So Barclays is pulling out of Africa. That’s hugely dispiriting news (or non-news, because it has been trailed for a while) and reflects badly on both Barclays and Africa. It reflects badly on Barclays because it suggests a failure of imagination, over many years, to...
This blog originally appeared on The SEEP Network blog, as part of the 2017 Annual Conference Series. I am writing this blog after just having completed a four-day training in Hawassa, Ethiopia of the “Integrating Extremely Poor Producers into Markets Field Guide” or...
This blog originally appeared on The SEEP Network blog, as part of the 2017 Annual Conference Series.
Part One – Our First Steps Last week, I read an interesting blog by the Head of DFID Kenya – Pete Vowles. In it, he asks himself the question: ‘is this blog self-indulgent?’ It’s the same question I’m pondering 30,000ft above Zambia on the descent...
Meeting the FSD Network… On 22 June 2017, I had the immense pleasure of meeting in Nairobi with the UK Aid-funded FSD Network CEOs from across sub-Saharan Africa and presenting some of latest enterprise finance trends emerging globally – in terms of new products,...
If you’ve ever been to Africa (or even the United States), chances are that you’ve had your finger prints taken on a scanner on the desk at immigration. If you’ve tried to skip the queue at Heathrow, you’ve probably tried to use the facial recognition scanners,...
Artificial intelligence, the rise of the robots, cryptocurrencies? There is lots of excitement about the way that new technologies are expected to revolutionise the banking industry. But when it comes to reducing the cost of sending money abroad, we already have the...
Blog 2 in our series on managing change within insurance providers, in partnership with FSD Africa For insurers to serve a new type of client at scale they must change their modus operandi. The high costs associated with conventional insurance cannot be absorbed by low...
The way we stay in touch, do our shopping, and even the ways in which some of us find love, have all gone digital. Yet, for the vast majority of people sending money home to friends and family in Africa, they are still doing it the way they have always done it: in cash....
Central Bank Governor Dr Patrick Njoroge fielded some tough questions from the audience on 9th February 2017 at FSD Kenya’s annual financial inclusion lecture. British economist, Professor John Kay, had just delivered a provocative talk on the risks of financialization...
Nearly a year ago, we joined the A2ii in Abidjan to sit down with a roomful of regulators to discuss the challenges and imperatives CIMA faces in regulating mobile insurance at the CIMA-A2ii Workshop on Mobile Insurance Regulation. In the CIMA context, as with most...
