Author: TIMOTHYRADIER

FSD Inject Sh268bn in affordable housing, energy project

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In Summary

  • FSD Africa is delivering on these priorities in Kenya and across the continent, creating over 35,000 jobs and leveraging more than Sh300 billion into sectors like energy.
  • The agency has contributed to 10.2 million people accessing financial services.

FSD has injected £1.9 billion (Sh268 billion) of long-term capital to SMEs, in the last 10 years towards affordable housing and sustainable energy projects.

The UK aid-funded specialist development agency, says it has made significant strides by advancing policy and regulatory reforms, enhancing financial infrastructure and increasing capacity in Africa’s financial markets.

FSD Africa CEO Mark Napier says these efforts have led to large-scale and long-term change, providing access to financial services to over 10.2 million people and addressing issues related to financial exclusion.

“In a short space of time, we have strengthened and developed financial markets, and tapped into capital by using new instruments such as green and gender bonds,” said Napier.

Speaking during the firm’s 10-year anniversary he noted that while its support for business growth has improved access to finance for more than 3 million African businesses has led directly or indirectly to the creation of over 35,000 new jobs.

“Kenya’s partnership with FSD Africa has created a favorable environment for the growth of our local capital markets, resulting in increased interest from both domestic and foreign investors,” said National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u.

During this period, the agency has contributed to 10.2 million people accessing financial services, invested over £50 million (Sh7.1 billion) towards green initiatives and created 35,700 Full-Time Equivalent Jobs in support of sustainable economic development.

The organisation has recently boosted its investment into projects that enable an equitable transition to a green future for Africa after several successful initiatives, including developing regulations and assisting green bond issuance programmes in Kenya and Nigeria.

The agency added that its green portfolio and pipeline have expanded because of continuous investments in programmes that provide environmental and social consequences, with close to £50 million being invested in green initiatives.

“FSD Africa is delivering on these priorities in Kenya and across the continent, creating over 35,000 jobs and leveraging more than Sh300 billion into sectors like renewable energy,” said British High Commissioner to Kenya Jane Marriott.

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Rethinking African debt and exploitation of natural resources

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Africa is endowed with abundant and diverse natural resources and natural capital wealth. Close to 8% of the Earth’s natural gas reserves, a third of global mineral reserves, and a 10th of the global oil reserves reside in Africa. Also, over two-thirds of the world’s arable land and a third of the world’s CO2-storing tropical rainforests are domiciled in Africa. Africa’s mineral wealth makes it potentially one of the richest continents, yet Africa is home to the poorest countries in the world.

Despite having historically low emissions levels compared with other regions, Africa’s CO2 emissions are fast growing due to increased emissions from its tropical lands. This recent growth is driven by increased natural resource extraction and consumption linked to increasing material use on the continent and abroad in recent decades.

As indicated in Sustainable Development Goals 8.4.11 & 12.2.12, it is important for Africa to focus on sustainable exploitation management and consumption of natural resources. But while the literature is replete with studies on the material footprints of nations and the world at large, there is a lack of studies focused on tracing the trends and understanding the determinants of Africa’s raw material extraction and footprint.

Africa’s extraction and export of raw materials is rising

The findings of a new study that calculates sub-Saharan Africa’s raw material footprint over the past two decades, shows that production and consumption levels nearly doubled between 1995 and 2015. Africa is a net exporter of raw material footprints across all material categories – biomass, construction materials, fossil fuels, and ores. Raw material equivalents of exports referred to as raw material footprints embodied in Africa’s exports of goods and services to the rest of world increased by 53%, from 1.95 gigatonnes in 1995 to 2.98 gigtonnes in 2015.

The raw material footprint in African exports increased for almost all African countries. Countries such as South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, and Ethiopia saw the highest growth in raw material equivalents of exports over the period. Meanwhile, the biomass footprint in African exports increased by 43% over the same period, reflecting Africa’s increasing agricultural commodities exports, such as cocoa, palm oil, coffee, tea, and cotton, among other cash crops, and horticultural products, particularly to Europe and Asia.

The fossil fuel footprint in African exports was highest in South Africa, Algeria, and Nigeria, while Western Africa (Mauritania, Guinea, and Ghana) and Central Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo) made up more than a third of the ore footprint.

These soaring levels of raw material equivalent of exports reveal the strong connection between raw material extraction and growth strategies of African countries. Is this rewarding and sustainable?

