Last billion

What advancements could the agricultural sector anticipate due to the developments in the mobile industry?

The mobile revolution has favoured many sectors of the economy, with industries as varied as fashion, gaming and real estate, to name but a few, all finding innovative ways to leverage its growth. One industry sector that's worth taking a closer look at is agriculture.

As Arunjay speaks with our guest for today's episode Rishi Raithatha, who's a financial specialist and writer, you'll learn how the agricultural industry can team up with mobile network operators and mobile money technology to build climate resilience through accurate climate and weather predictions and devise financially inclusive insurance schemes for farmers.

As a digital finance specialist with extensive experience working in technology offering insurance to smallholder farmers, Rishi has devoured multiple kinds of research that reduce financial inequalities in the farming industry. Today's conversation will introduce you to the technical side of the business, helping you ascertain the incredible potential that technology is offering to the farming industry.

Time-stamps:

[1:18] Rishi's experience working in GSMA for four and a half years and what he learned about mobile money from his time there

[7:58] Using commercial microwave links as virtual weather sensors to monitor and map rainfall measurements

[18:24] What is meant by the weather insurance index?

Connect with Rishi

Personal Website: https://rishiraithatha.com/

Connect with Us

Website: https://www.lastbillion.org/

With the ongoing pandemic calling out for increased mobility in every industry, the mobile money and fintech sectors are moving fast to cater to its diverging market. Director of Strategic Projects at MFS Africa, Nika Naghavi, joins hosts Janet Shutlist and Arunjay Katakam on the Last Billion podcast to offer her extensive knowledge about the past, present, and future of mobile money.

Mobile money is ALL the rage these days. In less than ten years, it has grown from an interesting idea to a worldwide phenomenon. In this episode, we explore the latest stats and trends in mobile money and how agents re-emerged stronger post COVID. We dig into the advances made with fintech in the past year, re-visit three major mobile money trends from 2016, and find out the reasons for mobile money dominance in Africa. Skeptical about the unimagined push to digitalization today? Tune in to also understand why questions pertaining to unprecedented digital transformation need to be better addressed.

Time-stamps:

[00:43] - Nika discusses the highlights around mobile money from last year. 

[02:50] - Learn how agents fared last year - the challenges faced and how they revived from there.

[03:57] - Bulk payments quadrupled in 2020. Learn about bulk disbursements (as government subsidies and NGO disbursements) and the need for more subsidies and protection programs by governments.

[05:46] - Arunjay on the happenings around Fintech the previous year.

💰 Fintechs have raised $23B across the regions since 2017

🌍 Africa’s average seed rounds stand at $1M, India and Latin America average $4M

🦄 Latin America is IPO-hungry, India breeds unicorns while Africa is just getting started with M&A

💳 Payments, credit, and neobanks lead fintech activity

Access the full report here: https://bfaglobal.com/catalyst-fund/briter-catalyst-fund-state-of-the-fintech-industry-report/

[07:05] - Three major mobile money trends from 2016 revisited.

Three major mobile money trends to watch in 2016 | by Arunjay Katakam

[08:26] - Is lack of competition the reason for mobile money dominance in Africa? 

[10:24] - Will the gains due to pandemic stick post-pandemic?

[11:48] - Demonetization in India and its short-lived benefits - A case study

Connect With Nika: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nika-naghavi-a15b6448/

Connect With Us: https://www.lastbillion.org/

In this episode, host Janet Shulist facilitates a debate between Arunjay Katakam, futurist and entrepreneur and Nika Naghavi, Director of Data and Insights for the Mobile Money Program at the GSMA. Arunjay and Nika debate the future of mobile money in developing countries, with Nika representing the MNOs and Arunjay representing Fintechs and over-the-top players.

Guest bios:

Nika Naghavi is the Data & Insights Director for the Mobile Money Programme at the GSMA. In her role, she provides the programme and its stakeholders with intelligence and analysis on future trends and opportunities within the Mobile Money sector with a focus on emerging use cases, business models, disruptive innovation, best practices and social impact opportunities. Nika joined GSMA in 2013 and has held various roles, including overseeing Mobile Money Programme’s publication and projects as well as designing an overarching data strategy to ensure that the Programme keeps providing the most relevant analytics and insights to meet the needs of the industry.

