“It takes a village to raise a child”: as the Fourth Industrial Revolution sweeps across Africa and more of its youth develop coding and other digital skills, there may come a time to update this old saying to: “It takes one child to raise the prospects of a village.” And based on the quest of one young man from a village in Ghana to solve some of the major problems faced by his community, this saying could become commonplace as more young innovators enter the fray.
Inspired by global technology success stories, Mustapha Diyaol Haqq, a 19-year-old from Kumasi in Southern Ghana, realized he too could deliver innovation where it was most needed, starting with his very home town. “Seeing how the big tech companies used innovation to solve some of the world’s biggest problems made me realize how important it is to learn to code,” says Haqq. “I looked online for any free courses that could help me develop coding skills and completed as many as I could.”
Young
Despite being self-taught, Haqq was able to develop a potentially life-saving solution for women across the continent. “I used my knowledge of coding and machine learning to develop a model for diagnosing breast cancer, which I hope to release freely to communities across Africa,” says Haqq.
Also high on his agenda, hunger and food security which he sees as two of the biggest challenges faced by the continent’s rapidly growing population. “Africa relies heavily on smallholder farmers to meet its food production needs. However, much of the produce from farms are spoilt before it reaches the markets in the cities. I’m currently working on a machine learning and AI model that can help reduce post-harvest losses and ensure the work our farmers do translate into food security for our communities.”
Connectivity challenges remain innovation
One of Haqq’s biggest challenges when learning to code was accessing the internet. “We don’t have a good internet connection where we live, so I had to walk kilometers to an internet café where I could access free online coding courses. Internet access is expensive but, thanks to the generous support of my parents, who made some sacrifices to give me a chance to complete a few online courses, I built sufficient coding skills to start developing solutions to some of the problems affecting our community.”
Ghana suffers from poor internet penetration, with only 14% of the population having access to the internet. Despite this, the Ghanaian government has set out an ambitious plan to position the country as a leader in ICT innovation in the sub-Saharan Africa region by 2023. Young innovators such as Haqq will undoubtedly play a crucial role in achieving the government’s ambitions and inspiring more youth to pursue careers in tech.
Haqq says internet access is also the single biggest obstacle to greater adoption of coding among African youth. “Our continent does not enjoy the fixed-line infrastructure of our more developed peers, and mobile internet can be expensive. For me to afford the internet cafes where I learned to code, my parents had to make sacrifices. Global companies can play an invaluable support role by investing in providing internet access to our communities to support us as we get ready for a digital future.”
Lighting a coding fire among Africa’s youth as Youth Ambassador for Africa Code Week
One of the initiatives working to address digital literacy in Ghana is SAP’s Africa Code Week, an annual, continent-wide digital literacy programme that has engaged over 4.1 million youth in 37 African countries since 2015. “I participated in Africa Code Week as an opportunity to share my knowledge with young people in my community and inspire more youngsters to learn one of the most important languages of our time: coding,” says Haqq.
“I am also a volunteer and instructor for Ghana Code Club, and with the help of some friends, we have established coding clubs in several communities, where we spend our free time and weekends teaching both kids and adults to code. Being appointed Youth Ambassador for ACW 2019 is a dream come true, and a unique opportunity to inspire change on a global platform, encouraging young talents across the continent to learn digital skills and code the change they want to see in their community.”
SAP, UNESCO, and over 130 partners from the public, private and non-profit sectors are currently gearing up to introduce coding skills to 1.5 million youth across 37 countries in October 2019. According to Claire Gillissen-Duval, Director of EMEA Corporate Social Responsibility and Africa Code Week Global Lead at SAP, this 2019 edition will feature a strong focus on empowering girls and building teaching capacity at the community level, hence the importance of role models like Mustapha.
“We are extremely proud and honoured to welcome Mustapha as our Youth Ambassador for ACW 2019. He overcame major challenges and his amazing journey has the power to inspire many. As a young innovator and change-maker, his mentorship and guidance will be crucial as we strive to empower an entire generation and strengthen teaching capacity in ICT education among African communities.”
Stay tuned for #ACW2019 taking place in October across 37 countries.
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.
CEO of Giraffe, a South African mobile job matching platform that helps medium-skilled workers get access to opportunities and helps businesses to recruit staff faster, and easier, and more affordably than any other way, Anish Shivdasani recently shared his view about how Software As A Service (Saas) championed by his startup has scaled in Africa.
Below is the transcript of his presentation
‘‘The reality is that Africa is booming’’
How many of you are from Africa or have been to Africa? Okay, so quite a few. I guess selection bias, probably why you’re here. What do you think about when you think of Africa? I mean, those of you who’ve been probably understanding it and know it, but those of you who haven’t. Often people have very negative perceptions or stereotypes of what Africa is about. When they think of Africa, they think of really negative stuff like disease, Ebola, and HIV and malaria.
They think of corruption, fat cat dictators hoarding billions of dollars whilst they’re compatriots have to sleep rough on the streets, kind of like San Francisco if you think about it. Poverty, famine, babies with bloated bellies and flies all over the face, and finally war. People hacking each other’s limbs off with machetes for no reason. To be fair, you would be right. I mean, all this shit does happen there, right?