The cutting down of major carbon sinks and digging up of mineral resources for export and the associated detrimental impact on the environment and climate change has not resulted in resilient growth, economic transformation and prosperity on the continent.

There has been a lack of structural transformation whilst informal employment has increased over the years. A study due to be published in 2023 shows that informal workers in Africa are mostly at the lower tier segment of the labour market, a dead-end with little chance of moving up the job ladder.

There are bigger questions as to how African countries can create opportunities to allow these low-tier informal workers to move up the job ladder. Can African countries create better jobs opportunities using their natural resources?

The distressing correlation between debt and raw material footprints

The findings of this study reveal a strong and positive correlation between national debt and raw material footprints embodied in African exports.

This is distressing. Given the sky-rocketing debt levels of many African countries, exploitation of natural resources is one of the key avenues available to combat their debt crisis, although it comes with a heavy environmental cost.

With the current growth and development paradigm, raw material equivalents for exports are set to increase substantially in a bid to service their debts using mineral and oil revenues, but this has disastrous consequences for the environment.

As much of the world focuses on the next steps in addressing the climate crisis, the funding squeeze and rising debt levels means that climate action will take a back seat in African countries. Increasing debt and intensification of extraction of raw material for export will leave Africans in extreme poverty.

This finding shows the urgent need to bring the debt issues upfront when discussing climate change, and the call on lenders to see their role in Africa’s growing environmental burden.

Policy options

The current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report indicates the need to urgently hold global warming to relatively safe levels but in doing this would require global cooperation such as working with African government in this area.

In the short term, it is important for lenders both multilateral and bilateral, and international community to accelerate debt restructuring and with all seriousness and urgency provide the needed support to put countries back on a more sustainable fiscal path. The distressing debt levels mean there is very little fiscal space to invest in health, education and on climate to support the population.

The ongoing debt restructuring negotiations must take into account these intersections with the environment and climate change as well as the mutual benefits. With support from the international community, it is important to put together a more agile and effective sovereign debt resolution framework that can provide African countries with the needed financing assurances and debt relief in a timely manner.

In the long term, African countries must rethink their growth and development paradigms and focus on creating wealth via adding value to these vast raw materials. With all the natural resources and the discovery of new rare earth elements (cobalt, lithium, nickel, tantalum, tungsten etc.) essential for facilitating the green energy transition, African governments must focus on how they can be more involved in the value chain across all material category, especially in the manufacturing sector.

Given the large reserves of many critical minerals on the continent, particularly in South and East Africa, Africa should work towards positioning itself as the global supplier of critical minerals and a hub (mining and production) for rare earth element acquisition in the world.

This would involve pulling together a new approach and policies that would ensure mutually beneficial mining investment on the continent aimed at wealth creation, particularly investing in the networks and value chains and harnessing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to boost productivity and investments.

Also, as has been done by the Dangote group in the building of the oil refinery in Nigeria, African governments should create the enabling environment and necessary support such as providing public incentives for private projects to attract private finance to develop the networks and value chains in the sector.

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Why financial inclusion remains crucial in Africa

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According to data from the World Bank, about 1.4 billion adults globally remain unbanked. Many of these are low-income people in rural areas, especially women and youth and those with little or no financial literacy support.

Financial exclusion exacerbates rural poverty and erodes the capacity of individuals and households to withstand shocks.

Indeed, regions in Africa have been impacted by major climate, political and health-related shocks which not only restrain efforts for wider financial inclusion but also threaten the economic and social development gains achieved in reducing poverty among rural communities.

However, there is a silver lining. Over the last decade, financial inclusion has continued to gain traction and supports many of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

It is a critical component in reducing poverty and improving the standard of living of millions of people left out of financial systems.

Account ownership in developing economies, for example, grew from 63 percent to 71 percent between 2017 and 2021, driven by services like mobile money.

According to data from the World Bank, about 1.4 billion adults globally remain unbanked. Many of these are low-income people in rural areas, especially women and youth and those with little or no financial literacy support.

Financial exclusion exacerbates rural poverty and erodes the capacity of individuals and households to withstand shocks.

Indeed, regions in Africa have been impacted by major climate, political and health-related shocks which not only restrain efforts for wider financial inclusion but also threaten the economic and social development gains achieved in reducing poverty among rural communities.

However, there is a silver lining. Over the last decade, financial inclusion has continued to gain traction and supports many of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

It is a critical component in reducing poverty and improving the standard of living of millions of people left out of financial systems.

Account ownership in developing economies, for example, grew from 63 percent to 71 percent between 2017 and 2021, driven by services like mobile money.

