Bixex: A New Home For Global Business Exchange

Issue 110

INTERSWITCH, AFRICA’S FINTECH GIANT DRIVING ELECTRONIC PAYMENT

COVID-19: AFRICA’S AVIATION BEGINS LONG JOURNEY TO RECOVERY

10 DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS IN 2020

A NEW HOME FOR

GLOBAL BUSINESS

EXCHANGE

JOANNA BICHSEL: HOW EX-MICROSOFT ENGINEER IS LEADING AFRICA’S FEMALE TECH REVOLUTION

54GENE IS INTEGRATING AFRICA’S GENOMICS DATA INTO GLOBAL RESEARCH

Are you looking for a service?

Find it on Market Place CLICK HERE

NOW ON

Editor’s MESSAGE

Covid-19: The Game Changer

T

he Coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on the global economy. Businesses (both small and big) are in mass exodus!

Nations are scrambling to come up with measures to save their economies. The lockdown has crippled world GDP and left business executives scrambling for new business models for the new norm.

Organisations around the globe are forced to go back to the drawing board.

Business strategists are retooling and reengineering business processes to ensure product/market fit. Meanwhile, SME’s are faced with one choice conform to the new norm or exit the market!

https://www.bixex.com/home.

Also contained in this issue are incisive stories from Africa’s finest business minds. Read the stories of Interswitch, Kasha, Terragon, Cashbox, 54gene, Helium Health, GeroCare, Drugstoc, Paymenow, SmartWage, Zedny, and Planet42.

These men and women see opportunities in the storm of adversities.

They are keeping the African enterprise on the forefront of innovation.

At Business Elites Africa, quitting is never an option. We shall overcome! No matter how long the night, the dawn will break.

Global Business Exchange is here Enjoy your reading!

In this issue, we present Africa’s business leaders on the cutting edge of innovation. These industry masters are leading business innovation with their product offerings. A good example is our cover stor y - Bixex (Business Exchange), a revolutionary global community of entrepreneurs and business professionals for business exchange. Bixex simplifies the way you connect for business exchange worldwide; while ensuring trust, privacy and reliability. With Bixex, business owners can exchange business services globally. Freelancers have access to the global marketplace of service demands.

Job seekers with the right skillset can apply for job opportunities anywhere in the world on the Bixex platform. This revolutionary site also offers business to business (B2B) matching-making s e a m l e s s l y. Yo u ’ v e g o t t o v i s i t

Ethelbert Nwanegbo

ETHELBERT NWANEGBO Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

Disclaimer: The information on this magazine is for information purposes only. Business Elites Africa Magazine assumes no liability or responsibility for any inaccurate, delayed or incomplete information, nor for any actions taken in reliance thereon. All information can be withdrawn or changed without notice. Whilst every care has been taken in producing the information on this magazine, this does not guarantee the accuracy of the information. Business Elites Africa is not responsible for any opinion, expressed by its authors. Materials contained on this magazine are subject to copyright and other proprietary rights. No material on this magazine can be reproduced, adapted, distributed or stored in a retrievable system or transmission without a prior written consent from Business Elites Africa Magazine. © 2020 Business Elites Africa Magazine. All rights reserved.

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OUR TEAM

OUR TEAM NIGERIA: 90 Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria.

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FIND INSIDE TABLE OF CONTENT

Meet the Nigerian Entrepreneur Matchmaking Global Businesses & Professionals

Guide to Bixex

Interswitch, Africa’s Fintech Giant Driving Electronic Payments

How Ex-Microsoft Engineer is Leading Africa's Female Tech Revolution

Trends That Rule B2B Marketing in 2020

Terragon is a World Class Data Analytics Firm Out of Africa

Cashbox: How This Fintech Startup is Helping Nigerians Curb Excessive Spending

54gene is Integrating Africa’s Genomics Data into Global Research

Gerocare is Providing Healthcare for the Elderly Across Nigeria

DrugStoc is Making Access to Genuine Pharmaceutical Products Easier & Faster

Franc is Helping People Make Wise Investment Decision

Helium Health is Digitising Nigeria's Health Sector

FIND INSIDE TABLE OF CONTENT

Paymenow is Driving Financial Wellness in South Africa

Smartwage Partners with Businesses to Provide Employees with Instant Access to their Earned Salaries and Wages.