But it’s not the full story. It’s not the full truth because the reality is that Africa is booming. Between now and 2050, half of the world’s population growth will occur in Africa. Think about that. Between now and 2050, another 2.4 billion humans will enter the Earth, and 1.2 billion of them will be in Africa. Last year, of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world, half of them were African countries.
Also last year, of the 10 fastest growing Internet penetration markets in the world, 8 of them were in Africa. So on the one hand, Africa’s kind of a mess. On the other hand, it’s booming population-wise, economically, and technologically. This is giving rise to this phenomenon called leapfrogging, whereby African countries are circumventing the normal pathway of economic development and jumping straight to the latest thing.
An example of this is in telecoms, for instance. Most African countries never had fixed-line telephony. When mobile came along, they just leapfrogged straight to mobile. This is having very important implications across other sectors. For example, banking.
Most African markets never had a banking infrastructure the like of which we used to here. It was largely a cash economy, but with the advent of mobile, all kinds of interesting things are happening. For example, in Kenya. More than half of Kenya’s GDP is now transacted through a mobile, through arguably the most successful mobile banking and payment system called M-Pesa. With electricity, a lot of African nations never had legacy electrical grids. So with off-grid solar becoming a thing now, a lot of African countries, in fact, 9 of the top 10 adopters of off-grid solar, are in Africa.
So you can see how technology’s starting to play a very important role in the development of Africa. What does this mean for startups and tech companies? Can they be done there? Now, unfortunately, there are a lot of constraints in Africa, major constraints when you’re talking about setting up and scaling a startup. First of all, the capital. There isn’t any. Unlike here, where you have billions, and billions, and billions, maybe trillions of dollars of capital, over there you have very little.
There are hardly any VCs. In fact, the concept of a VC is barely understood in Africa. It’s only starting to happen now. There is no startup ecosystem to speak of. Here in Silicon Valley, you have Google, and Facebook, and a ton of other massive organizations that are just churning out people who then go on to found other startups. There’s a solid ecosystem of mentorship, and talent, and stuff like that that you have here, which we just don’t have that.
Also in Africa, users are not particularly tech-savvy. You guys are at the bleeding edge of tech, but in Africa, it’s not the case. Tech is a novelty there. Talent, major problem. Here developers are dime a dozen. Over there, there are no developers, hardly any. Finally, and importantly, the market size is tiny.
South Africa’s GDP is 50 times smaller than the US’s GDP, and South Africa is the biggest economy in the continent, right? When it comes to setting up a startup, you’re probably thinking, “Why the hell would you do it there? Why the hell would you do it in Africa?” Well, I’m going to tell you why we did it, and how we did it. I’m going to talk about some of the lessons that we learned along the way.
‘‘In Africa, you’ve got to focus on a massive uniquely local pain point’’
First of all, in Africa, you’ve got to focus on a massive uniquely local pain point. We cannot possibly compete with Silicon Valley when it comes to building the next big thing or solving big global needs. I will guarantee that the next Facebook or Google will not come from Africa. We simply do not have the resources to compete, or the market size to compete. Where we can play, however, is when it comes to solving local problems, uniquely local problems, that no one cares about.
No one else will be interested in it, and an example of this is unemployment. In South Africa, the unemployment rate is about 40%. It’s one of the highest in the world. It’s crazy when you think about it, right? One of the reasons why unemployment is so high is because people just don’t have access to opportunities because of apartheid, because of the difficult history of South Africa.
You have large sections of the population that live geographically very far from business areas, and so they simply just don’t have access easily. They never had access to the Internet, and public transport is very expensive. Just in terms of seeing what opportunities are out there, it was very difficult.
However, back in 2013, in my previous career as a strategy consultant, I was doing a lot of work with telecoms companies in South Africa. We noticed that mobile penetration was starting to increase. By 2013, mobile penetration probably exceeded the 50% mark, and people who were up until then offline were now coming online with mobile as a primary means of accessing the Internet. So you had millions and millions of job seekers, who never had any means to access opportunities, suddenly having a mobile device and an Internet connection.
We saw an opportunity to use mobile, and the ubiquity of mobile, as a tool to solve the fact that people struggled to get access to opportunities. That’s how Giraffe was born. I think if we had focused on solving a niche problem, the market’s simply not big enough to scale. You’ve got to focus on a massive problem that is unique to that particular location. You’re probably wondering what that picture is about. Maybe some of you are wondering what that picture is about, and why it’s there related to this point.
Well, every year about two million Wildebeest migrate from the Maasai Mara in Kenya to the Serengeti in Tanzania. They all come to this river, and they stand on this riverbank, and the river is infested with the crocodiles. They spend days there figuring out how to cross it without getting eaten. It’s an example of a uniquely local massive problem in Africa. You see the metaphor, perhaps.
‘‘You need to remove all the barriers to adoption’’
The next thing I would say we learned is really about removing all barriers to user acquisition. Here in the US, you have disposable income. Businesses have disposable income, consumers have disposable income, and so you can spend money on trying out new stuff. In South Africa, the average salary is about $500 a month. What that means is people are confronted with the reality of should I buy data or should I buy groceries? You need to have a really compelling reason why someone should try your product, and you need to remove all the barriers to adoption.
Let me perhaps give you some concrete examples about what this was about. Our first MVP was actually an SMS based app where job seekers would send six SMSes in order to register on our platform. It probably cost about $1 for someone to register. We thought, “What’s $1? It’s not a big deal.”