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Banque Populaire Launches Microfinance Program for Moroccan Women

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Rabat — On Monday, Morocco’s Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP) announced the creation of “Gender Bond,” the country’s first microfinance project geared towards women.

The announcement comes on International Women’s Day, a worldwide celebration of womanhood and femininity and a focal point in the global movement for women’s rights.

BCP’s new project will spearhead a new subordinated bond, implemented through BCP-subsidiary Attawfiq Microfinance, dedicated to financing Morocco’s female entrepreneurs and project leaders.

The Casablanca-based bank’s new “Gender Bond” follows a similar structure to BCP’s innovative green bond program inaugurated in 2017. The project, which blends traditional investment and sustainability, secured nearly €150 million (MAD 1.6 billion) in foreign funding dedicated to renewable energy projects across the country.

BCP hopes the women-centered microfinance project, the first of its kind in Morocco, will mark a step in the right direction in improving financial independence and mobility for the country’s women.

In 2019, the United Nations’ Gender Equality Index ranked Morocco 121 of 189 countries based on factors including educational access for women, maternal mortality rates, and labor force participation.

The study quantifies that Moroccan men are over three times as likely to have a job as the country’s women, while the disparities are even greater for positions of leadership.

Only one in 10 of Morocco’s entrepreneurs are women, per recent figures from the Association of Women Entrepreneurs (AFEM). The findings indicate that the country’s greatest obstacles to female entrepreneurship include social pressures, familial expectations, and lack of access to startup capital for women.

The latter is especially damaging to women worldwide who strive to start their own businesses. A study from Harvard University quantified that only 13% of venture capital in the United States goes to startups with a woman on the founding team.

For startups entirely led by women, the figure falls to a measly 2.4%.

The same problem rings true for Morocco, according to non-profit leader Sana Afouiz. Afouiz founded the Womenpreneur Organization, an NGO that helps women across North Africa start, maintain, and grow their own businesses.

“When it comes to Morocco, a country where I grew up myself, the challenges are different. You have the economic difficulties — less economic investors who take you seriously,” she said. “There’s cultural issues — as a female entrepreneur you have certain limits. For example, being a female entrepreneur means working late, traveling around, et cetera.”

However, programs like “Gender Bond” can make all the difference by putting capital directly into the hands of female entrepreneurs.

“It’s not that women can’t do the things, because it’s forbidden, or things like that. No, they can’t do it because they don’t have the real support they need,” said Asmaa Benachir, Moroccan social entrepreneur and women’s rights advocate. “My advice [to women] will be to always empower themselves by learning — not stop learning.”

Banque Centrale Populaire is Morocco’s second-largest bank, reporting over $20 billion (MAD 180 billion) in revenue annually.

BCP also holds overseas offices in Spain, England, Germany, France, Gibraltar, the Netherlands, Canada, and Belgium.

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The Women Leaders for Climate Action takes the lead in advancing sustainable finance through Green and Gender bonds capacity building for financial players in Zambia

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15th March 2023, LUSAKA – Starting today, the Women Leaders for Climate Action (WLCA) will be hosting a two-day Roundtable Event on Green and Gender Bonds with   potential green and gender issuers and arrangers in Lusaka.

This event will build stakeholder capacity on green and gender bonds requirements and needs. The event will explore the climate financing needs in Zambia and potential adaptation projects, and facilitating deep dives into the steps needed to make green and gender bonds one as key capital market instruments that will help the country meet climate and gender equality outcomes from target investments. Zambia already has in place a supporting regulatory framework to support green bond issuances, the Securities (Green Bonds) Guidelines of 2019.

In view of the need for Zambia to mobilise $50 billion to fund its National Determined Contributions (NDCs), it’s crucial that key players explore a range of financial instruments required to fund climate action in Zambia. It’s against this background that WLCA since 2022 have explored the possibility of a bond that could deliver green outcomes and gender equality outcomes. This is in full recognition that Zambian women face the brunt of climate impacts and are also leading enterprises adapting to new realities that need financial support.

WLCA has partnered with FSD Africa to deliver, the roundtable event. WLCA aims to collectively mobilize resources to support large scale response to climate change through financial instruments such as the gender green bond. The network seeks to enhance women’s resilience to climate change by eliminating gender gaps in accessing climate finance in Zambia. The women’s network is also focused on raising voices of communities impacted by climate change especially women.

