| Nigeria | The Central Bank of Nigeria partners Bitt Inc on eNaira. The CBN, in a press release by the Director of communications, announced the formal engagement of a Barbados-based fintech company, Bitt Inc, as the technical partner for its eNaira project scheduled for a pilot on October 1. Bitt Inc is said to be experienced when it comes to building a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)—they began to work with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) in 2019 to conduct a pilot for a blockchain-issued central bank digital currency (CBDC). CBN |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | We first reported the initial conversation around launching the eNaira in our issue 94. |
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| Tanzania | Tanzania reduces mobile money transaction levy after public outcry. The East African country finally reduced the amount levied on mobile money transactions by 30% of the initial Sh10 and Sh10,000. The levy which was initially brought about by the country's effort to finance their 2021/22 budget, received lots of criticism from the citizens who claimed that it was counter-productive to the country's financial inclusion agenda. Mobile Money Africa |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | Just like we commented in our issue 99, this levy is a potential threat to the mobile money adoption and financial inclusion initiatives of the country. Glad to see that the government yielded to the outcry and reviewed down the levy. |
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| Africa | Will super apps take off in Africa? Samora Kariuki highlights the macro trends that ensured the success of the biggest supers apps in Asia and outlines key factors under which a super app will thrive in Africa. Frontier Fintech Newsletter |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | In China, super apps are typically designed as a marketplace for offline and online services e.g movie tickets, restaurant meals, flight tickets, home delivery and, pharmaceutical services amongst others.
Some countries in Africa are also experiencing an emerging trend of super apps. Mobile apps like OPay (Nigeria), M-Pesa super app (Kenya), VodaPay (South Africa), Halan (Egypt) are all active in their respective markets. Except in Kenya where it could be argued that M-Pesa has attained massive adoption, super apps is still trying to achieve ubiquity in most geographies across Africa.
Factors such as low smartphone penetration, low literacy, and low discretionary income level have posed challenges over the years. There have been efforts through increased capital injection, cheaper smartphone offerings from players like Transsion Holdings and non-mobile solutions like Wave's QR card to solve these problems. However, adoption is still nascent and the challenges still persist. Despite these persisting challenges though, we expect adoption to still grow albeit quite slowly with more investments and cheaper hardware. |
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| Nigeria | Arab Bank launches fintech-focused accelerator in Egypt. Arab Bank launched their fintech-focused corporate accelerator program — AB Accelerator — in Egypt. The program aims to speed up the adoption of emerging technologies and solutions within the Arab Bank and support entrepreneurs with the opportunity to scale their market-ready fintech startups across the MENA region. Afrikan Heroes |
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