10 Digital Marketing Trends in 2020

Planet42 Provides Cars for People Who Can't Access Conventional Vehicle Loans

How $100,000 Drowned this Nigerian Brand + Classic Lessons

Going Above & Beyond

Covid-19: Africa's Aviation Begins Long Journey to Recovery

Zedny is Empowering Human Capital in Africa

Top 7 New Technology Trends in 2020

Bboxx is Improving Access to Renewable Energy Across Africa

How Covid-19 is Bleeding African Tourism

10 Strategies to Attract & Retain Millennials to Your E-commerce Business

I N T E RV I E W

ETHELBERT NWANEGBO CEO / Founder, Bixex

B

ixex is a 21st century digital business exchange platform whose primary aim is to simplify how business owners and p r o f essi o n a l s c a n se a ml essl y c o n n ect a n d collaborate. It does not matter where your business is located - be it in Africa, America, Asia, or Europe. As long as you can access the internet and signed into Bixex, you can easily connect/collaborate with whomever you need to work with it.

Founded by serial entrepreneur and US-trained accountant - Ethelbert Nwanegbo, Bixex avails entrepreneurs an opportunity to access international business contacts and opportunities. The platform also has a social component which makes it a holistic platform.

In this exclusive interview with Business Elites Africa, Nwanegbo explains how Bixex is a broader version of LinkedIn, Fiverr, and Upwork combined.

He also narrates how the Bixex concept was revealed to him in his dream back in 2017.

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I N T E RV I E W

Meet the Nigerian Entrepreneur Matchmaking Global Businesses & Professionals BY: DIMEJI AKINLOYE

Q: How did you create Bixex?

A: This whole quest to solve what I think is a major problem started at the onset of my company back in 2007, when I decided to leave the company I was working for to create my own accounting firm. I spotted a problem I thought required an urgent attention.

It was a daunting task to recruit new clients or network effectively. So I attended chambers of commerce meetings so and identified with several groups. I would drive from my office for about thirty-five minutes to networking events, spend about an hour and thirty minutes at the events and another thirty minutes to drive back to my office.

And ninety percent of the time, I couldn't find a lead or make any meaningful connection. I spent too many hours at these events, plus I paid for attendance. At the end of the day, I couldn't find one person that I could say was a good lead.

I turned to LinkedIn and some of the glorified billboards, to see If I could connect with some of these business owners, if I could send messag es and have a conversation with then, maybe I could find a client, but it didn't work.

So for me, there was a need for a platform that can help both buyers and sellers of professional services mingle and exchange services while at the same time giving them social networking opportunities.

I decided to do further research. I found Fiverr but Fiverr was just a platform that people just go to find freelancers. The problem with Fiverr too was that the buyers and sellers couldn't connect meaningfully and there was no social component to it. It's so dry. For example, there was a book I was Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

trying to finish so I needed someone to research for me in one area, so I found a lady on Fiverr to do the job. Given that Fiverr is so limiting in communication that you can't have a good conversation about your need, getting a good result for my book project was a flop. So Fiverr didn't solve the problem.

Then I looked at Upwork but that didn't solve the problem either.

I became clear that there is a major need and I needed to resolve it. That was one. Another question I had to ask myself was; is there a platform that a person who needs business guidance could find a mentor without having to hire a consultant that stops adding value the moment you stop paying them? That was another problem. These problems gave birth to Bixex. I was so obsessed with the need to find a solution to these problems that I sort of caught a supernatural vision.

In 2017, I went to bed one night and fell into a dream. The whole thing was given to me in that dream in detail. From the name Bixex, which is Business Exchange, what will be on the site to the problems Bixex should be solving. It was so vivid to me in that dream. I woke up and wrote down everything I saw in that dream. I called some developers to run the idea by them and they said the dream was too lofty, that there was no way one could combine the marketplace, social component and all these other stuff in one application.

They said it would be better to make four different applications. But I said no, I want everything in one place. That's how Bixex came to live.

Q: You mentioned LinkedIn, Fiverr and Upwork, are you saying it's the social component of Bixex that makes it better than these platforms?

When you look at LinkedIn, it has just two elements that are contained in Bixex.

LinkedIn had the social element, which is connecting with people, joining groups, sharing content - that is one. Another thing Bixex and LinkedIn share in common is you being able to upload jobs and hire people.