Arunjay Katakam is motivated by his passion for financial inclusion and solving poverty, Arunjay is focused on how he can use technology for good, breaking down barriers to democratise money. A highly regarded payment expert with strong strategic and analytical skills, Arunjay worked with the GSMA Mobile Money programme for five years. Where he provided a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of mobile money including analysing the impact of new technologies and business models. As advisor to the Head of Mobile Money, in 2018 Arunjay led the strategy pivot to a Payments as a Platform approach and helped secure $17m funding for phase 4 of the programme.

Janet Shulist has more than six years of experience supporting financial inclusion initiatives through digital finance and mobile technology in emerging markets. She runs her own consultancy to support fintechs and digital finance providers and previously was a Mobile Money Insights Manager at GSMA.

Key topics:

Welcome  to the last billion podcast. This is a regular podcast that shines a  light on the people, programs and tools that aim to end poverty for the  last billion people in the next 10 years.

Our hosts Janet Shulist and Arunjay Katakam take you through recent news:

1. Tech speeding up aid operations in 2019

http://news.trust.org/item/20191217232954-gshlg/

2. The threat to MNOs is finally here, it's not Banks, it's not Facebook/WhatsApp/Google, etc and it is not mainstream Chinese players Alibaba and Tencent (at least not yet). The treat is coming from other Chinese actors.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/17/operas-africa-fintech-startup-opay-gains-120m-from-chinese-investors/

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/12/palmpay-launches-in-nigeria-on-40m-round-led-by-chinas-transsion/

3. Designing to close the gender gap

https://www.womenandmoney.design/#opportunities

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a review on iTunes and every other podcast app. Spread the development love by sharing or tweeting this podcast.

Let us know your thoughts @m4dinsider and join the discussion by signing up at www.m4dinsider.com

Our hosts Janet Shulist and Arunjay Katakam take you through recent news:

1. MTN Nigeria launches mobile money agent service

2. Thinking through an EdTech Readiness Index

3. The group overseeing Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency apply for a payments license in Switzerland

4. Pooled demand for mobile channels - new DIAL paper

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a review on iTunes and every other podcast app. Spread the development love by sharing or tweeting this podcast.

Let us know your thoughts @m4dinsider and join the discussion by signing up at www.m4dinsider.com

This week we have a special guest on the show: Nika Naghavi (@naghavinika) to discuss GSMA's m360 Africa conference last month in Kigali, Rwanda.

Nika is the Data & Insights Director for the Mobile Money Programme at the GSMA. In her role, she provides the programme and its stakeholders with intelligence and analysis on future trends and opportunities within the Mobile Money sector with a focus on emerging use cases, business models, disruptive innovation, best practices and social impact opportunities. Nika also led advocacy engagements related to the role of mobile money in reducing the costs of international remittances and collaborated with Harvard Business School to publish the first-ever large-sample quantitative analysis of the expansion of digital financial services.

More blogs: https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/person/nika-naghavi/

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a review on iTunes and every other podcast app. Spread the development love by sharing or tweeting this podcast. 

Let us know your thoughts @m4dinsider and join the discussion by signing up at www.m4dinsider.com

This week, our hosts Jenny Frydrych (@jennyfrydrych) and Arunjay Katakam (@arunjay) talk about digitising humanitarian payments, based on a paper Jenny wrote: Humanitarian Payment Digitisation: Focus On Uganda’s Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement

You can download the full paper here: http://bit.ly/2LQLUl0

Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a review on iTunes and every other podcast app. Spread the development love by sharing or tweeting this podcast. 

Let us know your thoughts @m4dinsider and join the discussion by signing up at www.m4dinsider.com

Our hosts Janet Shulist (@janshu) and Arunjay Katakam (@arunjay) take you through this week's news:

1. Digital governance innovation in Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh (India) 

https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/digital-governance-krishna-glimpse-future-working-paper.pdf 

2. Big Data, Big Opportunity: Is Data Science the Key to Universal Energy Access?

https://nextbillion.net/data-science-and-universal-energy-access/

3. HealthTech on the rise: 54gene funding round in Nigeria

https://qz.com/africa/1660709/nigeria-health-startups-54gene-mdaas-global-raise-big-funding/ 

4. An update on Facebook's Libra

5. Afro-Asia FinTech fest https://afroasiafintech.net/ and apply for funding at https://matchi.biz/hackcelerator2019.html

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a review on iTunes and every other podcast app. Spread the development love by sharing or tweeting this podcast. 

Let us know your thoughts @m4dinsider and join the discussion by signing up at www.m4dinsider.com