We went into the townships to see how job seekers would interact with this app, and we noticed that none of them were signing up. Why? Because they didn’t have any airtime. They didn’t have any cell phone credit. They use their cell phones primarily to receive calls, and they would buy small data bundles for WhatsApp and Facebook, which were becoming common at the time. So we basically said, “This SMS thing ain’t going to work.
We have to go back to the drawing board.” So we built a .mobi site, which basically used a mobile website for them to register. Because they had some data, we figured that that would be less of a barrier to adoption. Sure enough, we built that version, went back to the townships, and people started signing up. It started working, but people still had to spend a couple of cents to sign up. We were like, “How do we make this thing completely free to sign up?”
So we went to speak to some of the cell phone operators, and we said, “Look, this is what we’re doing. Why don’t you zero-rate our .mobi site so that you can go above the line and say, “Hey, we’re trying to help solve unemployment in South Africa,” and we can simultaneously get more and more people jobs? So they did this, and we made it completely free for job seekers to sign up, and that’s when we started to see the thing explode. As soon as people would hear about it, then they would sign up. So you’ve got to build barriers to acquisition in any African market within which you operate.
The third thing is you’ve got to build for non-tech savvy users. You guys here in the States have been using smartphones for more than 10 years now, and before that, you were using PCs. Smartphones are only becoming a thing now in the last couple of years in Africa, and up until now, people have never used PCs. The smartphone is the first means by which people accessing the Internet, and it’s a novelty. People are still used to doing business offline, and so people are not particularly tech-savvy. What does that mean when you’re trying to build a tech product? Well, you have to build it in a very simple way. You have to leverage existing behaviors that the market already understands so that you don’t need to educate users.
An example of this is in South Africa all banks use this thing called one-time PIN, whereby to authenticate a user or to authenticate a transaction, they SMS you a four-digit code and use that four-digit code to be authenticated. Every South African understands that. We use exactly the same mechanism to authenticate our users. The cool thing was when people started using Giraffe, and they saw that we had this OTP thing because they associated OTPs with banks, it meant that they trusted us because they recognized, “Okay, cool. Banks use this, and Giraffe uses this.” It helped us gain credibility without necessarily needing to educate the market because it was an existing thing. This, I think, was quite important to stimulate usage and to get people to come onto the platform.
‘‘In Africa, business is done on trust. They need to speak to a person.’’
The fourth thing that we learned is… and this is interesting, right? Here in the US and other developed markets, people are so used to buying stuff online that they’ll go online, they’ll just do self serve, right? In Africa, business is done on trust. They need to speak to a person. They need to see a person, have a conversation with them. It’s really important to have that face to face interaction in order to sell.
The challenge, however, is that because of the limited disposable income that both consumers and businesses have, you can’t charge a lot of money for services there. You’ve got to be very sensitive to price, and so you’re caught in this conundrum. On the one hand, you can’t really afford to hire salespeople because your CLTVs don’t justify it. On the other hand, you can’t sell anything if you don’t have your salespeople. So what do you have to do?
Well, you have to build a direct sales force. It’s something which you have to do in the beginning because until you gain trust, and your brand becomes trusted, you need to have a direct sales force to bring in those initial customers. This was actually a blessing in disguise because by getting direct sales, and I mean, I sold myself in the beginning for quite a long time. I mean, the negative economics of having this direct sales force actually funds your education of the market because you spend time with customers, you understand what their real problems are, and you’re able to tweak your product to address it. It’s interesting.
As entrepreneurs, we normally come up with an idea, and we build a product, and we don’t really understand what the customer actually wants. Having this direct sales force is invaluable in educating and informing where your product is going.
‘‘You’ve got to know when your customers are lying to you’’
I’d say the next thing that we learned is you’ve got to know when your customers are lying to you. Here in the US people are very direct. They’ll tell you what they think, and they’ll mean what they say. Whereas in Africa, I think in many African cultures people are very nice, right? They’re not going to say anything that will piss you off. Even if they have a problem with their product, they’re not necessarily going to be very candid about it.
I remember a situation where we had closed quite a big customer in the very early days. They were a supermarket, and they were using our product. They were hiring tons of people, and we were like, “Okay, cool. This customer seems to be getting a lot of value out of what we’re doing.” We started talking to them, and we asked them a couple of questions. We said, “How important is Giraffe to you in your recruitment process?”
They were like, “It’s just extremely important.” I asked them, “How disappointed would you be if we took Giraffe away from you, and you couldn’t use it?” They said, “Look, it would be a disaster. I’d be very disappointed.” We were like, “Cool.” At this point, we were offering the service for free. After having these kinds of conversations, I was like I think we’ve reached a point where we’re ready to charge these customers now because they seem to be deriving immense value. We went to them a couple of months later and said, “Okay, your free trial is over.
We need to start charging you,” and they refused. They said, “No, we’re not going to use the product anymore,” completely diametrically opposed to the conversations I’ve had with them before. This is the kind of thing that you see there, and so it’s so important to really not listen to what your customers are saying, but listen to what they’re doing, how they’re behaving.
From that moment on we’ve spent more time looking at data on customer usage to give us insight into whether customers would like to continue using our product or not. I’d say the next thing is it’s super important if you want to scale in Africa to become a thing. What do I mean by this? Here in the US and again other developed markets, people are interested in novelty and innovation.