Speaking at the same event, WLCA Co-Chairperson and WWF Zambia Country Director Nachilala Nkombo said that the organisation understands the challenges that exist in accessing climate finance for developing countries, the challenges are especially worse for women led innovations.

“This is the reason we as WLCA have offered ourselves to provide linkages for women entrepreneurs and innovators to local and global climate financing opportunities so as to close the financing gap. It is worth noting that WLCA’s objectives contribute to the economic transformation and environmental sustainability pillars of our 8 NDP by strengthening citizen participation in the economy as well as enhancing their mitigation and adaptive capacity to climate change for sustainable inclusive growth.”

As WLCA’s implementing partner, FSD Africa will be working with Zambian capital market stakeholders to identify potential issuers of demonstration green and gender bonds and lend its support.  FSD Africa is a is a specialist development agency working to help make finance work for Africa’s future. It is funded by UK aid from the UK government. This support is part of the Green Growth Compact, a framework for collaboration between the UK Government and the Government of Zambia to follow a green growth development pathway.  This will contribute to global ambitions on emissions reductions whilst protecting Zambia’s own unique biodiversity and natural capital for the benefit of future generations.

Sarah Bloom, Head of Economic Development, Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office, Zambia (FCDO) and WLCA Co-Chairperson said……

“The Government of Zambia has identified green growth and environmental sustainability as a key strategic pillar to achieve the aspirations of the 8th National Development Plan (8NDP) and Vision 2030.  The UK, through Women Leaders for Climate Action is pleased to play our part to build the capacity of market players and to introduce new and innovative products to Zambia, such as green and gender bonds as alternative funding sources to drive climate resilient sustainable development.”

FSD Africa has provided technical assistance towards the development of green and gender bond transactions across Africa, mobilizing over $400 million in the process. This entailed development and review of guidelines and listing rules in Kenya, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania that have laid a solid foundation for green and gender bond issuances and subsequent listing on local exchanges. Through various demonstration transactions across the continent, FSD Africa plans to work closely with bond issuers to meet the $277 billion annual climate financing gap in Africa.

Evans Osano, FSD Africa’s Director Capital Markets had this to say:

“Zambia requires about $50 billion in climate finance to meet her enhanced NDCs. FSD Africa is delighted to support the development of capital markets in Zambia to provide much-needed long-term capital through diversified and innovative investment asset classes. By leveraging on her capital markets, Zambia is on the right track to enable the economy to realise its full potential and achieve impactful real and social sector outcomes.”

Through FSD Africa’s support, gender bonds issuances in Africa have now raised USD 52.7mn in local currency. These funds will help address the access to finance challenge that is prevalent amongst women entrepreneurs in Africa.  In addition, providing support for gender bond issuances continues to grow gender bonds as a distinct asset class, increasing appetite for impact investing amongst local investors. FSD Africa is particularly committed to ensuring that we support funding models that have a clear tracking mechanism for the use of proceeds.

Request for further information can be made by sending an email to bmilambo@wwfzam.org

Issued by
WOMEN LEADERS FOR CLIMATE ACTION

 

Why NMB Bank opted to list Jasiri Bond on Luxembourg bourse

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Summary

  • Trading of the bond at the DSE will continue, and the hope is its listing in Luxembourg will attract the attention of global investors on sustainable and gender-based bonds

Dar es Salaam. NMB Bank’s Sh74 billion Jasiri bond was listed on Wednesday on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) in a move that showcases to the world the top lender’s first debt instrument aimed at financing women-owned small businesses in sub-Saharan Africa.

A statement from NMB Bank Plc issued in Dar es Salaam yesterday says the Sh74 billion Jasiri bond was officially displayed at the Luxembourg Green Exchange (LGX) at an event that also marked the launch of the Luxembourg Women in Finance Charter.

The Luxembourg Minister of Finance, Yuriko Backes, who officially unveiled the Luxembourg Women in Finance Charter, said the listing marks an important milestone for global efforts to promote gender finance.

The events were timed to coincide with International Women’s Day.

“… it underlines the Luxembourg Stock Exchange’s pioneering role in helping to drive new and emerging sustainable financial products. By directing capital towards initiatives that empower women and advance their participation in the economy, the financial sector can thus support the unlocking of new opportunities for growth and innovation to help build a more equitable and sustainable future for all,” she is quoted in the statement as saying.

Though the bond will continue to be traded only at the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE), its listing at the LGX sends a clear message to global investors that there is a sustainable and gender-based bond in Sub-Saharan Africa that was issued by a Tanzanian lender, the NMB statement further notes.

