A colleague shared some tweets about
a yet-to-be-launched product feature we’d been building. Our Social Media Team
had created an account for it and some well-meaning folks reshared the
screenshot on Twitter and got some responses. A few of the comments showed that
people were looking forward to the product as they believed it was going to lay
a new foundation for education financing in Africa. That is what we live for at
Flutterwave–to build solutions that create real impact.
For us at Flutterwave, our
vision includes Africa-focused growth in the payment industry with global
implications. We may face a lot of obstacles on our journey to achieving
this vision, but we know that we are always working towards building the
payment infrastructure for Africans. For now, we have the Flutterwave for
Business Suite of Products which is built for Africa and we have Send by
Flutterwave, our remittance solutions which is built for Africans in the
diaspora. Africa is at the heart and center of what we do. And why not? My
beloved continent inspired me to start Flutterwave in the first place.
I was working in a
Financial Institution in South Africa when a brand wanted to expand to Nigeria.
They found it difficult to pay their vendors and employees in Nigeria and that
hindered their expansion dreams. I saw an opportunity to build the payments
infrastructure that will help big brands to expand within Africa and set up
shops in record time within the continent. Today, there is no better example
that shows we are very close to this dream than our partnership with Uber which
has helped the brand expand to eight countries in Africa.
Seven years in – and our
vision still stands; to support businesses expanding into Africa, to enable
businesses expanding within Africa, and to help businesses in Africa start anywhere
and go global. But I always say that payments are just one key part to Africa
being able to leapfrog its economy. In order to jump-start wealth creation
across the continent, we have to do this through payments, logistics, and
commerce. While we may not be able to tackle all three, we can get payments
right and as we do, we create the channels and opportunities for other
entrepreneurs to get logistics and commerce right.
Payments, commerce, and
logistics are at the heart of everything we do in Africa. These three
industries command values in hundreds of billions of dollars and if fully
unlocked, could create value in its trillions. Total transaction value in the
digital payments market is projected to reach $146.40bn in 2023. Third-party
logistics has a total industry cost reaching $344.2bn in 2023 and e-commerce is
expected to grow by 26.5% between 2023 and 2028. Mind you,
Mobile Money is a category of its own which grew up to $697.7bn across Sub-Saharan Africa in
2021.
There are a lot of
opportunities to unlock and what we are doing at Flutterwave is to roll up our sleeves
and get to work in creating synergy across these growth drivers. In the last
seven years, we have brought onboard the mobile money payment methods on
Flutterwave with our partnerships with MTN, Airtel, and Safaricom amongst others
across different countries. We have also integrated various third-party
logistics providers, most recently, Shiip–which enables our Flutterwave Store
vendors to deliver to their customers. We also continue to enable payments for
other e-commerce companies and online marketplaces across the continent.
There’s more to be done,
however. The industry needs continued support from the African Union and the
Association of African Central Banks. While we acknowledge the progress so far
of the AfCTA in creating the PAPSS network consisting of 8 Central Banks, 28
commercial banks and 6 switches, we’d appreciate stronger alignment in
regulatory requirements across the 54 countries of Africa. Also, the support
we’ve gotten from various Central Banks have helped us increase our technology
reach to 34 countries. There’s an opportunity to truly make Africa one big
payments market, and once we do, the possibilities are endless.
Until then, we will
continue to do what we do best; turn the support we’re given into value for our
customers, partners, people, and investors. And like I always say, yesterday
was the best time to build in Africa. Today is the next best time.
Today is Africa Day, a day
dedicated by the African Union to celebrate the continent of Africa and to
highlight those issues that affect us. On behalf of all my colleagues at
Flutterwave, I wish us all a Happy Africa Day! Indeed, it's still day one
in Africa.