Browsing: Silicon Savannah

It is high time insurance firms embraced technology

Opinion

Even as mobile penetration continue to grow, the East Africa region is still sluggish in technology innovations especially in the insurance sector.

The region is considered as Africa’s Silicon Savannah with a high mobile penetration, home grown digital financial innovations like M-PESA that is now being exported in other countries and a fast growing tech start –up ecosystem.

Statistics indicate that about $63.6 billion is transacted in aggregate in a single year on mobile money platforms in the East African Community (EAC) countries. This corresponds to 46 percent of the total GDP of the EAC in the most recent statistics.

Mobile is a key factor in the region’s start-up ecosystem where many tech start-ups now use the technology as the primary platform to create solutions that address various socioeconomic challenges.

According to the GSM Association, a trade body that represents the interests of mobile network operators globally, over half of …