This also gives room for global investors, who will have seen the Jasiri Bond at the LGX, to think about Tanzania in general and NMB in particular whenever they want to invest in a sustainable debt instrument in Sub-Saharan Africa, the statement adds.

The Jasiri Bond, which saw its offer oversubscribed by 197 percent in April last year before its listing at the DSE, specifically seeks to finance women-owned micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in Tanzania.

NMB Bank expects that the proceeds of the social bond will provide up to 2,000 women in Tanzania with access to the necessary financing to start or grow their businesses.

According to the CEO of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE), Julie Becker, the bond provides female entrepreneurs in Tanzania with the opportunity to contribute to the socioeconomic development of their communities.

“At LuxSE, we see it as our duty to give issuers such as NMB Bank a pathway to international capital markets so that we can encourage other issuers to raise financing for women’s empowerment while also providing the visibility needed for investors to access these gender-focused investment opportunities more easily,” she said.

NMB Bank CEO Ruth Zaipuna said the listing of the Jasiri Bond on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange underscores the lender’s commitment to gender empowerment.

“Going forward, we remain committed to being a beacon of innovation excellence and sustainability leadership within and outside Tanzania,” said Ms Zaipuna.

In May last year, LuxSE entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with UN Women in which the two institutions committed to joining forces to advance gender finance and gender-lens investing.

As part of its commitments, LuxSE established a gender-focused bond flag on LGX, which highlights debt securities listed on LuxSE and displayed on LGX that raise financing for projects advancing gender equality.

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Why East Africa refugees remain financially underserved

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Summary

  • There has been progress in providing financial solutions to displaced populations.
  • This is particularly in stable contexts where business and personal financial interests are protected by governments.
  • The heterogeneity of refugees carries over to their financial services needs.

Properly integrating displaced populations within a host country’s financial system invites often thorny political issues and private sector players are erring on the side of caution.

There has been progress in providing financial solutions to displaced populations, particularly in stable contexts where business and personal financial interests are protected by governments and civic institutions and personal identities are more entrenched. But in the contexts where refugees struggle with instability, little documentation, a tenuous status or few financial links, those strides can vanish.

As politics sometimes place insurmountable complications for even well-designed solutions, expanding financial inclusion to displaced individuals in difficult locales requires a shift in approach that integrates both refugee and solution within a wider market.

Beyond the shared experiences of forcible displacement and perhaps downward mobility, refugees are far from a monolith, differing across gender, age, economic and professional backgrounds, among other demographic markers. Economic status diverges further considering their given status or length of stay.

The heterogeneity of refugees carries over to their financial services needs, which makes achieving scale for solutions difficult.

Self-sufficient

Some refugees in Kenya’s Kakuma settlement camp, for instance, are self-sufficient, with thriving businesses selling to the other settlement camp members. Within the same camp, however, are poverty-stricken families, making up 68 percent of the population in the camp.

These two groups’ needs differ, with the latter reliant on cash transfers while the former is more likely to take up more sophisticated services like loan products and insurance.

Private sector players have consequently been slow to serve these groups, erring on the side of caution.

Rwanda’s refugee population is served by a handful of financial service providers, including only one bank – Equity Bank – and a few fintech startups like Leaf Global, which are the only firms that accept refugee IDs to create accounts.

Lack of financial options

In general, a lack of financial options persists in spite of the many refugees who have graduated from relying solely on cash transfer programmes, numbering about 54 percent of the population.

Yet this untapped market is still small and fragmented.

Rwanda’s population of refugees, at about 144,000, is a small market size, especially when divided further along the various demographic and financial situations.

To serve them and achieve growth, a shift towards incorporating refugees among larger, more similar populations becomes necessary.

The issues often riddling refugees’ access to financial solutions – lack of documentation, ID, a stable address, savings or a financial history – often mirror those at the bottom of the pyramid, after all.

Success stories

There are a few examples of initiatives with some modest success.

Rwanda’s Save, a digital platform for savings groups, targets refugees and rural communities. Just a year after it was piloted, Save had over 4,000 users in 232 groups.

In the global south, Leaf Global Fintech, which provides digital wallets for safe financial transactions and storage, began with an aim to help displaced people as they crossed borders. Four years after its inception, it’s expanded to focus on migrants as well across its countries of operation, including Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda.

Solutions focused solely on refugees run the risk of only excluding further these populations from key financial products.

