Taking Africa to the world: MFS Africa story becomes an MIT Sloan case.
I have to start with a disclaimer. I am an INSEADer and my love for INSEAD is eternal. But…I may now have something for MIT. I must admit, it started long time ago. Sometime during my high school years when I learned about MIT being the place where the most beautiful minds on earth go to get their university degrees. But the flame died quickly when I couldn’t even pronounce the “Massachusetts” in the name.
Then a few years ago MIT popped up in my life again through the inaugural edition of the Zambezi prize which MFS Africa entered in 2015. We made it to the final but we didn’t win (Umati Capital did). But we won so much more. We won friends and a safe group of like-minded entrepreneurs such as Vahid at Nomanini, Michael at Tugende, Nicole at First Access, Martin at Chamasoft. The whole thing was orchestrated by Elizabeth Henry then at MIT Legatum Center. It was during the 2-day Zambezi boot camp in Cape Town that I got the inspiration for how to go about attracting and managing talents at MFS Africa; and the importance of building a culture which will offer both high output and awesome experience for employees. The boot camp was so great that few years later Vahid led Michael and I into starting the AFU which had this year its 3rd edition in Kampala. That’s a lot from one competition. And when I look back to connect the dots of MFS Africa story, the MIT Zambezi prize definitely stands out as an important dot.
Last year, my brother Kasso Okoudjou, was admitted at MIT as the Martin Luther King Visiting Professor of Mathematics. What a moment of pride it was and continue to be for our family. That my brother, that beautiful mind I grew up with made it all the way to be teaching mathematics at MIT was a proxy victory to me.
And this past Tuesday, October 29th 2019, the MFS Africa case was taught for the very first time at MIT Sloan School of Management. It was with so much pride that I sat with my colleague Rachel Balsham in the classroom while professor Anjali Sastry led a lively and passionate discussion with the students. The case (which will be freely available from early 2020) stages a recent debate within MFS Africa on whether or not we should engage in B2C services in addition to the B2B Payment Hub services that we have become known for. And to help students step into the management team shoes for the debate, the case narrates our history from the enthusiastic beginnings through the long and narrow passages, all the way to January this year when we had to make that call.
It is always something to read about yourself. What tops that is probably to be present while very smart people argue about you. And the class discussion on the case this week did not disappoint in that regard. It was as passionate as our own discussion had been at MFS Africa. Funny at times, taking unexpected turns, but always true to the vision of the company: to make borders matter less when it comes to financial services. The call we ended up making in January, is to leverage the uniqueness of our position to continue to densify and straighten the digital payment rails across Africa on one hand and seed innovative use cases in line with the changing aspirations of Africans and the diaspora, on the other. Our Homeland partnership with MTN is a great example of such services; and we intend to seek and conclude these types of ground breaking partnerships.
The class ended on a question from one student about the high interest rates being charged by some fintech/financial inclusion companies in Africa. I am sure you are all following the current chatters about this and burgeoning debt crisis in Kenya. This is an important question, and anyone who cares about bettering lives through sounds and aspirational digital financial services, needs to confront it head-on. And here is my answer: it’s about founders and funders taking personal responsibility for what they are building.
There is a danger of a knee-jerk reaction that could affect the entire ecosystem starting with funding. And it will be a terrible mistake. What is needed instead, is more personal responsibility from executives at digital lending players and their funders to fully understand the short term and long term impact of their services. It is also important for us, founders and funders, to stretch our imagination beyond credit. It will be a historical waste of opportunity, if the fantastic digital payment infrastructure we have collectively built in Africa over the past 15 years is only seen as a mean to disburse unsecured loans. There are many other critically important parts of the economy that need as much focus, funding and full attention of unreasonable founders: health, agriculture, education to name a few. We’d like to see the MFS Africa payment network be put to use in critical parts of the economy like these ones. And we will play our part in making this come true in the coming years.
I left Cambridge last week with a lot of pride but also a renewed sense of purpose. Now that we have the world’s attention, it is no time to linger. We at MFS Africa will continue to break down borders and barriers so access to relevant financial services is no longer function of where you are, be it in Africa or anywhere in the world.
I would like to thank Professor Anjali Sastry, Megan Mitchell and the entire team at MIT Legatum Center for paying attention to our work and elevating it on the world stage. I would like to thank my colleague Rachel Balsham for entering us in the MIT Zambezi Prize, and for all the subsequent work with MIT that led to the case, when it felt there were so many other burning issues we should rather focus on. I would like to thank Filip Nilsson, Maz Chaponda and Sharon Welang for believing first, and continuing to believe, that a team of ordinary people like us can do something that the world will see. I would like to thank my entire MFS Africa team for continuing to work relentlessly day in day out, to make our vision become reality. And finally, I would like to thank you all, partners, friends and families in Africa and around the world for your continued support over the years; it’s your faith in what we are building that keeps our dreams alive. Much love.