With Fiverr and Upwork, the only thing they have in common is just the marketplace. So Bixex is like an embodiment of all these companies combined, and lots more.

Q: What exactly is the edge Bixex has over the other platforms?

A: Part of the edge is the Deals, the Matchmaking (B2B) and being able to send referrals. The referral process on Bixex is beyond just tagging somebody. For example, if I'd need to refer Mr A to Mrs B - I'd click on 'send referral', select Mrs B, and it's going to ask me who I want to refer Mrs B to, I'm going to say Mrs B and then I could add a note. No other platform has that.

In addition to what you can do with Bixex, you can create your own group. On the B2B Matchmaking, If I'm a professional in Nigeria and I'm thinking of floating a company in the US, you could go to B2B Matchmaking and create a request that you are looking for an attorney to help you register your company in the US and an attorney on the platform can connect with you, and you guys can exchange contact and execute the transaction. Whether you're a retailer looking for a supplier anywhere in the world, a designer looking for a global distributor of your products; the B2B Matchmaking will solve that problem. No other site offers this service, especially with the level of peace of mind Bixex provides.

A: No, it goes beyond the social component.

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I N T E RV I E W

Let's talk about other features on Bixex, what is the difference between the Marketplace, Deals and Offer?

Q: How do you prevent scams? In the case someone has been paid for a service and the person fails to deliver.

A: The Marketplace is where buyers of service post what they are looking for. For example, If a person needs the service of a graphics designer to design a flyer or anything, or someone needs the service of an accountant, Marketplace is where they all post their requests. They also put a budget they are willing to pay for the service. While the Deals and Offers feature is where sellers push their service offerings. For example, a web developer could post a gig or a deal for jobs and add a competitive service charge so that he could get a client faster. He could offer to build two websites for the price of one. In the same vein, a desperate graphics designer could decide to put out an irresistible offer - maybe to design a logo and flyer for $10 when the regular price is $50. So the feature is where all kinds of deals take place.

A: When payment is made for a service, the money doesn't go to the service provider. It goes straight into an escrow account until the job is done and the service buyer approves it.

For instance, If I contract a content writer to develop an article for me, the moment I pay him, the money goes into escrow. He won't be able to withdraw it. When he finishes the article and sends it to me - I'd review it, and if I'm satisfied, I'd approve it. Then the funds get released to the writer. So if you're a scammer and someone pays you for a service, you can't withdraw the money until the person that is buying your service approves the deliverable. That is why when you contract anyone for a job on Bixex, everything is designed by milestone. In the milestone, I will spell out what is expected of you and at the end of the day, the deliverable must meet the expectations. If it doesn't, I will ask for modification and if you modify it and I accept it, that is when funds are released. So there is a big safety procedure to make sure scammers don't succeed.

Tw o t h i n g s h a p p e n i n t h e B i x e x Marketplace. When I'm looking for people to bid for my service, I can make it an open bid or make it a closed bid. If I make it open, it means anybody can bid on it but if it's closed, it means I can only accept certain people to bid on it.

Let me share another component that makes Bixex different from other platforms. If you are a business owner, there is a way within the site that you can add business pages to your account. So if you own five companies, you can create five business pages and the business page is almost like your one-page website.

Also, the reviews you see on Bixex are not fake ones. They are reviews from the people you provide service to on the platform, unlike LinkedIn where people can endorse you without even doing business with you.

They may not even know you. For example, I have more than one thousand people on my LinkedIn page who have endorsed me and I don't even know them. That is part of the reasons we set up Bixex to start creating the trust factor.

Talk about the premium subscription.

A: Although the Premium feature has not been launched yet, until possibly January 1, 2021, there are three levels of subscription.

The type of subscription you have will determine the extent of access you would have to certain features. For example, if you are a freelancer on the site, depending on the type of Premium subscription you have, the site will automatically send you leads or give you access to bid on so many jobs. Also, with a certain subscription level, your bid could come on top, making it more visible over others that are in lower subscription level or those that have normal accounts. Free users still have access to a lot of features on the site but not all until they upgrade to certain premium levels.

As a job seeker, do I stand a better chance at landing a good offer if I'm a premium subscription?

