Browsing: Mobile technology

• Africa’s agribusiness sector is undergoing significant transformations driven by population growth, urbanisation, technological advancements, and shifting consumer preferences.
• Alongside their role in stimulating economic growth, agribusiness and agro-industrial development have the potential to reduce poverty and foster social and economic growth. 
• Technological advancements and digital transformations are revolutionising agribusiness in Africa, offering transformative opportunities.

Africa’s agribusiness sector potential

Agribusiness in Africa is undergoing significant transformations driven by population growth, urbanisation, technological advancements, and shifting consumer preferences. As a continent with abundant agricultural resources, Africa holds immense potential for agribusiness development.

African economic growth remains commodity-based, mainly on commodity exports, with minimal processing and value addition involved. To foster sustainable and inclusive growth and development in Africa, there is an urgent need to promote a new development approach based on exploiting the continent’s full agribusiness potential.

Some pressing issues call for a reorientation to support agribusiness and agro-industrial development, namely, poverty …

Digital payment platform iPay has joined forces with Visa, a world leader in digital payments, to introduce Visa’s Tap-to-Phone technology to simplify digital payments for merchants and customers.

Dubbed Tap Ulipe, the solution is integrated into a sleek, portable, internet-enabled MobiGo 2 device, comparable in size to modern smartphones. It offers merchants many solutions beyond traditional payments without investing in clunky POS machines. In addition, merchants can also download the Tap to Ulipe app from the Google Play store on their Near-Field-Communication (NFC) enabled smartphones to accept contactless payments.…

Airtel Kenya has announced the launch of its fifth-generation network (5G) to take advantage of the increasing adoption of 5G devices. Last month, Airtel Kenya announced its intention to expand its network coverage to meet the growing demand for data services in East Africa. With this move, Airtel Kenya joins Safaricom among the network providers that have introduced 5G in the country.…

An efficient crypto mining industry can generate more job opportunities in Africa as the demand for miners, blockchain specialists, and technology specialists increases, . This encourages nations to enhance their energy and technological capacities to support crypto operations. These enhancements can considerably benefit other industries and the economy as a whole.

African nations must embrace the chance to become a crypto mining hub. This can aid in the digital economy’s growth, citizens’ financial standing, and the infrastructure for energy production. Consequently, African governments can invest in cryptocurrencies to acquire alternative funding sources for developing renewable and alternative energy sources.…

Enhancing financial literacy is only one of the numerous ways Africa’s youth may be prepared for the future. Stakeholders must simplify financial literacy education and make it practical. Without simplified and functional financial literacy, one could fall victim to the prevailing financial challenges in a highly changing world marked by technological advancements. Improving financial literacy in Africa’s youth will help improve financial inclusion.…

The financial services space is being disrupted by new entrants that are nimble and more innovative. The overwhelming result of this has been the closure of bank branches right across the broad spectrum of the banking sector and across the country. 

Whenever a branch closes press space is taken up by the banks running adverts citing the growth and advent of mobile technology to be the cause of bank branch closures. To the passive reader it would then look as though technological advancements, growth, and adoption together with the prosperity of banks with respect to their branch networks are mutually exclusive.…

The last decade (2010-2020) was an important experiment in African tech ventures moving out of the “labs” and becoming real businesses that saw investors backing them with so much capital that from 2014 to 2019, the total number of VC deals doubled every year until the advent of COVID-19, which disrupted global economic activities in 2020.[1] However, 2020 saw some notable exits including World Remit’s acquisition of Sendwave for $500M[2], Network International buying DPO for $288M[3] and Stripe taking over Paystack for $200M[4] to enter the African market as Egypt’s Fawry gain unicorn status.[5] The IPO of Fawry the third Africa tech venture reach market capitalization of over $1 billion to after Jumia[6] and Interswitch[7] was overs subscribed 30 times. 2020 ended with another notable exit, with two initial shareholders in Ghanaian fintech startup, Zeepay, exiting from an initial investment of about …