African Tech Roundup

Africa's 'high-end' VOD scene is hotting up, and for home-grown heavies, ShowMax and Kwesé, the race to achieving critical mass is on.

ShowMax is on the prowl for mobile telco partners that can help it hack growth while leveraging the enviable stash of international licensed content that its mothership, DStv, has in its vault. Meanwhile, Kwesé has the benefit of being part of the Econet Group-- a huge potential advantage in that they might exploit Econet's established mobile distribution network.

With Econet's Chairman Strive Masiyiwa promising that Kwesé will launch 60 channels across no less than 18 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it's quite clear that the network's "mobile-centric" strategy will not be limited to carving out a decent share of the mobile VOD market, and so DStv could well be due for a haircut.

This week's African Tech Round-up features a chat with Nzwisisa Chidembo, a programmer, business analyst and author of new book called Exploring Consumer Adoption of NFC Mobile Payments in South Africa which unpacks research done into why South Africans haven’t taken to mobile payments as readily as consumers in other countries on the continent.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

Got a minute? This brisk, energetic podcast presented by Brian Lupiya delivers the top three digital, tech and innovation stories featured in the latest episode of the African Tech Round-up (AfricanTechRoundup.com).

Music credit: Brian Lupiya

Several well-respected voices we featured on the show last year predicted that we would see some major agtech plays happen in 2017. Sure enough, Mastercard made headlines last week for launching a digital marketplace platform called 2KUZE which connects smallholder farmers, agents, buyers and banks in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The app allows farmers to buy, sell and receive payments for agricultural products via their feature phones.

If this initiative works half as well as we hope it will, it should make a heck of a difference to small-scale farmers looking to sell their produce to the right buyers more efficiently and at the best possible prices.

This week's African Tech Round-up features a conversation Andile Masuku had with Katherine Liew. Katherine is the Head of Digital Disruption at Barclays Africa. Given what's fixing to be an exciting year for fintech on the continent, he was keen to tap Katherine's mind to get a sense of how one the continent's largest banking incumbents is going about keeping up with the frantic pace of innovation within the financial services industry.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

The team at the African Tech Round-up has returned from the Festive break, and so we’re officially back to our normal programming.

At the tail-end of this episode, Andile Masuku chats with Nicholus Steward, founder and CEO of the Swazi Bridge Project. He attended the world’s biggest tech show, CES 2017 in Las Vegas two weeks ago, and he’ll be sharing insights he gleaned from the event.

We’re also catching up on some biggest stories that broke while we were on holiday, including Standard Bank acquiring Firepay— the company behind the SnapScan payments app, the George Soros-backed VC, Leapfrog raising $800 million to invest in Africa's finance scene, and the Nigerian fintech startup, Paystack, closing a $1.3 million seed investment round involving Tencent, Comcast Ventures and Singularity Investments. There's no doubt about it, folks. Fintech is definitely a hot ticket at the moment!

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

We are one week away from returning to our regular coverage of the week’s biggest digital, tech and innovation headlines, once the team at the African Tech Round-up returns from the Festive break.

This week's show features yet another sneak preview of Season 6 of the African Tech Conversations series. Andile Masuku chats with Simon Carpenter, Chief Technology Officer at SAP Africa. With 2017 well and truly underway, Andile finds out what innovation trend Simon is most excited about.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

This week's episode of the African Tech Round-up features a snippet from Andile Masuku's full-length sit-down with Chad Larson-- one of the three founders of the Kenyan solar power start-up M-KOPA Solar. Chad serves as the company’s Finance Director and Chief Credit Officer. He has lived in Nairobi with his wife and three boys since the company launched in 2011.

Chad is a qualified CFA and an Oxford MBA who previously served as the CFO of the Africap Microfinance Investment Fund, based in Johannesburg, and prior to that, he spent 10 years in the investment banking division of Bank of America in Sydney and New York, working on fixed income, structured finance, and derivative transactions.

M-KOPA Solar is aiming to be a $1 billion company by providing pay-as-you-go energy to off-grid homes. To that end, the company successfully closed a $19 million round of financing led by Generation Investment Management LLP in December 2015.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

This week’s African Tech Conversations sneak-peek is drawn from an in-depth chat Andile Masuku had with Eline Blaauboer, Managing Partner at both TBL Mirror Fund and Safaricom Spark Venture Fund.

Eline’s worked in the venture capital and private equity sector in both Europe and Africa for last 14 years— gaining loads of experience with new investments and portfolio management, negotiation and structuring of investment rounds and deal flow generation.

Her latest undertaking is something called 'Africa Tech Ventures' - a venture fund focussed on investing in and accelerating the growth of disruptive tech-enabled start-ups and businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa. Eline and her team at Africa Tech Ventures are currently in the process of fundraising and on the look-out for investors interested in collaborating with them.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

Olivier Laouchez, who hails from Martinique (French West Indies), is the charismatic co-founder and CEO of Trace, one of the world's leading urban entertainment platforms which reaches over 200 million multicultural and multiethnic youth in 140 countries around the world.

Initially a print magazine published in New York and London, Trace was relaunched as a multimedia group in 2003, and now operates 20 TV channels under several sub-brands and formats: TRACE Urban, TRACE Tropical, TRACE Toca, TRACE Gospel and TRACE Sports Stars.

More recently, Trace has continued to invest aggressively in on-demand digital video, mobile services, content production and event production.

The team at the African Tech Round-up is on break, but while we’re away over the next four weeks, the show will go on!

In place of our regular programming, we’ll share sneak-previews of episodes from the brand-spanking new season of the African Tech Conversations series which starts on Friday, December 16th, 2016. The series features the likes of Eline Blaauboer, Managing Partner at TBL Mirror Fund and Safaricom Spark Venture Fund, Chad Larson, Co-founder and Chief Credit Officer at M-KOPA, Simon Carpenter, Chief Technology Advisor at SAP Africa, and more.

This week we’re ringing in the Festive Season by sharing moments from Andile Masuku's in-depth conversation with the Ethiopian-born, Dr Solomon Assefa, who is the Director of IBM Research in Africa.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

Brett Parker is the Managing Director of SAP Africa. In this chat with Andile Masuku, he reveals some of the most critical strategic decisions made by SAP’s global leadership back in 2010, that helped the software giant maintain its dominant position in an increasingly competitive global market. Brett also highlights some of the fascinating greenfield opportunities SAP is pursuing on the continent and explains why SAP is well-positioned to partner with enterprises looking to navigate digital transformation issues.