A: Yes. A job seeker with a premium subscription will receive job offer notifications automatically. The person does not have to search manually. It gives you a

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better chance and it also doesn't prevent you from applying for jobs. We have an algorithm at the backend that looks at your profile as a job seeker and checks on every job post on the site that matches your background and notifies you immediately the job is posted.

Does Bixex allow users to create forums on specific topics?

A: Yes. There is the networking group, the business group and others. So you can create your own group and pretty much be the administrator of that group. We also added a feature that is called 'Fan Club'. On Bixex, we want people to also have fun. Let's say you are a fan of Real Madrid or a celebrity, you could create your own fan club around that topic. Others who have the interest may join the club and you guys can have relevant discussions.

There is the 'Points' feature. How does it work?

A: We haven't gone live with that feature yet.

We are just waiting for our bank to facilitate the global payout so that anywhere you are in the world you can get the money in your local currency. We are waiting for the bank to finish coding everything on the backend. how it works is that when you invite other users to the site, you earn points and the point can be converted to money or used to buy ads or some virtual gifts on the site. You can pretty much determine how you want to use your points.

What's the cash equivalent of one point?

A: Each point is about 50 cents. Each active referral counts as 50 cents - even if you are not the winner and you referred five people, you are still earning points but just don't win that big price. Once you hit 100 referrals it means you have 100 points and that translates to $50. Now, the way we make sure that those referrals are not fake is that the people you invite to the site have to link one social media account to their profile when they are registering on Bixex. When we go to that social media account we'd know if the person is an active user or not.

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GUIDE TO BIXEX

What’s

BY: SIMEON ONOJA

B

ixex is a global business exchange platform dedicated to forging real and meaningful professional connections. On the platform, like-minded professionals can come together to share their skills and ideas.

about every other professional, Bixex will help you find them. The revolutionary platfor m thrives in creating quality connections for job seekers in today's gig economy. Bixex creates quality connections that stand the test of time and produce real business results.

Bixex was created out of the need to filter out the digital noise associated with regular social media which makes it harder to find the right people and fill the talent gaps. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, Bixex is constantly re-engineering to make it easier for business people to engage with their connections.

Here are a few of the things you can expect from signing up: Access to a world-class global network Meaningful lead generation for B2B companies Ÿ Free local and global business listings Ÿ Powerful entrepreneurial matchmaking Ÿ Find and list deals

Bixex is built on trust and integrity

Signing up on Bixex

As you may well know, people use social media for different purposes. Bixex, on the other hand, provides a solution geared towards the unique needs of business decision-makers and professionals. The key aim from the very beginning has always been to weed out the dead weights and distractions of the major networking platforms, whilst creating confidence and honesty focused experience.

Bixex has three signup options designed to suit all kinds of professionals. You can sign up as a business owner, a job seeker or customize the identity under which you sign up using the "other" option.

Bixex Builds Quality Connections Bixex is based on the philosophy that less is more; it's not about how many contacts you have but how important they are. Whether you're searching for business experts, worldclass accountants, programmers or just Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

Ÿ Ÿ

Visit Bixex and select from the "join now as" option. You will now be able to select from the "Business Owner", "Job Seeker" or "Other" from the options.

or tapping the "Start Searching" button on the welcome page. The login button can also be found at the top right and the bottom of the page.

You can also use the "start searching" button to log in and start exploring the rich features of Bixex.

The Bixex Homepage Bixex has a minimalistic homepage designed to prioritize key features. At the very top of the homepage, you access the search bar which allows you to search through the whole Bixex platform.

To the right of the homepage (highlighted above), you have the message icon which displays the number of received messages.

The bell icon displays the number of notifications, while the cart icon shows the offers you’ve selected and plan to purchase.

There’s also your profile picture or avatar to the right of the screen. This icon enables you to manage your profile – You can view your profile and Business Page, access your Settings and Logout options.

Another interesting way to approach the signup process on Bixex is to simply use the "Signup Now" button.

How to login into Bixex Logging into Bixex can be done by clicking 11

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GUIDE TO BIXEX

they please, while on “Private Groups”, only the admin or the user who created the group can add users.

Bixex Feed The “Bixex Feed” displays carefully curated news and articles from around the world for the information and self-development of professionals on the platform. The “Bixex Feed” has the “Trending Topics” – which displays content that is focused on the most popular topics and “Wall of Fame tabs” which displays trending posts by Bixex users.

