Go to any (surviving) book shop in any European or North American city and ask for the section on African authors. The shop assistant will look bemused and probably send you to the travel section.
There the assistant will pick up a book on Africa, which will almost certainly have that picture of a baobab tree on it, the image that is forever associated with the continent.
Moreover, if you ask for a book on African technology, this will be met with a blank stare and if there is a single book on that subject, it will almost certainly be illustrated with a picture of a barely clothed African tribe member using a mobile phone.
These hackneyed images of Africa should be thrown into a time capsule and stored away for eternity, because 21st Century Africa deserves so much more from the rest of the world when it comes to its writers and its technology.
While the writing of Chinua Achebe, Senghor, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa Thong’O and Leo Africanus, as well as recent authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie deserves to be more widely recognised, Africa may yet be acknowledged in technology as the Father of Mobile Money.
According to the GSMA there are now 21 mobile money services worldwide with more one million active accounts. This validates mobile money beyond what M-PESA has achieved in Kenya; this is a financial revolution in developing countries all over the world; led by Africa.
The success of M-PESA (‘Pesa’ being Swahili for money) has been extraordinary. Set up in 2007 by
Other African countries have continued this trend. At the end of 2013, there were more registered mobile money accounts than banks accounts in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Twelve months later in 2014, Burundi, Guinea, Lesotho,, Rwanda, the Republic of the Congo and Swaziland passed this threshold, bringing it to a total of 15 countries.
Mobile money doesn’t just mean banking within one country, it also extends internationally. WorldRemit is a remittance service that lets people send money to family and friends living abroad by undercutting the extortionate fees charged by Main Street agents.
Using WorldRemit, money can be received as a bank deposit, cash pick-up, mobile money, or mobile airtime top-up. The service is available to senders in 50 countries. and offers transfers to more than 120 destinations across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America.
Founded in 2010 and based in London, the company has raised a staggering $147 million in seven funding rounds from only four investors. Its CEO and Founder is the charismatic Somaliland-born Ismail Ahmed who remembers the 1980s when it sometimes took three months for remittances to arrive in Africa.
“International remittances to mobile money are growing exponentially, not only across sub-Saharan Africa but in Asian and Latin American markets too. We’re working hard to connect with all mobile money services around the world and see mobile-to-mobile remittances as at the very core of our business,” he says.
Another London company that is making movements in the market is Moni Technologies. Founded in 2013, the company raised a $5 million seed round and is a mobile money transfer platform for users to transfer funds from their bank account directly into that of a recipient.
“Mobile money services enable financial inclusion and allow the poor to transform their lives. This is especially true in the remittance industry, where mobile money reduces the cost of making these transfers considerably. These services are creating products for the under and unbanked, something that was unimaginable a few years ago,” said Laurence Aderemi, CEO and Co-Founder, Moni Technologies.
Aderemi is right to say that the services available to Africans were unimaginable, as much as it is unfathomable that book shops do not have dedicated African sections.
While those great writers may have to wait a little longer for the global acknowledgement they deserve (but it will come), Africa’s expertise in mobile money means the world will have to start listening or Africa will surpass it.