They are interested in trying new brands, experimenting with new things. This phenomenon of a startup is well understood, and people have embraced it. In South Africa, it’s quite the opposite. Incumbent brands rule, and newcomers are treated with suspicion. New brands are treated with a lot of cynicism and suspicion. That’s very difficult for startups because startups by definition are new brands, right?
There’s a couple of things that we did here to manage this situation. We couldn’t use paid marketing because incumbent brands had all the share of voice, and simply by using paid marketing we would have blown all our funding, and that would have been that. We had to find alternative ways of marketing and really getting the word out there. There were a few things that we did. There was no silver bullet, I would say. There’s no silver bullet, but there are a couple of lead bullets that I want to share with you.
The first thing we did really pulled the unemployment angle quite aggressively. Unemployment was a massive social problem in South Africa, still is actually, massive topical problem. Every day on the news you hear something or the other about unemployment. So when we launched this app that was intending to help reduce the employment situation, we got massive amounts of press, mainstream press, mainstream TV, prime time radio, news, newspapers.
That did two things for us. It brought a massive amount of trust and credibility to our brand, and what we were doing, and it brought a ton of leads, a massive number of inbound leads. The PR thing is extremely powerful when the problem you’re solving is an important social problem. That was the first thing we did. I’d say the second thing we did was really about building alliances with brands that were already trusted, and this was a cool logo acquisition tactic that we did. We basically looked for the biggest call center in South Africa.
We went to them, and we said, “We’ll give you unlimited hires for the next six months, in exchange for which you need to write a bunch of press releases about our partnership, and the fact that you’re going to hire 600 people from us in the next three months,” to which they agreed. As soon as we started launching these press releases, we had tons of their competitors phoning us up saying, “Hey, can you come and talk to us? We’d really like to find out what you’re doing.”
Literally, in the space of a few weeks, we managed to close a number of quite big subscriptions just off the back of FOMO, effectively. The competitors of the customer that we offered the free service now wanted to pay us for it. That was another tactic that really, really worked well for us.
I’d say the third lead bullet that we did, and I think this is quite common now, especially in marketplaces, is we built viral loops on opposite sides of the marketplace. What that means is as soon as a job seeker would sign up and make their CV on the Giraffe app, we would enable them to send their CV, there’d be a send button, and we’d email their CV to any employer they wanted. The email would contain Giraffe and Giraffe branding.
We basically got our job seekers to market to our employers. Vice versa, whenever an employer wanted to use our service, we gave them a dedicated link that they could put anywhere, and it would enable job seekers to find out about Giraffe through the employer.
So we built viral loops on opposite sides of the marketplace. I’d say those three things, combined together, helped us to grow really, really fast. It was all guerrilla stuff, very little paid marketing. I think it’s super important that if you’re going to build a brand that’s going to see explosive growth, you cannot rely on the traditional forms of marketing, in my view anyway.
‘‘If you’re going to do a startup in Africa, you’ve got to be ultra-lean’’
Okay, so I’ve talked about product, and market, and customers, and brand, and sales. I want to take a step back now and talk about some more existential or abstract elements that I think are really important. Product/market fit. This is one of our favorite topics, and I’m sure we’ve all read The Lean Startup and stuff.
Often we have to manage this lean situation where we have limited resources, and we need to make sure that we iterate until we get to the answer. That sounds all very well in principle, however, if you’re going to do a startup in Africa, you’ve got to be ultra-lean, right? You’re not going to be able to raise millions and millions of dollars of funding. You’re going to be ultra-lean, and we were very, very lean. In fact, for the first 18 months, we had one developer who built the entire first version of our product.
Even today we have just three developers, and with such limited developer resource, you have to be super careful of how you build and prioritize products. Now the funny thing is, when it comes to product/market fit, I had initially assumed that it was a binary event. That it would just happen. It wouldn’t be there, and then the next day it would be there. This is definitely not the case, or it wasn’t the case for us.
I think product/market fit is a gradual process, and you can think that you’ve reached it even when you haven’t reached it. I’d say the first 18 months of monetization we were seeing double-digit revenue growth for the first 18 months, and ostensibly you could take that as an indication that, fine, you’ve read product/market fit right. Revenue’s growing, customers are happy, etc., etc. After about 18 months, we started noticing some weird stuff. It started to become more difficult to sell.
In terms of operations, things started to get a bit creaky, and then we felt actually the product that we are trying to scale up on is not the right product. We felt that we’d… It wasn’t the right product, and so what do we have to do? We basically had to change the product. Now by that time, if you can imagine, we’ve done all this with one developer. We had built an immense amount of technical debt.
You build stuff super quickly, so it becomes a bit dirty the way you build it. We had a massive amount of technical debt, but it wasn’t just technical debt. We had to change our pricing. We had to change our sales processes. We had to change our operations. We had to educate customers about the fact that we were changing our product, and that was quite painful because you got customers saying, “But I liked your old product. Why are you changing it?”
You have the team who’s basically now having to change the way they work together, and that wasn’t the first time that we did it. We had to do this again maybe about six months later. What we realized is that every successive attempt a product/market fit gets harder. It’s not like you can just keep experimenting until you find the answer.
Every time you change something, it gets much more complex. The energy that you have to muster in your organization is very significant. This is something which we hadn’t realized, and it’s funny because, if you think about it, almost all startups are at the verge of extinction.