Bixex Fan Club

Bixex Social

Bixex Dashboard The homepage features the Bixex dashboard to the left where you can easily read the number of Connections you’ve made, your Profile Views, and the number of Fan Clubs or “Groups” created. There’s also the “Suggested Groups” menu which displays groups in which you might be interested. Meanwhile, the “Points” option displays the points earned by Bixex users.

These points can be converted to “actual”.

Bixex has highly interactive social features designed to enable business people to share ideas on topics that interest them - it can be focused on business, technology, sports, politics, etc. The choice is actually yours to determine. Let's take a look at the unique social features of Bixex.

Bixex Groups Bixex g roups provide a spot for professionals in a similar industry or with

Creating Fan Club on Bixex On the BixEx dashboard select the “Fan Club” option. On the next page, you click on the “Create a club” button to the right. You’ll need to specify the name of the club and provide a description of what or who the fan club is all about. Ensure to Upload an image that best illustrates what or who the fan club is about.

Bixex My Community The homepage also has the “My Community” menu which provides quick links to join Groups, Fan Clubs, Connect with Bixex professionals and influencers in your community, manage your page, and send a referral.

Bixex Status Update The Bixex homepage allows you to post status updates which will be visible to other Bixex users. You’ll find a text box which reads “Share what’s on your mind…”. Click on the text box and type in your Bixex update.

Bixex users can choose to Like, Comment or use the Share button to either Repost on their walls or Share to social media.

Bixex status update allows you to write an article, post images and a Video. Once you’re done composing your content you can click on the “Post” button to the right.

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Bixex fan club allows professionals to discuss trending topics for which they have a strong interest. The Bixex fan club is built to connect professionals from different i n d u s t r i e s u s i n g e v e r y d a y e v e n t s, personalities or ideas which interest them as the focal point from which meaningful interactions and connections are made.

similar interests to find answers, make business connections and position themselves as industry experts. It is focused on connecting like minds and driving self development.

The “Fan Club” option lets you view the “Fan Club” you’ve created and also suggests fan clubs you could be interested in.

Bixex Connections There are three tabs unders the Bixex groups - “Networking Groups” which displays groups that you have created, the “Business Groups” which displays groups that you have joined, and the “Suggested Groups” which displays groups that you might find interesting.

This Bixex feature provides full details of your social activity on the platform. On the connections menu, the “Bixex Professionals” tab helps discover industry experts and make connections. You can click on the picture of a Bixex user and Contact, Message or Connect with them.

Creating Groups on Bixex Select the join groups option and choose if you want the group to be public or private.

For “Public Groups” Bixex users can join as 12

The ‘My Connections” tab displays a list of Bixex users with whom you have made a connection. You can also see the number of connections you have on the dashboard. w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

GUIDE TO BIXEX

Note: The above options allow you to search the lists using the “Filter button” to the right of the tab. This search feature allows you to search for Bixex users using their Name, Title, Location and Company.

The “Invites in” and the “Invites Out” tabs show connections invites that you have received and those that you have sent out respectively.

Suggested Group Bixex suggests groups that are most likely to catch your interest. It does this by an indepth analysis of your profile and interactions on the platform.

Why the Bixex Market Place is where all the deals happen For both professionals and buyers of services alike, the “Market Place” is probably the most important feature on the entire Bixex website. It is right here that employers post job opportunities, along with the descriptions of what exactly they hope to accomplish and how much they are willing to pay. Eligible ser vice providers/freelancers can then bid for these jobs whilst ultimately reaching potential new Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

deals.

complete the task within a 5-month period.

Now, even though the Market Place on Bixex is important to every user, it is particularly useful to service buyers. This is because the feature enables them to actually seek out service providers and hire only those who are qualified enough to meet their needs.

After publishing this on Bixex, other users will see it. Among these users are potential freelancers who possess the expertise Mr Lanre is looking for. If after reading through Mr Lanre’s demands/description of the job and they are okay with the terms, they can bid for the job.

In view of the foregoing, Bixex users hoping to post deals on the Market Place must ensure that they are registered as employers.

As you may already know, there are two types of registration on the site – registering to use the site as a job seeker or registering to use it as an employer. The interesting thing is that you can actually register as both, thereby utilizing the site to its fullest potentials.