Refugees in Kenya cannot directly access regular M-Pesa wallets. Closed loop or locked wallet accounts designed for refugees enable the World Food Program (WFP) to distribute cash equivalents redeemable for food items at select stores within settlement camps – a tech-enabled dependency that simultaneously locks them out of access to payment, remittances and money storage in the epicentre of East Africa’s fintech revolution.

Financially excluded

Yet solutions that are exclusive to refugees – or rather, those that keep them financially excluded – are inevitable results of broader systemic issues.

To open a bank account or mobile money wallet in most countries, a formal ID is required, and refugees – often stateless and with little to no documentation at all – can be quite constrained by this alone.

A given country’s policy seals the fate for many refugees in need of financial access.

In Mauritania, a country with over 76,000 refugees and asylum seekers, a refugee ID provided by UNHCR is not recognised by banks, dooming most to exclusion.

Rwanda offers an in-between model, with particular banks and mobile network operators permitted to issue accounts to UNHCR ID-holding refugees, such as Equity Bank and Leaf Global Fintech.

Thorny political issues

Properly integrating refugees within a host country’s financial system invites often thorny political issues. Inclusive policies may arouse accusations of supporting foreigners at the expense of a country’s own citizens, and Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism issues can be hard to sort out when hosting refugees from war-torn countries with little documentation.

Organisations like UNHCR and CALP Network are hard at work trying to bring about interventions that facilitate greater financial inclusion, but the journey is long and slow.

UNHCR advocacy efforts enabled Zambia’s Central Bank to allow the use of refugee IDs to access mobile money services. Uganda also now enables refugees with valid IDs to acquire SIM cards. But in Kenya, refugee IDs cannot be used to acquire SIM cards, and refugees are unable to freely move outside of settlement camps without permits.

Underground solutions

With policy roadblocks, it is no wonder that informal hawala money transfer systems thrive within asylum-seeking corridors. Certainly, hawala has its enduring uses; humanitarians still use these systems to send out large amounts of cash, as large as $100,000, to areas that are hard to reach, such as Somalia and Afghanistan, according to Kimberly Wilson, a researcher whose work has focused on the financial journeys of refugees.

“[Fintechs] know they are competing with the underground solutions and they don’t have a competitive solution. They lack familiarity [among the refugee populations], and… they want to go to something they understand and trust. Then you add the ID problem as well as the KYC rules. These problems need to be solved if people want to see more formal solutions,” said Wilson, senior lecturer at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

While the Hawala systems work and are quite reliable, they are often illegal in many countries and have been linked to money laundering and funding of terrorist activities.

“The technological and the technocratic solutions are pretty straightforward. It just comes down to the politics of the country,” said Rory Crew, technical advisor, data and digitalisation, CALP Network.

Blockchain technology

Crew gives the example of a blockchain technology provider in Latin America who considered the technology a potentially great way to move money for refugees between countries. But a bank account or mobile money wallet connection is needed to facilitate the blockchain capabilities, which inherently limits potential scale in a region where mobile money uptake is still quite low and bank account ownership is limited.

Workarounds can be reached; Leaf Global Fintech for example, has managed to plug in their blockchain-based solution to the vibrant mobile money ecosystem of East Africa. A Leaf mobile wallet user can cash out using any mobile number from its countries of operation (Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda).

Yet invariably, few tech solutions truly take off because local policy makes it near impossible for the refugee and entrepreneur alike.

Confronting this murky regulatory environment, financial service providers serving refugees must diversify approaches, integrating both product and refugee within the fabric of a host country’s financial system thus engendering both the needed inclusion and business model success.

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WAMU-Securities advocates broadening the investor base

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Dakar is a city in the throes of change. The capital hosted the second edition of the Public Securities Market Meeting held from Jan 24 – Jan 26.

The forum focused on the issues and challenges of the regional sovereign debt market with the aim to position the market as a real investment option.

To this end, WAMU-Securities and other financial market players are advocating for an expansion of public securities to new investors.

“We need to rely more on our market, especially since external markets are almost closed,” Banassi Ouattara, the acting deputy general director of Waemu started right off.

“The Eurobond markets are closed because of the policies of the central banks which are forced to implement; with inflation galloping around the world. So, there is this need to broaden the investor base and the broadening of the investor base also contributes to the efficiency of the market because it will result in the expression of different strategies. This means that the more investors we have, at the same time as some buy securities, others will want to sell, so there will be a lot of trading in the market.”