The thing that is often the difference between life and death is reaching product/market fit, and the number of bullets we have in our gun to get it to diminish over time. Each successive attempt is more difficult than the previous one.
‘‘One of the biggest mistakes I think we made, ironically enough, is being a recruitment company…so you’ve got to hire for mission.’’
I guess this brings me to the next point, which is around recruitment. One of the biggest mistakes I think we made, ironically enough, being a recruitment company this was very ironic, are we really screwed up our recruitment. You see, the thing is in Silicon Valley you have tons of really, really talented people who want to work at startups. Everyone knows what a startup is. In fact, it’s cool and sexy to work at a startup, right? If you’re a startup, and you’re looking for people, I don’t think it’s particularly difficult. Sure, there’s a war for talent, but there’s an abundance of talent as well.
In South Africa, there are three problems regarding talent. The first one is that 70% of the workforce is employed by corporates. Corporates dominate the economy in South Africa, and so people don’t really understand what a startup is, right? People just don’t get it. They just say, “Well, I want to work for a bank or a telecoms company.”
They don’t understand what a startup is, but I think more pertinently, there just isn’t the talent there. We don’t have lots of developers. We don’t have anyone who’s a growth hacker. It doesn’t exist. There are no digital marketing people, right? It’s such a new space. There’s no ecosystem, right? So the talent is scarce as it is, but you’re competing with well-funded or well-capitalized corporates.
When we closed our first seed round, we were funded by Omidyar Network, which is a Silicon Valley investor. We’re one of the only Silicon Valley companies that are funded in South Africa by… Sorry, one of the only Silicon Valley funded companies in South Africa. We expected that thousands of people were going to come to our door saying, “Hey, I want to work for you guys.” That didn’t happen at all, and it was a slog. We had to find these people who are needles in haystacks, and this was something which was very difficult for us.
I think the key learning is you’ve always got to be recruiting. Even if you don’t have any open roles, keep recruiting because the time it takes you to find the right person, you will have an open role. I think when it comes to choosing someone when you’re working in a place like Africa is you can’t compete on money, or financial benefits, or bean bags, or free lunch, or whatever it is.
You’ve got to compete on the mission. You’ve got to hire for the mission. When I interview people, I ask them, “Why do you want to join Giraffe?” Some people say they want to work in a small company where they can have a big impact. Some people say they want to work in tech. The ones who I only really take seriously are the ones who say, “I want to work for you guys because you’re trying to help solve unemployment.
I want to be a part of that.” That is supercritical to hire for people who are mission-aligned, and it’s not just the founders have to be mission-aligned. It’s the whole company because it’s the people who are mission-aligned are the ones that are going to be most resilient when you inevitably go through tough times, so you’ve got to hire for mission.
‘‘You’ve got to hustle’’
I think the next learning is you’ve got to hustle. In Africa, you’ve got to hustle. Everyone in Africa hustles. What do I mean by this? Well, here in the US, and developed markets, you have established ways of doing business. You have business norms. In Africa, it’s much more informal, much more chaotic. Because you’re operating in a very lean environment, you have to be able to hustle to leverage to the maximum the resources that you do have.
I’ll give you some examples of this, right? We acquired job seekers when we had no jobs to offer them, and that was hustling. We pitched to customers when we didn’t even have a product, and we only started building our product after we closed a sale, because we couldn’t do it any other way. We had to do this because we didn’t have the resources to build our own product. We had to sell it first. When you’re operating in this kind of environment, hustling is key.
‘‘I’d say the final learning that I’d like to leave with you is this.’’
I’d say the final learning that I’d like to leave with you is this. When we set up Giraffe in 2014 and quit our fairly high paying consulting jobs, most of our colleagues and friends thought we were completely mental. They thought we were crazy. They were like, “Guys, what are you doing? You can’t do this in South Africa. No one is doing this. It’s never going to happen. It’s never going to be successful. People don’t even have smartphones yet. How do you expect to build a company like this?” But we’ve kind of done it.
Not that we’ve finished, we’ve still got a long way to go, but the point is that we’ve shown that the infrastructure, the mobile infrastructure, the Internet penetration, the digital infrastructure is there, right? It is possible to build and scale a company in South Africa, and I believe the rest of the continent, as mobile penetration and smartphones become more abundant.
Also, I guess when I look around the room, you guys are some of the smartest, and most intelligent, and wealthiest, and privileged people in the world. Right? It’s funny, I’ve been here a lot of talks. Everyone’s talking about unicorns and decacorns, and making tons of money, and you guys really have a choice.
You can use your talent to solve high-class problems, First World Problems, and help big corporates earn more money, and help big VCs, fat cat VCs, make more money, or you can use your talent to help the people who need it the most. Right? This world is full of suffering and pain, right, yet most people use their talent just to make more and more money. The inequality that we’re facing in the world is very significant.
I guess my appeal to you is, instead of trying to build the next Slack, or Dropbox, or whatever high-class problem these guys are solving, use your energy and your talent to help solve humanity’s problems, because I believe a lot of problems in Africa can be solved using tech and software. So my closing remark would be this. I would love it if you could join me, either in South Africa or any African country, and help us to build the future because of the last 30 years as Asia’s time. We’ve seen how Asia has emerged. The next 30 years will be Africa’s time, but Africa just needs the talent, the capital, the ecosystem. With those things, we can build an amazing continent.
