Movemeback Pulse

Home-grown digital infrastructure & platforms

Africa-Asia trade - Kenya’s Wapi Pay raises $2.2mn. Kenyan tech startup Wapi Pay has closed a $2.2mn pre-seed round to enhance their digital cross-border payment infrastructure for facilitating Africa-Asia trade. With many African payment startups focusing on the Africa-West remittances, the Africa-Asia doorway remains largely uncharted, with merchants facing as much as 20% in money transfer costs and up to a week’s delay in payment processing. Capable of processing payments within a day at ~3% charge, Wapi Pay plans to process $500mn in remittances by year end, and increase the number of African merchants and Asian suppliers to 500,000 and 100,000 respectively. With trade between Africa and China increasing 73% from ~$107bn in 2008 to ~$185bn in 2018, more opportunities to enable Africa-Asia trade exist.

End-to-end value chain capture

Kenya wants to ban Chinese fish imports. Kenya is considering a ban on fish imports from China to enable domestic producers to seize the full value of the trade. Kenya spends approximately $17mn annually on imported Chinese fish, some of which reportedly contains unhealthy amounts of chemicals like lead. As wild fish stocks in Lake Victoria continue to dwindle, the ban will create opportunities in aquaculture and associated industries to help the country close the supply gap. Kenyan farmers are already demonstrating capabilities to meet domestic demand - fish imports from China nearly halved in the last year, after eight years of consistent growth, from 18,074 tonnes to 8,900 tonnes. Recent news like last month’s launch of a $120mn fish-processing factory and the announcement of a 50% feed subsidy by Kakamega county could fuel the race to fully meet demand from domestic production.

Intra-continental connectivity, collaboration & trade

$36mn Nigeria-Cameroon bridge to boost AfCFTA. A 1.5km bridge worth $36mn connecting Nigeria and Cameroon is close to launch, as the two countries seek to bolster trade with one another that stood at $900mn in 2019. The bridge will become the most reliable land connection between two regional economic blocs - the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and enable cross-regional trade. Intra-regional trade stood at ~$1bn within ECCAS and ~$11.4bn within ECOWAS in 2016. The bridge will also aid the realisation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) - which aims to combine Africa’s 1.3bn people and combined $3.4trn GDP.

Scaleable energy access

2mn Burkinabé to access Pay-As-You-Go clean energy. Two million people in Burkina Faso are set to access Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) clean energy following a partnership between London-based solar utility provider Bboxx and Paris-based cotton company Geocoton. Under the partnership, Bboxx will provide solar-based off-grid energy to cotton producing communities and adjacent villages in Burkina Faso - enabling households to purchase as much electricity as they can afford and need. In a country where only 5% of the rural population has access to energy, and where 43% of people live on less than $1.90 a day, the partnership provides an off-grid route to electrifying Burkina Faso, and a case study of how partnerships can be utilised to target hard to reach rural communities.

Proportional Representation

A regional solution for women’s land rights. Ministers from Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti, Uganda, South Sudan and Ethiopia have convened under the umbrella of the regional body IGAD to sign a document that addresses the socio-cultural barriers to women’s land ownership. While these countries have laws and policies providing for gender parity in land ownership, implementation has been hindered by sociocultural norms and attitudes. As women are the principal users of agricultural land across much of Africa, increasing the number of women landlords in IGAD from the current 2-7%, could bolster agricultural production, improve the income of women, and help achieve the SDG5 on gender equality. Research shows that agriculture is 2-4x more effective in cutting poverty than growth in other sectors, and that women are more likely than men to use resources under their control to meet their children’s needs.

High value skills development and talent repatriation 

Spotlight on Nigeria’s Tokyo Olympics. Nigerian shot-putter Chukwuebuka Enekwechi shared a video of himself hand-washing his Olympic kit, after receiving only one set. It comes after Nigeria’s sports minister stopped athletes from taking Puma bags (each having ~40 items), and left the German kit maker to cancel its $2.7mn deal. The decision, which could have also seen Puma give cash rewards to athletes with podium finishes, epitomises Nigeria’s unpreparedness for the Tokyo Olympics. The country’s athletics federation also failed to organise drug tests for 10 athletes, who were subsequently disqualified from the games. Perceived to be the 8th most athletically talented country in the world in 2019 (according to a U.S. News ranking), Africa’s most populous nation has the potential to become an Olympic powerhouse.

Exporting culture and identity

Wizkid's London tickets sell out in 12 minutes. Testament to the soaring international popularity of African music, tickets for Nigerian Afrobeats superstar Wizkid's November concert at the 02 Arena in London sold out in just 12 minutes. This the second time the Grammy Award winner has sold out the 20,000-capacity venue, after becoming the first African artist to do so in 2018. Wizkid’s overseas success presents a case study for how African artists are expanding to capitalise on the global $50bn music industry. Beyond producing commercially appealing tunes, Wizkid’s collaborations with the likes of Drake, Akon, Tyga, Chris Brown, Beyoncé have all aided in him gaining international recognition. However, as the international scramble for African artists continues, musicians may require more support to ensure their rights over their art is being protected.

Essential infrastructure, personal living-space & utilities

African coastal cities adapting to climate change. Regular flooding amplified by climate change is increasingly paralysing economic activity and destroying property in Africa’s largest city, Lagos - costing $4bn annually. Other African coastal cities are experiencing severe effects of climate change too, leading to the need to institute measures to protect infrastructure, life and economies, including flood defences, augmentation of infrastructure resilience and beach replenishment. For instance, Lagos’ new coastal city, ‘Eko Atlantic’, is built on highly elevated land reclaimed from the ocean, and protected by an 18-m-high and 8-km-long wall made from concrete blocks strong enough to withstand storm events. Research shows that implementing adaptation measures will halve Africa’s population exposed to flooding by 2100.