THE AGE OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY FOR AFRICA
For decades coming, most global businesses such as Uber, Microsoft and the likes have always found it increasingly painful and stressful doing business in Africa because getting paid was a bottleneck.
The African payment infrastructure was a mess, totally disorganized and out of tune with the requirements of big business. They simply could not make it work. This detered these companies and many more from expanding operations into Africa because they could not get paid for their products and services in Africa.
Even with big players on the block such as Paypal with focus on payments still found it very difficult to operate in Africa, they still couldn't make it work. Only Africans could fix the problem.
In the past 10 years, this problem stunted the tech advancement oand business scene of Africa because we couldn't participate in big industries such as Ride Sharing, Ecommerce and Retail because there wasn't a way to solve payments.
It was clear that only Africans can solve payments for Africa.
This all changed 3 years ago when some very determined Africans with the tech backing and financial strength stepped into the scene with the solution.
Robust Payment APIs was the solution
The problem was that there wasn't any unified system which included the banks on a single platform and made it easier for them to communicate and transfer funds easily. This was the solution....Get all the banks on one network and control that network. Ensure an inhouse transfer of funds within these banks. Create transfer rules and protocols for tracking down funds and destination of these funds.
This was the miracle, Africa was saved. In the last 2 years, major companies such as Uber and taxify and even Airbnb now all operate seamlessly in Africa with more global companies on their way expanding into Africa by the minute.
Payments had since been the major determining factor of who wins the race for Africa.
Africa has opened up to a whole new set of possibilities for investment and business opportunities.
With the expansion of advanced payment gateways such as PayPal and Transfer-wise into Africa, many businesses and foreign investors have found it easier to come into African markets to do business such as Uber, Taxify, AirBnb to mention just a few, not just because Africa is wealthy but Africa is ready.