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FarmDrive, a Kenyan data analytics startup helping smallholder farmers in Africa access credit from local banks, has raised funding from the venture arm of Safaricom, the biggest communication company in East and Central Africa, Safaricom Spark Venture Fund.

Ghanaian agritech startup Agrocenta will use its recently closed $650 000 round to expand operations in Ghana — the company’s CEO and co-founder Francis Obirikorang revealed yesterday.

Ghanaian agritech startup Agrocenta will use its recently closed $650 000 round to expand operations in Ghana — the company’s CEO and co-founder Francis Obirikorang revealed yesterday.

The convergence of mobile telephony, banking services, and information systems creates significant economic opportunities on a global scale. While the adoption of mobile banking and mobile money emerged on the global scene as a tool to promote financial inclusion, new developments in the industry have created additional possibilities for this type of technology to revolutionize the practices and experiences of business owners in the Third World. This paper calls attention to the different ways in which mobile banking services and mobile payment systems are able to create value for their consumers. An empirical case study is developed using the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (City of Accra) that details the experiences of MTN Mobile Money users.

thndr is Egypt's mobile first investment platform with 0% commission, no account minimum, access to real time news, market data and easy account setup and funding processes.

Always a step ahead of the game when it comes to finding innovative solutions to keep their customers satisfied, our smart friends over at EasyEquities partnered with InvestSure in 2018 to provide a safety net for a selection of shares in their portfolio.

Kiva has been awarded $2.5 million from the W-GDP Fund at USAID in an effort to identify innovative approaches to catalyze commercial investment for women’s economic empowerment and equality.

The Kiva Capital team will use this innovative funding to launch a comprehensive fund design and structuring process. This will include the development of an impact framework and a shared learnings platform.

Two weeks ago a Kenyan fintech provider PULA was among 20 finalists pitching at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The presentation by the CTO Sitati Kituyi was selected among the winners, enabling the company to walk away with a cash prize of USD 50,000, getting an exclusive opportunity for networking with investors and a fast-tracked application for the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof-of-Concept Scheme. Pula ‘restructures agricultural insurance and seeks to use technology to insure the previously unbanked, uninsured and untapped market of smallhodlers across the globe. It facilitates crop and livestock insurance coverage and works with Fortune 500 companies, global NGOs, research institutions, and governments to help provide smallholders the protection they need in an increasingly unpredictable market.’ The finalists who eventually pitched for the Global Fintech Hackcelerator were selected through two parallel scouting programmes. The local programme which aimed to tackle problem statements originating from the financial industry in Singapore and the broader Asia region saw 10 winners shortlisted from among 200 submissions by companies across 30 countries.

We are honoured to have the opportunity to collaborate with some of the leading minds in AI and ML to accelerate the extension of financial services to the billions of un(der)-served people in the world. We’re at a critical point in our business where we are focused on leveraging the latest technology to increase customer eligibility and decrease unequal access to quality financial products in emerging markets.” JUMO founder and CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball 

Jason has over 20 years of executive product and general management experience helping early-stage and growth-stage companies build and deliver innovative products and experiences. Prior to Kiva, Jason spent 7 years at Minted. There, he led the Product Management and Design teams after running Growth, Digital Products, and Customer Operations. He began his career at Yodlee where he eventually led global engineering and custom products, then moved on to establish and lead the product teams at Lift Media and Extole.

Neville Crawley, Chief Executive Officer, Kiva Neville joined Kiva as CEO in the fall of 2017. He brings nearly 2 decades of experience leading global business and technology ventures, most recently as the CEO of Quid, a platform that analyzes the world's collective intelligence to help answer strategic questions. During Neville’s career he has worked in China, Nigeria, Brazil, Malaysia and across the Middle East, including 4 years working for McKinsey & Company and as the publisher of China Economic Review. Board member since 2017

Recently the introduction of 5G to the world has got everyone interested to find out more about it.5G is the fifth-generation mobile network. It is a new global wireless standard that is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices

WorldRemit is a leading digital cross-border payments business. We disrupted an industry previously dominated by offline legacy players by taking international money transfers online—making them safer, faster, and lower-cost. We currently send from 50 to 150 countries, operate in 6,500 money transfer corridors worldwide, and employ over 1,100 people globally.On the sending side WorldRemit is 100% digital (cashless), increasing convenience and enhancing security. For those receiving money, the company offers a wide range of options including bank deposit, cash collection, mobile airtime top-up, and mobile money.