Facilitating the financing of local economies

The forum saw three days of exchanges on the theme “Investor Diversity and the Efficiency of the Public Securities Market.” Basically, on how to facilitate the financing of local economies, something major players say requires a paradigm shift particularly for financial inclusion.

“Unfortunately, even though the financial market was created in 1998, it has yet to be demystified and no longer frightens certain investors in the various segments of the population,” Harold Coffi, the general director of financial services company at Societé Générale Senegal analyzed.

“I think that everyone has a role to play: experts, SGI, SGO, etc. There are also the banking networks since we have access to a large population that can easily adhere to these products. But there is also, in terms of financial inclusion, the much lower income, unbanked population. That’s where OME, so the Telco’s can also help.”

“I think it’s the combination of all of that, strong partnerships that will allow us to have a broad base of collecting the savings that exist in Africa much more effectively,” Coffi concluded.

Financial markets do remain indispensable in this quest to boost economies. WAMU-Securities, for example, facilitates contacts between governments and investors.

Moreover, one of the highlights of the Public Securities Market Meetings is the Country Focus. This is a forum for sharing experiences but also for presenting progress made and development projects to attract investors. A great opportunity for countries like Burkina Fasoa according to Aminata Ouedraogo, the Burkinabe deputy director of the public treasury.

“For us, it is very significant because we started the year 2023 with a program of issues. It was an opportunity for us first to reassure investors to accompany us and also to share our issuance program. So, for us, this is a framework that we need to perpetuate. We will return to normal conditions very soon. We especially ask investors to be with us always.

WAEMU, a zone full of potential

Today, the WAEMU zone offers guarantees: enormous economic potential, reassuring growth prospects despite the global and internal crises. This is reassuring for investors like FSD Africa, an institutional partner of WAMU-Securities. Funded by the British government, this specialized development agency works to build and strengthen financial markets in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Our presence here in Dakar will serve to increase our network. It will also increase the number of institutional partnerships that we can have. We have the opportunity to invest directly in companies. We also offer technical assistance to companies and governments on the continent. And I think that our presence will allow us to show all the financial instruments that we offer”.

Because of the crises that make access to international markets increasingly difficult, governments are forced to adapt. Financial market players have understood that economic sovereignty requires a broader investor base. For WAMU-Securities, domestic markets remain a more than credible alternative for making national and community economies more attractive.

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WAMU-Securities advocates broadening the investor base

Posted on by TIMOTHYRADIER

Dakar is a city in the throes of change. The capital hosted the second edition of the Public Securities Market Meeting held from Jan 24 – Jan 26.

The forum focused on the issues and challenges of the regional sovereign debt market with the aim to position the market as a real investment option.

To this end, WAMU-Securities and other financial market players are advocating for an expansion of public securities to new investors.

“We need to rely more on our market, especially since external markets are almost closed,” Banassi Ouattara, the acting deputy general director of Waemu started right off.

“The Eurobond markets are closed because of the policies of the central banks which are forced to implement; with inflation galloping around the world. So, there is this need to broaden the investor base and the broadening of the investor base also contributes to the efficiency of the market because it will result in the expression of different strategies. This means that the more investors we have, at the same time as some buy securities, others will want to sell, so there will be a lot of trading in the market.”

Facilitating the financing of local economies

The forum saw three days of exchanges on the theme “Investor Diversity and the Efficiency of the Public Securities Market.” Basically, on how to facilitate the financing of local economies, something major players say requires a paradigm shift particularly for financial inclusion.

“Unfortunately, even though the financial market was created in 1998, it has yet to be demystified and no longer frightens certain investors in the various segments of the population,” Harold Coffi, the general director of financial services company at Societé Générale Senegal analyzed.

“I think that everyone has a role to play: experts, SGI, SGO, etc. There are also the banking networks since we have access to a large population that can easily adhere to these products. But there is also, in terms of financial inclusion, the much lower income, unbanked population. That’s where OME, so the Telco’s can also help.”

“I think it’s the combination of all of that, strong partnerships that will allow us to have a broad base of collecting the savings that exist in Africa much more effectively,” Coffi concluded.

Financial markets do remain indispensable in this quest to boost economies. WAMU-Securities, for example, facilitates contacts between governments and investors.

Moreover, one of the highlights of the Public Securities Market Meetings is the Country Focus. This is a forum for sharing experiences but also for presenting progress made and development projects to attract investors. A great opportunity for countries like Burkina Fasoa according to Aminata Ouedraogo, the Burkinabe deputy director of the public treasury.

