted them in scavenging for funds.
“The time…was really, really tough,” Maphai admitted. “There were moments where we literally had a month of capital in our bank account. We were just raising angel and family office money to allow us to continue.”
Wazen also remembered these tough times with nostalgia. “I think that year (2015), we had on average about 60 days of runway at any given moment,” he said. “And we were a team of like 25 to 30 people. So it was a really scary time.”
Could Substantial Revenue And Traction Have Made All The Difference Raising Funds For Yoco, And At What Cost?
Yoco’s dramatic early years was also worsened by the fact the startup did not set out to generate revenue immediately; it, instead, spent time building out its products.
“We had to build in the early days,” Wazen said. “A lot of plumbing the product and licensing and stuff. 2015 is the first time we actually went live. This just means that two years into the business, we’re not (even) doing our first live transaction with a customer. So, you know, we were pretty exhausted.”
It is therefore arguable that funding would have been easier to come by if the startup had acquired more traction at the time.
“Our beta product, a Bluetooth card machine, had really simple pricing. No monthly fees, you pay one off for this card machine through our website and you get it delivered to your door the next day,” Wazen said.
He noted that the beta product which was a big change from what was out there, was liked by the startup’s first customers.
“We recruited our first customers through our networks,” he said. “However, we chose to stay in stealth until we felt like our systems and our processes could truly scale. So meaning in our case — because the type of customer we wanted to serve was very small — we needed to make sure that we didn’t need any human intervention to actually grow and reach and serve those customers.”
But going on a stealth mode was a difficult decision, Wazen noted.
“It was a difficult decision to stay quiet,” he said. “While on stealth mode, we started seeing banks and competitors launching similar offerings. That was like a craze back then, like everyone was trying to do what Square was doing; but we knew that because we were managing money, it would be a huge mistake to prematurely launch.”
It was during this stealth mode that the startup went from building its pilot product to learning all that it needed to learn.
“Once we got comfort, there were a couple of 20, 30 merchants. We next moved on to an operations pilot, which was primarily intended to test automation on all of Yoco’s ancillary components. So, can we actually scale up the distribution of these card machines? Can we provide scalable support for our merchants? Is it possible to undertake risk management and onboarding at a large scale? After that, we transitioned into commercial pilots for a few months. We put the segments and channels to the test, and so on. At each stage, there were a number of things we needed to learn and improve on a hands-on basis,” Wazen said.
When the startup eventually launched to the public, it did so with 500 merchants, which Wazen admitted was obviously a negligible figure.
“And then very quickly as it happens, we realized that it’s all good having a nice product and experience, but we needed the volume,” he said. “This is usually what happens when you realize that you have to move from being a product company to a distribution company. Like you had to really capture the right segments and communicate properly and find the right channels that could scale.”
Yoco only began to show traces of success towards the end of 2016, an outcome Wazen described as a product of “many experiments and a bit of luck.”
“So we grew from 500 to 5,000 merchants that year and were able to raise our Series A from international VCs. And since then, we’ve been more than doubling year on year. Today, we’ve got over a hundred thousand small businesses and we’re still scratching the surface,” he said.
Also standing out from Yoco’s story is the temptation for startups to suddenly go public while building in stealth in order to remain alive and beat mounting pressures. In this respect, Wazen admitted that Yoco’s decision to stick to its original master plan saved the day for them.
“At some point we started to go upmarket because it was more predictable and closer to us,” Wazen said. “But that didn’t result in the outcomes that we wanted. We weren’t growing as fast as we wanted. It was a really scary time, but we took a big step back — you can call this a pivot; it isn’t really a pivot though. I think it is going back to our roots, to what we started out wanting to do — which was to focus on the merchants who had never accepted card before. They were out there. We just needed to build distribution to get them”
Yoco in numbers. Image credits: Yoco
Strong Product Moats Have Inspired Even Bigger Ticket Sizes
Although Yoco started off building out offline and online payments for small businesses, it has also widened its collection of payments solutions. This is instrumental for the startup’s growing traction and even the larger investment ticket sizes it has raised so far.