Thank you very much.
Anish Shivdasani’s talk was transcribed for use in English by Jason M. Lemkin Co-Founder and CEO of EchoSign.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
Startups and entrepreneurs in Ethiopia can now have access to a new fund. The Abu Dhabi-based Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development (KFED) has signed a partnership agreement with the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance aimed at providing over $100 million to help promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the African country.
A Look At The New Funding
The new agreement, which was signed by Hussain Jasim Al Nowais, chairman, KFED and Admasu Nebebe, Ethiopian Minister of Finance, will help pave the way in enhancing innovation and supporting entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, a statement said.
The funding will be used to implement a series of projects aimed at consolidating the Ethiopian government’s efforts to create a stable and balanced economy while also driving in other benefits like the creation of employment opportunities for the youth, women empowerment and enhanced capacity building for entrepreneurs and local institutions.
The allotted $100 million will be supervised and maintained by the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, in cooperation with KFED.
The proposed fund is expected to play a significant role in reinforcing the Ethiopian government’s move to create economic entities that will be capable of supporting and enhancing the stability of the economy, including the creation of jobs and reducing unemployment and poverty in different cities and regions in Ethiopia.
“Under this agreement, the KFED looks towards providing the vital elements needed in helping Ethiopians realize and establish their own projects which can play a key role in the move to reinforce their national economy,” Admasu Nebebe, Ethiopian Minister of Finance noted.
The latest agreement highlights the growing strategic relationship between the UAE and Ethiopia which also saw the visit of Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmad to the UAE back in March, where he met with the Crown Prince discussing a range of mutual bilateral issues.
Ethiopia Unemployment Rate
The prime minister also just last week announced plans of sending 50,000 workers to the UAE over the next year to help reduce unemployment among skilled Ethiopian nationals.
The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development, which was established 12 years ago in Abu Dhabi, supports small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UAE and has funded more than 1,600 projects within the UAE and across 20 countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
Angolan and Mozambican services companies are answering to Equatorial Guinea’s call to cooperation and will be participating in the Oil & Gas Meeting Day in Malabo on October 1st and 2nd, 2019. The delegation will be led by President of the African Energy Chamber in Angola, Sergio Pugliese.
The growth of Africa’s oil & gas sector presents the continent’s services companies with tremendous opportunities for partnerships and regional expansion. As Africa’s second-largest oil producer and thanks to its strong local content efforts, Angola is now home to countless services companies with the necessary capacities to expand across sub-Saharan Africa.
“Angola is known for having strong local services companies,” said Sergio Pugliese. “The growth of our local content is now accelerating thanks to the reforms made by President João Lourenço and his administration. We now have Angolan companies that developed strong capabilities and are ready to expand beyond Angola.
They are seeking partnerships and deals with other African and international services and technology companies, to serve both their regional expansion plans but also to further support the growth of the Angolan industry at home. The Oil & Gas Meeting Day provides the perfect platform to seal such deals.”
The African Energy Chamber supports the Oil & Gas Meeting Day, a Year of Energy event organized by Equatorial Guinea’s National Alliance of Hydrocarbons Service Companies (NAHSCO). Malabo has positioned itself as the hub for services companies to engage in meaningful conversations on how to build the next generation of African oil & gas leaders and companies.
The services industry is a massive job creator and a strong pillar of the global oil & gas industry. As cooperation amongst African oil markets increases, the need for services companies to step up their game and pursue an aggressive outreach has become a necessity.
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.
This year organizers have crafted a programme that puts deal-making front and centre of the agenda for the 1500+ delegates.
For over twenty-five years, Africa Oil Week has acted as a central hub for decision-makers in the African oil and gas sector, bringing together delegates from Marrakesh and Maputo to Lagos and Lusaka in Cape Town each November. Following consultation with two expert advisory boards, and countless interviews with the industry, this year organizers have crafted a programme that puts deal-making front and centre of the agenda for the 1500+ delegates.
In 2019, AOW will include the following dynamic features designed to foster business development:
Ministerial & VIP Programme
Projected to host 20+ government Ministers and 150+ CEOs, VPs and Investors in 2019, the aim of the Ministerial & VIP Programme is to act as a catalyst which moves projects towards Final Investment Decision. With a dedicated team on hand to facilitate introductions, delegates taking part in the Programme will be fast-tracked to the best opportunities in the African upstream.
In the words of Kael O’Sullivan, Director of Investor and VIP Relations: “A key aim of ours for the 2019 Summit is to ensure that capital is connected to the right opportunities. The Ministerial & VIP Programme is key to these efforts and will bring together the top 150 decision-makers and influencers in the African upstream space for investment and deal-making. This core group, we believe, will play a major role in the future development of the sector and, by extension, the economic development of Africa.”
Prospect Forum
After a well-received 2018 launch, the Prospect Forum returns to AOW this year with three days of insights into the most exciting plays across Africa. The data revealed at the forum will help define where Operators and Geophysical companies allocate their investments and attention during the coming years. Expect to hear from Independents including Steve Jenkins, Chairman of Savannah Petroleum, Edward van Kersbergen, Founder and Chairman of Mazarine Energy and global geophysical players including TGS, PGS, and ION.