“For us, it is very significant because we started the year 2023 with a program of issues. It was an opportunity for us first to reassure investors to accompany us and also to share our issuance program. So, for us, this is a framework that we need to perpetuate. We will return to normal conditions very soon. We especially ask investors to be with us always.

WAEMU, a zone full of potential

Today, the WAEMU zone offers guarantees: enormous economic potential, reassuring growth prospects despite the global and internal crises. This is reassuring for investors like FSD Africa, an institutional partner of WAMU-Securities. Funded by the British government, this specialized development agency works to build and strengthen financial markets in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Our presence here in Dakar will serve to increase our network. It will also increase the number of institutional partnerships that we can have. We have the opportunity to invest directly in companies. We also offer technical assistance to companies and governments on the continent. And I think that our presence will allow us to show all the financial instruments that we offer”.

Because of the crises that make access to international markets increasingly difficult, governments are forced to adapt. Financial market players have understood that economic sovereignty requires a broader investor base. For WAMU-Securities, domestic markets remain a more than credible alternative for making national and community economies more attractive.

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The potential of Africa’s mobile and digital ecosystem

Posted on by TIMOTHYRADIER

Yesterday, the UK’s international trade department hosted the Africa Mobile & Digital Leaders Reception. The event, which was hosted on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is the third in a series of events looking at promoting partnerships between the UK and Africa, specifically in mobile-driven digital trade.

Digital trade is a driver of business growth all over the world. Market research company, eMarketer, predicts that online sales will soar from $3.3 trillion 2019 to $6.2 trillion in 2023 and $7.4 trillion by 2025. In Africa, the United Nations estimates that internet business could add $180 billion to the continent’s GDP. However, there are hurdles that need to be overcome to unlock the immense opportunity for mobile-driven digital trade on the continent.

Jamila Saidi, Head of Digital Commerce at the trade department said, “We know that digital trade and digital services powered through mobile and other channels is the future and will be at the heart of growth in Africa. The continent is one of the most exciting in entrepreneurship and innovation and this century will redefine Africa as its population claims the opportunity ahead and reaches for economic empowerment, all powered by entrepreneurship and investment.”

The Department is cooperating with African Business magazine to highlight how Africa’s vibrant and entrepreneurial tech community can leverage partnerships to overcome hurdles to unlocking the potential of digital trade in the continent.

The event also saw the announcement of a new business group, The Africa Forum for Digital Commerce, which will bring together people and organisations who are passionate about advancing Africa’s economic growth, to collaborate and create digital commerce opportunities from the continent and to the continent. The forum’s founding members include ARM (E3)NGAGE which has recently been launching its own digitisation initiatives across the continent.


(From left to right) – Stephen Ozoigbo, Senior Director, Emerging Economies, Arm; Henry Bonsu, African Business magazine; Dr Robert Ochola, CEO, AfricaNenda

Stephen Ozoigbo, Snr. Director, Emerging Economies at Arm, said, “Since the inception of our (E³)NGAGE lab model, we have seen tremendous progress across targeted program areas that support our digitization strategies across the continent. Our current ecosystem successes in Africa have also accelerated Arm’s ambitions around launching additional labs, as we expand across the continent.”

Other founding members include:

  • AfricaNenda – an independent, African-led organisation created to accelerate the growth of instant and inclusive payment systems.
  • Connected Places Catapult – the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and place leadership. The Catapult has an established track record of working with cities across Africa and around the world on initiatives designed to solve pressing challenges in rapidly growing cities, such as congestion and overcrowded public transport.
  • Vodafone – The largest pan-European and African technology communications company, Vodafone operates mobile and fixed networks in 20 countries, and partners with mobile networks in 47 more. Vodafone has over 330 million mobile customers, more than 28 million fixed broadband customers, and 21 million TV customers. Vodafone is also a world leader on the Internet of Things (IoT), connecting over 155 million devices and platforms.  Vodafone has revolutionised fintech in Africa through M-Pesa, the region’s largest fintech platform, providing access to financial services for more than 58 million people in a secure, affordable, and convenient way.
  • what3words – a British founded tech company that has created a simple way to communicate precise locations. It has divided the globe into a grid of 3m x 3m squares, and assigned each one a unique combination of three words: a what3words address. This allows users to find, share and navigate to any precise location using three simple words. The innovative location technology is used by businesses and governments worldwide to solve issues caused by poor addressing – improving efficiencies, enhancing customer experiences, offering smoother journeys and even saving lives.

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