“It’s been an interesting journey,” Wazen said. “Today, apart from offering offline and online payments for small businesses, we have also got a couple of different card machines. We let small businesses accept payments on their websites via plugins or by an API, and also send payment links and invoices and gift cards and all that. We’ve also got a pilot going on with QR. It’s really about having all payment methods possible that are relevant. And that’s really important.”
Wazen also said Yoco offers an entry-level software stacks for small businesses, which give them access to tools to manage their inventory and point of sale, business intelligence, staff management and a range of other things.
“We also offer a lending product which is growing very fast. It is also very much built on top of the payment rails and it is there to support our merchants by essentially predicting their cash flows and giving them some growth capital,” he added.
Yoco which is presently in operation across South Africa with over 150,000 B2B customers, claims to process more than $1 billion in card payments per year, and that it has processed more than $2 billion in card payments in its six years of operation. The startup also recently initiated moves to expand to the Middle East, a regional market where Wazen (Lebanese) comes from.
“The market size for payments is virtually limitless,” said Wazen. “It’s GDP. Half of the GDP is small to micro businesses; so it’s a completely underserved segment and that’s going to continue. I think we expect to be running this business for decades to come. We’re still really early in. In the beginning in order to be in a position to continue running this business for so long, we want to be IPO-ready by 2024.”
And speaking about the IPO, Wazen said Yoco intends to do this on a US exchange. He added that when it comes to geographic spread, Yoco is taking deep dives in a few markets.
“It’s not about having large footprint across multiple markets,” he said. “I don’t think that that model necessarily is the best when you’re targeting small to micro businesses.”
“We don’t benefit from being in multiple markets. It’s about going deep in a couple of big markets, including South Africa; and really being market leaders in those markets and then the region,” he added.
Wazen advised entrepreneurs in Africa to focus more on market creation.
“You have the privilege of being in a market where the majority of the population is still not consuming basic things. So turn those people into consumers and you’ll not only build a massive business, but you’ll also change lives. Don’t do the easy or the tempting thing, which is to go after the affluent or the middle-class. You might come from that background as a tech founder. But that doesn’t mean that that’s where the opportunity is,” he said.
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning writer
The partnership between banks and fintech’s will not only help reach more customers but also build financial literacy amongst consumers. This was the unanimous agreement at a webinar discussion hosted by TagPay and moderated by Omar Ben Yedder from African Banker; Yves Eonnet (TagPay), Djiba Diallo (Ecobank Group), Obinna Ukwuani (Bank of Kigali) and Carl Manlan (VISA), discussed how the digitalization of banks is a huge opportunity across Africa and partnerships with fintech would address the challenges of financial inclusion and the rapid scaling up that is needed across the continent.
Obinna Ukwuani, Chief Digital Officer, Bank of Kigali
Banks have to be equipped with the tools that enable them to pre-empt the market and respond quickly to customer demands in a secure and cost-effective way.
For the banks to stay relevant Djiba Diallo, Senior Fintech Advisor, Ecobank Group said that it is important to understand fintechs and leverage the opportunities. Banks are still there and still needed but need to adapt to what is happening on the continent and partnering with fintech companies is key to doing that.
Many banks are partnering with Fintech companies to help them digitalize, enabling them to expand their services and reach more customers at the same time.
Obinna Ukwuani, Chief Digital Officer, Bank of Kigali said, “We see digital transformation as a necessity, so the bank has invested in transitioning the bank into this new era”. All companies are becoming technology companies, whether a bank or not”.
Cash currently leads the way in the majority of Africa, but to increase financial inclusion, which is increasing already through financial technology, digital banking will need to have continued growth.
Financial inclusion also enables banks to feed new businesses and entrepreneurs, and hence builds the economy at the same time. Using the technology of mobile telephones, digital banking will have a significant role to play now and in the future.