Bidding Rounds
Aiming to match the success of last year’s Ghanaian, Congolese (ROC) and Sudanese licensing rounds, which resulted in the issue of multiple shallow-water licenses, it has been confirmed that further African nations will be offering licenses at the conference this year. Further information will be released soon.
Wells to Watch
The 26th Africa Oil Week will unveil the first-ever Wells to Watch insight series, which will give delegates access to brand-new proprietary information about the most promising prospects on the continent. Highlights include Scott Macmillan, Managing Director of Invictus Energypresenting Zimbabwe’s SG 4571 and Alexander Mollinger, COO of Discover Exploration presenting Comoros blocks 35, 36 and 37.
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 Kenyan Central Bank is taking the bull by the horns now. Cybercrimes by banks involving a breach of customer information and eventual stealing of funds will no longer only be thrown open to the court to decide who is liable or not, bank directors will have to pay for any breach of customer information going forward.
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has issued new rules to payment service providers including commercial banks and technology companies warning the boards of directors that they face “ultimate” liability in case of criminal breaches.
A Look At The Guidelines
In the guidelines aimed at stemming cybercrime, the CBK says boards will take responsibility for breaches of customer information.
“Payment Service Providers (PSPs) should carry out regular independent assessment and audit functions that shall be undertaken by the internal and external audit and risk functions … The board of directors is ultimately responsible for the cybersecurity of the PSP,” said CBK.
PSPs including firms like Mastercard, Visa, Safaricom, Airtel, and Telkom have 90 days to comply with the requirements published this month.
Firms working with PSPs are also expected to treat customer information confidentially.
“Outsourcing agreements should be governed by a clearly written contract, the nature and detail of which should be appropriate to the materiality of the outsourced activity in relation to the ongoing business of the PSP,”
“Some of the key provisions of the contract include controls to ensure customer data confidentiality and service providers’ liability in case of breach …”
Some financial institutions are required to collect detailed customer information for anti-money laundering, tax, and accounting reasons.
Privacy experts around the world have recently expressed concerns about how personal data is collected and used by companies.
In April, the government approved a tough policy on data protection, paving the way for it to be tabled in Parliament.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
The total money owed by Nigerian governments, whether federal or regional now stands at more than $69 billion (N24.97trn) in the first quarter of 2019. This is more than the value of all money (GDP) made by Ghana last year.
A Break Down Of The Figures
Figures from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics say Nigerian States and Federal Debt Stock data as at 31st March 2019 showed that the country’s total public debt portfolio stood at N24.95trn.
Further disaggregation of Nigeria’s total public debt showed that N7.86trn or 31.51% of the debt was external while N17.08trn or 68.49% of the debt was domestic.
Similarly, total domestic debt was N3.97 trillion with Lagos state accounting for 13.64% of the total domestic debt stock while Yobe State has the least debt stock in this category with a contribution of 0.68% to the total domestic debt stock.
Remember that Congo recently got a major bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help it service its debt obligations with its creditors.
Government debt as a percent of GDP for African countries, 2017. Source: IMF, 2018. Regional Economic Outlook
This bailout potentially set a precedent for other nations struggling under the weight of large debts to China.
It appears that what IMF has succeeded in doing is to alert other countries borrowing from China that China would never cut off any percent from any borrowed sum, but may instead, prolong the period of repayment.
Many observers see Congo as a test case for the IMF. A number of African countries facing unsustainable debt resulting from commercial borrowing, a boom in Eurobond issues and years of Chinese lending on the continent are expected to turn to the IMF for help in the coming years.
This is even bound to grow more because sovereign debt financing is inevitable given that African countries budgetary resources are insufficient to finance their vast development agenda.
“The IMF is tacitly accepting that China will not take a haircut on debts to African governments,” said one banker, who has followed the negotiations.
The IMF is also advising Congo’s government to restructure high-interest debt it contracted with oil traders including Glencore (GLEN.L) and Trafigura despite a previous pledge to the Fund that it would not engage in oil-backed borrowing.
“I think they’ve learned their lesson as to the costs of these kinds of practices,” Alex Segura, IMF mission chief for Congo, told Reuters.
IMF Is Also Pitching Its Stakes And Leaving African Countries At Their Own Mercy
All that bailout would not just happen without a reciprocal deal. For instance, the IMF said in November that Congo’s government must take a series of steps before the lender agrees to a bailout, including reforms to improve governance and transparency, adjustments to the state budget. It’s also requested “explicit financing assurances,” including debt relief, from creditors before it considers a bailout.
With all these, African countries with heavy debt burdens may all be sitting on a time bomb.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
Nigeria has recorded an Inflation drop from 11.40 percent to 11.22 percent with analysts saying it is not enough to make even the slightest dent on rising poverty.
Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation, declined to 11.22 percent year-on-year in June compared to 11.40 percent in May, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Nigeria inflation rate of 2019
Food inflation also reduced to 13.56 percent in June compared to 13.79 percent in the preceding month.
According to the CPI figures for June, which was released this week by the NBS, core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce dropped to 8.8 percent in June, down by 0.2 percent compared with 9.0 percent recorded in May.
A deceleration in the headline index could encourage the monetary authority to cut the monetary policy rate, thereby lowering the cost of borrowing in the economy.
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.
Nigeria’s aspiration for universal internet coverage has received a boost with the materialization of a $100 million loan from the Government of India.