Backed by Accel, TCV, and Leapfrog—WorldRemit’s headquarters are in London, United Kingdom with regional offices in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Africa, Somaliland, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Belgium.

erhaps the most influential and widely reported publication pushing forward this narrative is an article examining M-Pesa written by US-based economists Tavneet Suri and William Jack—and published in the prestigious journal Science—entitled ‘The Long-run Poverty and Gender Impacts of Mobile Money’.

We are a global fintech pioneer, providing solutions for the financially excluded one product at a time We are all about convenience for our customers, growth for our partners, and financial access for all. The need to solve wicked problems is what drives our innovative spirit.

Nigerian fintech startup Paga, poised for global expansion, has announced its acquisition of Apposit, a United States (US)-based technology company with operations in Ethiopia. Founded in 2009, Paga provides Nigerians with safe and convenient ways of making payments, allowing money to be sent to any phone number for the beneficiary to redeem at a Paga agent or at an ATM via a cardless withdrawal. Customers can also use Paga to deposit money to bank accounts in Nigeria, pay their bills, or top-up mobile phone airtime.

FarmDrive is a Kenyan ¬based social enterprise that is unlocking access to financial services for over 50 million smallholder farmers in Africa. Using simple mobile phone technology, alternative data sets, and sophisticated data analytics, FarmDrive is closing the critical information gap that keeps smallholder farmers from getting loans that would allow them to grow and diversify their businesses. Potentially creditworthy smallholder farmers are often denied loans because they lack the traditional credit profiles that lenders rely on to evaluate borrowers.FarmDrive bridges the funding gap between smallholder farmers and financial institutions in two ways. The first step is to bring together multiple streams of data to create yield-predictive agronomic algorithms specific to each farming vertical and geographical region. T hese streams of data can be classified into three categories: 1. Agronomic Data: crop portfolio, soil health, drainage, weeds, pests, etc. 2. Remote Sensing Data: vegetation, weather conditions, climate trends, etc. 3. Market Data: offtake security, price trends, etc. FarmDrive then creates credit profiles for farmers by combining the agronomic algorithm with behavioral data. The behavioral data is obtained from farmers through a simple SMS/Android mobile phone application. With this application, Farmers can track their revenues and expenses, and also send demographic information to FarmDrive.

M-PESA was cheaper than banks, and safer and more convenient than handling cash. The financial inclusion driven by M-PESA has greatly led to the growth of Kenya’s digital economy.

M-PESA”: that is a name in global fintech history that can never be erased. Not that anybody would want to. Forever it will be the perfect example of a viable financial ecosystem based on rules unthinkable before

Feeding into the Central Bank of Egypt’s grand plans of building a digital economy and advancing digital and financial inclusion, the partnership aims to increase use of digital payment solutions such as POS terminals and QR solutions, by leveraging Visa’s global network and Fawy’s on-ground, localised solutions.

Bosire and Kimani launched FarmDrive in May 2015. The digital recordkeeping platform serves as a basis for bankers to establish credit ratings and determine which farmers are best suited for small loans. FarmDrive’s pilot program consisted of 50 farmers. Today hundreds of thousands are in FarmDrive’s database; about 830 have received financing. In turn the banks pay FarmDrive for essentially functioning as their credit bureau for Kenya’s vast farming community. The two entrepreneurs have no intention of stopping there. “There are more than five million small farmers in Kenya,” Bosire says. “Throughout Africa it’s about 50 million. But when we started FarmDrive, we always had global ambitions. We’re building solutions for farmers in Asia too.”