Category: Doing Business in Africa

The Ayoba Obituary : Africa did not reject super apps. It rejected the wrong version of them.

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. The continent was never likely to produce one neat WeChat-for-Africa, sweeping across markets with one interface, one model and one rhythm of adoption. That benchmark was always too lazy for a region this fragmented, this uneven in digital adoption, and this differently regulated from one market to the next. What is emerging instead is narrower, but more durable. The African super-app dream has narrowed, not died. But the market has already voted against the broad lifestyle version of that idea. What is working is not the app that tries to do everything. It is the platform that becomes the default channel for everyday money and then layers services outward from there.
The cleanest place to begin is MTN’s Ayoba. For a while, Ayoba looked like one of the boldest homegrown attempts to build an African super app at scale.

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A Mobile Money CEO Takes Over Retail? What Is Absa Actually Doing ?

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One of the ways I tend to deduce the strategy of an organization is to observe who they hire, so when Absa Group appointed Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, CEO of M-PESA Africa, to lead its Personal and Private Banking operations across the continent, effective April 1, 2026. a continental role spanning both personal and private banking. And hiring someone who built Africa’s largest everyday, money ecosystem rather than a traditional banker signals something fundamental: retail banking in Africa is being re, architected around daily transaction flows, not product, led strategies. I was intrigued about what that meant for Absa strategic direction .

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Africa’s Digital Sex Economy is quietly growing and investors are funding it : Size, Trends, and the New Hustle

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Africa’s Digital Sex Economy is quietly growing and investors are funding it : Size, Trends, and the New Hustle
Across Africa’s urban hubs—from Lagos to Johannesburg, Accra to Nairobi—a new economic frontier is quietly booming: the digital sex economy. Once confined to the backstreets and brothels, sex work has now migrated to private screens and subscription platforms. Powered by mobile technology, platforms like OnlyFans, Telegram, WhatsApp, and anonymous digital wallets, a new generation of African women (and some men) is reimagining how sexual labor is marketed, monetized, and consumed.

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The State of Mobile Money in Africa 2024,it’s evolving use cases and a couple of tough questions

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The “GSMA State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2024” underscores mobile money’s critical role in global financial inclusion, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa with 548 million accounts driving significant GDP growth. West Africa’s boom in mobile money, spurred by innovative regulations and non-MNO services, contrasts with East Africa’s MNO-led model. Use cases are expanding beyond transactions to remittances and merchant payments, fueling economic development. Technological advances and regulation prompt this sector’s promising future, offering transformative potential especially in underbanked regions.

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Are these Accelerator programs wasting African startups time?

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Are these Accelerator programs wasting African startups time?

This article was sparked by a thought-provoking LinkedIn post from Victor Asemota, where he delves into the phenomenon of African startups being caught in a seemingly endless loop of acceleration. It’s like watching a hamster on a wheel, except the hamster is a startup, and the wheel is the myriad of accelerator programs out there. Victor’s musings were in the context Visa acceleration program, where he noted that the startups involved were already so seasoned in the accelerator circuit that another round seemed more like a victory lap than a necessity

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An Examination of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement: Has the Promise Been Fulfilled or Is It a Bust?

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The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a monumental agreement, was designed with the aspiration of establishing the world’s largest free trade area. This ambitious initiative was intended to bring together 1.3 billion people across 55 countries, creating a combined GDP of US$3.4 trillion. The vision of AfCFTA was painted as a future where seamless trade across the continent would be a reality. The dream was that purchasing professional work clothes from Rwanda or a book from Nigeria would be as simple as a few clicks, without the burden of exorbitant shipping costs. However, the question that arises is whether this promise has been fulfilled or if the AfCFTA is a bust.

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