The facility arranged by the EXIM Bank of India is the result of a close collaboration between the India High Commission in Nigeria and the Federal Ministry of Communications. The deal was facilitated by the immediate-past Minister, Alhaji Adebayo Shittu, who had promised a 70 percent broadband penetration by 2021.
The loan from India is expected to accelerate the deployment of solar-based mobile telephone sites in the country’s vast rural areas. Officials of the communication ministry privy to the details of the plan said no fewer than 1,000 sites can be built within 12 months once the two countries seal the agreement.
The credit facility from India is expected to be devoted to financing Nigeria’s Rural Broadband Network and the deployment of robust masts that will rely on alternative power sources, especially solar power. The plan is hinged on the government’s determination to extend telephone services to all rural communities at a relatively affordable cost while ensuring that identified bottlenecks experienced in urban areas are minimized.
Early this year, Shittu had disclosed that the government was desirous of fast-tracking the implementation of the National Broadband Roadmap by rapidly deploying less-expensive telecoms masts in the rural and remote areas. The plan, he explained, would provide access to telephone services and rapidly increase broadband penetration in hitherto hard-to-reach regions of the country.
The latest statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has indicated that broadband subscription stood at 63.2 million while actual broadband penetration increased to 33.13 percent in May this year.
“I am optimistic that if we put all the current efforts together, in another two years, we should be able to attain 70 percent. My ambition is two years rather than the five years being postulated,” the former minister said at a conference organized by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria in February this year.
The minister premised his hope on the $100million loan from India, saying: “The current mast that the telecom operators use is very expensive to maintain. They rely on electricity, and we do not have electricity all around the country. So we have a situation where somebody who wants to build a mast of N40million would also have to acquire a 200KVA generator and fuel it.
“For this reason, we have redirected our effort at getting solar-based masts which will also have 50km radius so that if you have a land area of 100km, you will have two masts. It is cheap to maintain and all operators can depend on it, rather than having the rural operators to construct their own masts or lay their own cables.
“We are doing all of these, and I believe that within the next two months, we should have an approval from the Indian Government for work to commence on deploying this to all rural areas in Nigeria”
Figures from the NCC indicate that there are about 120 million internet users in Nigeria, most of them in the urban areas. Internet penetration is a little above 33 percent, although the commission is working with the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to introduce Television White Space to further deepen broadband penetration.
Although the Nigerian communications industry has attracted huge investments of recent, experts believe that a robust telecommunications network is important for economic growth in the country. Indeed, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Dandatta, has noted that while the present portfolio of $68 billion investment in Nigeria is huge, it is by no means adequate for one of the fastest-growing telecommunications markets in the world.
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.
Africa Finance Corporation, the leading infrastructure solutions provider in Africa, announces today it has financed Aker Energy A.S. (“Aker Energy”), a subsidiary of Aker ASA, one of the highest-quality-rated companies in the Norwegian market and a leader in oil, gas, and industrials.
AFC’s support is through investing in US$100 million of convertible bond notes with an intention to participate in follow on fundraising activities. The funds will be used by Aker Energy to finance the development of the Deepwater Tano Cape Three Points block (“DWTCTP” or the “Asset”), a block offshore Ghana containing multiple oil fields.
The Asset is owned by joint venture partners, including Aker Energy (50%), Lukoil (38%), Fueltrade (2%) and a 10% carry for the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (“GNPC”), wholly owned by the Government of Ghana. The Pecan field, which is the most appraised in the DWTCTP block and the field to be developed in the first phase, is an oil field estimated to contain reserves of about 334 million barrels of oil equivalent.
This investment is aligned with AFC’s overall natural resources strategy, which entails building a portfolio of value-added assets across the Energy value chain. By taking an early equity financier role in operational or near-operational upstream assets. AFC can enhance the revenue potential of African states to generate revenue required for investment in infrastructure and social services for its growing populations.
This investment also marks the beginning of AFC and Aker’s mutually beneficial relationship in the exploration and production sector across the African continent; AFC will offer support to Aker, open new opportunities, and mitigate potential geopolitical risks. Aker, with its proven track record of delivering complex deepwater projects on time and budget, and a network of affiliates, such as Aker Solutions, leading subsea equipment, and services provider, is an ideal partner for AFC, as it seeks to broaden its partnerships with developers within the natural resources sector.
The Republic of Ghana (Ghana) which became an AFC sovereign shareholder in 2018, having acceded to membership in 2011, will benefit from this project through increased revenue and government royalty and taxation income. Deepwater Tano Cape Three Points field is one of Ghana’s principal hydrocarbon assets and is expected to contribute to Ghana’s near term target of an annual production volume of 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Samaila Zubairu, President & CEO of AFC, commented on the announcement: “This is an exciting milestone for Africa Finance Corporation – we have partnered with the
subsidiary of one of the most highly respected international oil, gas, and industrials companies to support its first project in the African market as an operator. This is an opportunity for AFC to invest alongside a technically and financially strong sponsor that requires project development expertise and public sector advice in Africa, both of which AFC is ideally placed to offer.”
Jan Arve Haugan, CEO of Aker Energy, added: “We value AFC’s vote of confidence by collaborating with Aker Energy and the commitment to further strengthening this partnership going forward. We believe AFC will be a valuable partner to help Aker Energy navigate the opportunities and challenges that lies ahead of us.”
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.
