Movemeback Pulse

Home-grown digital infrastructure & platforms

Wave becomes Francophone Africa’s first unicorn. Senegal-based fintech company Wave has raised $200mn in the largest-ever Series A investment on the Continent, lifting the startup’s valuation to $1.7bn. Wave brings competition to a mobile money ecosystem that has been dominated by telecom operators and banks. While many telecom operators charge for deposits, withdrawals, transfers and payment of utility bills, Wave users can make free deposits and withdrawals and are subjected to a 1% fee for sending money. This makes the Wave 70% cheaper than telecom-led mobile money, according to the company. With more than half the population in SSA expected to subscribe to mobile services by 2025 (~634mn), increased competition could help facilitate rapid growth in financial inclusion.

Access to financial services and products

South Africa pioneers central bank digital currencies. South Africa has partnered with Australia, Singapore and Malaysia to trial a cross-border payments platform that uses different central bank digital currencies (CBDC), in a bid to establish a more efficient international settlement system. If adopted, CBDCs (digital forms of existing currencies) would allow financial institutions to transact directly with one another – helping to eradicate the need for intermediaries and slash the time and cost of transactions. African merchants face costs as high as 20% of transaction value to send and receive money, and payment processing can take up to a week. Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, Mauritius, ESwatini, Rwanda, Egypt and Madagascar are also exploring the use of CBDCs.

Effective internal and regional security, and foreign policy

AU suspends Guinea after coup. The African Union has suspended Guinea in disapproval of last week’s coup, in which President Alpha Condé (Guinea’s first freely elected President) was ousted by Special Forces. Many Guineans including from the country’s opposition have welcomed the coup, but it has drawn international condemnation from the US, the UN, and African regional bodies. It’s the latest in a chain of events sparking fears of democratic reversal across the region, where military strongmen are increasingly re-asserting dominance. In the last year, there have been two military takeovers in Mali, one in Chad and a failed attempt in Niger. Guinea is endowed with natural resources - including bauxite used for making aluminium - but continued instability will ensure this doesn’t translate to widespread prosperity. 

End-to-end value chain capture

Agreement with UAE could see a gold market established in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls Stock Exchange has struck a deal with the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange - potentially paving the way for establishing a gold market in the Southern African country. Creating a local exchange would be a gamechanger for the domestic gold industry by helping to reduce smuggling, and enabling Zimbabwean miners sell directly to buyers on the metal market rather than through middlemen. Miners are pushed towards middlemen by a law that compels them to sell their gold to the Central Bank, which pays 30% of the price in local currency at a rate well below black-market rates. More than $1.5bn worth of gold is smuggled out of Zimbabwe every year, largely to Dubai. Formalising much of domestic gold sales could expand Zimbabwe’s tax base as the country emerges from a 2-year recession.

Essential infrastructure, personal living-space & utilities

$500mn for Africa's largest-ever data centre expansion. Africa Data Centres, the Continent’s largest network of interconnected data centre facilities, will spend $500mn to build 10 hyperscale data centres (HDCs) in 10 countries over the next two years. The additional HDCs will exponentially expand Africa’s ability to store and process its data locally rather than overseas, and enable the Continent to meet surging domestic demand for data centre services, particularly from financial services and medical organisations, the public sector, cloud and content providers, and e-commerce companies. While Africa currently accounts for less than 1% of total available global data centre space, capacity has doubled in the past three years. The African Data Centres Association (ADCA) estimates that the rest of the Continent will need 700 data centres to reach the current level of South Africa - denoting massive room for investment.

​​Baseline healthcare & disease protection

Power cut-resilient incubator could save millions of lives. Swiss architect Fabien Roy has designed a battery-powered incubator that functions through power cuts, targeted to health facilities in SSA.  Named Robust Nest, the machine can keep babies warm for up to four hours when unplugged from power - feeding hopes to save the lives of premature babies that die in incubators during regular power cuts across Africa. The equipment will undergo trials in Kenya in early November and is expected to be ready for wider adoption in 2022. Hypothermia - a potentially dangerous drop in body temperature caused by prolonged exposure to cold - is a major contributor to the 1.1mn annual neonatal deaths in SSA. Such tech-based solutions can complement the skin-to-skin contact method for protecting babies against hypothermia.

Intra-continental connectivity, collaboration & trade

Uganda threatens to pull troops out of Somalia. Uganda’s President Museveni has threatened to withdraw the country’s troops from the AU’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia, following incessant squabbles between political actors. He argues that endless disputes between Somali leaders are hampering efforts to reach a political solution to the 30-year conflict. Recent days have seen an escalation of a row between Somalia’s President and Prime Minister. Uganda withdrawing its 6,000 troops from the 22,000-strong AU force could leave the country vulnerable to attacks from Al Shabaab militants, whom security experts warn may try to emulate the Taliban in Somalia. Somalia's leaders may have to put aside their differences and focus on strengthening the state to fend off threats to peace-keeping efforts.