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We had a Twitter conversation recently where a number of people alluded to the fact that
the right skills were not available in Africa and my position is that it is a wrong assumption.
The skills are there, the seed investors are there but we have only had ineffective
mechanisms for aggregating them. We have been trying to use the wrong motivation to
spur engagement and growth.
We all need money and I won’t lie that it does not solve a lot of “personal problems”, but
that is what they are “personal problems”. Some may extend this to say that if I solve the
financial problems of my family and myself then there are fewer headaches for everyone
else. Eastern Nigeria is a typical example of where this thinking fails. People build huge
mansions in villages without roads, electricity or water and end up spending more to
provide basic things for themselves when it would have been much cheaper if it were by
communal effort.
I hear some complain that mobile money has not gained much traction outside East Africa
and they blame the telecommunications companies when they should actually blame the
technology ecosystem. The foundation of any technology ecosystem is efficient payment
mechanisms to speed up monetization and there are no shortcuts to building ecosystems
around payment initiatives. We need to solve the hard problems.
After having been involved in several mobile money implementations we realized that the
technology ecosystem plays a bigger role in growth than the telecommunications
companies or mobile money operators. Innovative solutions force players to change as
there is already a lot of competition to succeed but instead of innovation in payments we
see opportunism and attempts at closing out others. The winning players are those will
provide the customers with better service and not those who give them no options. We
need to do better than what we are doing now and it not going to be achieved by shortcuts
alone.
Time to put back my halo.
I work every day and make money but there is a greater satisfaction I get from creating
products and new services. Money is a useful by-product to spur more creative activities. I
don’t get paid for writing blog posts but I put my views out there hoping to make an impact