Carl Manlan, Vice President, Head of Social Impact, CEMEA, VISA said, “Because we are cash dependent the opportunity to introduce digital payments to help promote financial inclusion is critical and to that we need to ensure that there is adequate financial literacy and skills building along the way to make it work for more people.”
Partnership between banks and fintech’s will not only help reach more customers but also build financial literacy amongst consumers. In addition, the industry will need to develop talent and skills, and this can be done across Africa ensuring the industry continues to grow.
Banks no longer see Fintech’s as disruptors but partners. More often, as a key part of their business with a shared responsibility for delivering to customers, banks are going into a new world and need new platforms, new technology and a new architecture, the old core banking system is being surpassed and a new core banking system is needed.
FinTech’s will help banks provide a better service to customers, working together and within the same regulatory framework. Digital banking helps with financial inclusion and formalizing the economy and banks, globally, need to react to the digital revolution and customer demand.
Yves Eonnet, Chairman of TagPay, summed up the event by saying, “The time we are entering is very exciting for us [FinTech’s] and for you [banks].” “The expertise that we have opens up banks to new ventures and new capabilities, especially due to the low cost and speed of deployment.”
“Systems are designed to target new customers, financial inclusion, or new sectors that are poorly served. This is exciting in Africa because this for me, is the beginning of a new era for banks, and all banks in the world are looking at what is happening in Africa.
Because in Africa you have this situation, which is unique, with the financial inclusion issue where banks need to attract new customers, therefore you have customers to serve, have the technology to do it, have the dynamism of the culture that makes it possible and that is where we are to build the bank of the future. I often say the Silicon Valley of banking is not in California but in Africa, it is where it is happening.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The Ethiopian government is collaborating with global telecoms equipment manufacturer Ericsson to expand its 4G services into the South West region of Ethiopia during 2021. The partnership with Ethio Telecoms correlates with Ethiopia’s plans to introduce international investors and partners into their monopoly-laden and virtually untapped telecoms space.
Frehiwot Tamru, CEO of Ethio Telecom
Ethio Telecoms will use Ericsson Radio System products and solutions for this deployment. The core expansion will take place in Ethio Telecom’s regional data centres and the data centres in Addis Ababa.
Through this partnership, Ethio Telecom will seek to modernise its network by transitioning from the current Operations Support Systems (OSS) systems to the more advanced and high-capacity Ericsson Network Manager (ENM).
Ethio Telecom will also introduce Ericsson Cloud Packet Core and Ericsson NFVI (Network Functions Virtualisation Infrastructure) as part of the modernisation effort. The 4G network will also use Ericsson Radio System products.
The telecom’s expansion of 4G comes at a time when the demand for 4G is growing exponentially. According to the latest Ericsson’s Mobility Report, 4G subscriptions increased by approximately 100 million worldwide during the first quarter of 2021.
“We are excited to collaborate with Ericsson in expanding our 4G/LTE Advanced service. This will bring high-speed internet to the South West region, which will be vital for achieving Ethiopia’s digitalisation ambitions while improving the reach of telebirr, our mobile money service,” says Frehiwot Tamru, CEO of Ethio Telecom.
“We understand that digitalisation has the potential to boost the livelihoods of Ethiopians while improving access to financial, healthcare, education, and services and we believe our collaboration with Ericsson will take us one step closer to a digital Ethiopia.”
“Ericsson began the partnership with Ethiopia and Ethio Telecom in 1894. Fast forward nearly 130 years later and we have together launched one of the most advanced 5G ready networks in the region. As the world enters a digital age with 5G technology gradually rolling out across the world, we are reiterating our commitment to Ethiopia and Ethio Telecom to support with our technology leadership and global expertise,” says Todd Ashton, VP and Head of Ericsson South and East Africa.
Recently, massive African telcos like Safaricom and MTN have been making strides into introducing their services into the fallow Ethiopian market which has a population of over 100 million people, where only about 20% have access to the Internet, and less than 40% have a mobile phone.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
