Growing higher and higher: my takes from AFU19
Last week I joined industry peers at the third annual African Fintech Unconference (AFU19) in Kampala. The AFU came out of bonds formed between MFS Africa, Nomanini, and Tugende — among other African fintech companies who were finalists in the Zambezi Prize for Financial Inclusion way back in 2015. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch, shared victories and war stories, and formalised our conversations somewhat into this annual event. This year’s theme was Collaboration for Innovation: Fostering Partnerships for Advancing Digital Financial Inclusion, which provided a launch pad to talk about how we can work together to improve financial inclusion across the continent.
The event brought to light some interesting challenges and opportunities, and overall it was a great cross-sectional view of the state of the industry. These are my key takeaways:
Peer-to-peer learning
The three-day annual ‘unconference’ is always an exciting event on the calendar for me as it provides a safe space for peer-to-peer learning, collaboration and creativity. The format is self-organising and spontaneous, with participants suggesting topics and themes. It was refreshing to take off the armour, be vulnerable among peers and acknowledge the pain that comes with the thrilling entrepreneur journey!
During AFU19, I particularly enjoyed hearing from peers about their experience with scaling up, and how they have solved practical issues such as “partnership with corporates”, achieving diversity and inclusion, or surviving due diligence.
The industry as a whole
AFU19 showcased how the industry is maturing as layers of infrastructure are becoming “expected standard”. We are no longer talking about “how to integrate to Mobile Money” — it’s taken for granted! It was obvious to see a great deal of concentration around Payment (as segment of fintech) contrasting with much less activity around segments such as Identity, and Consumer Protection. The segment that seem to be drawing the most attention is clearly Credit and/or Credit Scoring. I was fascinated to hear the stories coming out of kenya but I remain doubtful about Credit being the “holy grail” of fintech. But I guess time will tell as the saying goes…
Misconceptions about funding (and opportunities)
Interestingly, among all the entrepreneurs who attended, there is still a big knowledge deficit about the Silicon Valley funding model (from seed funding to series A, B, etc) that is slowly becoming the standard on the continent. I realised that first-generation tech entrepreneurs in the new “Africa rising” context such as myself need to do more to impart this knowledge with today’s first-time entrepreneurs as well as honestly and openly share our experiences with investors.
We are also uniquely positioned to be more active as Angels, and help first-time entrepreneurs avoid the many mistakes we made. It is the only way we can rebalance the funding market in favour of African entrepreneurs.
Overall, I left Kampala with a renewed conviction that it is important to have a conference for practitioners, by practitioners, whereby we can drive the agenda and talk about the things that really matter to us; whether these topics include managing growing pains on the path to scale, unpacking the grey areas around regulations, developing industry partnerships, securing funding from the right investors or pursuing ‘responsible’ fintech solutions that don’t end up excluding people. I look forward to next year’s AFU gathering and hope to see you there!