How Bixex Market Place connects freelancers and service buyers Let’s assume that Mr Lanre is a Nigerian PhD student of Zoo and Aquarian Studies at Western Illinois University. Mr Lanre needs a Lagos-based researcher who can help him to gather important data from some with contacts or professionals around the Lagos metropolitan area and he is willing to pay $1,500 for the research. He wants someone who holds a Master’s Degree in a similar field. The person must be available to 13

Open Bids and Closed Bids Depending on what exactly the service buyer is hoping to accomplish, he or she can decide to post either open bids or closed bids. When it is an open bid, just about anyone on Bixex can indicate their interest to do the job.

However, if it is a closed bid, the service buyers invite only certain people to bid.

It is important to note that one of the benefits of using Bixex Market Place to hire professional service providers is that it saves cost on the part of the service buyers. Just imagine how much you would save in terms of advertising cost!

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GUIDE TO BIXEX

Payment for deals on Bixex Market Place In a way to curtail fraud, Bixex has put measures in place. One of such measures is the use of escrow accounts in the payment process. Here’s how it works: after a freelancer agrees to work a project, the service buyer pays the money into an escrow account. The money remains there until the project is completed and the buyer certifies that it was satisfactorily done. It is only after this that the money is finally transferred to the freelancer.

This is a wonderful feature that every professional/freelancer and employer should definitely use. So, try it out today by registering at www.bixex.com.

NOTE: Deals and Offers on Bixex will disappear once the specified duration elapses. You can see the duration of a deal or offer reading in real time when you open the aforementioned.

Ensure to select the “agree to the terms and conditions” button and “Submit”. Your newly created deal and offer will be visible under the “Offers” tab. Once a deal or offer is created it will need approval from the admin before it appears under the “Best Deals” tab.

The “Order History” shows deals and offers which you have purchased overtime, while the “Offer Sold” shows deals or offers that you have been able to sell. The Interest tab shows deals and offers you have selected and considering to purchase.

To remove deals and offers from the Interest tab, click on the dustbin icon at the top-right corner of the thumbnail.

Bixex B2B Matchmaking

Deals & Offers Bixex Deals and Offers displays discounted services that Bixex users are offering.

Under the Deal & Offers menu you’ll find the “Best Deals'' tab where you can access the hottest deals on Bixex. This tab has a search bar to enable you search through the list.

Bixex Business-to-Business (B2B) matchmaking connects businesses looking to sell products and services. It is designed to facilitate a beneficial exchange of business skills between various businesses.

The feature uses hashtags to connect b u s i n e s s e s. Fo r i n s t a n c e , a s a l e s representative, who uses a specific hashtag #digitalmarketer for instance, will be notified when a job is posted with the same hashtag. So all that is left to click or tap is the “apply button”.

The B2B Match-Making Menu

How to add Deals & Offers To add deals and offers, click or tap the “Add a Deal/Offer” button to the right side of the page. You’ll be required to specify the Industry, Title, Hashtags, Summary, Details and References for the deal or offer. On the next page input, the Amount for the deal or offer, the Offer close date, the “Deal and Offers Timeline” which includes the Expected Delivery Date and the Expected Order Duration, the Units available and an Image.

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You can access the B2B matchmaking menu at the top of the homepage. Under the Bixex B2B Matchmaking menu, you’ll find the ‘Proposals’ and ‘my post’ options.

The ‘Proposals’ option displays a comprehensive list of products and services that you or other Bixex users have posted for either sales or purchases. Under the ‘My Post’ option you view proposals that you have created. Let’s see how you can create a proposal.

Creating a Request On the Bixex B2B Matchmaking page, click on the ‘create your request’ button which is located on the top right of the page. On the next page, you will be presented with several options that best describe you and what you’re looking for. This option covers a supplier looking to find a buyer and vice versa, a prime contractor looking to find a subcontractor or the reverse, and a mentor looking to find a protege or a protege looking to find a mentor.

The earlier mentioned options for creating proposals require you to provide certain vital information. The fields required to be completed vary from one option to the other. Let’s take a look.

Supplier or Buyer The Bixex supplier and buyer options for creating proposals are two separate options, but for easy understanding, we will look at them side by side, and then consider the information that needs to be provided. The supplier or buyer proposal option collects information from the respective parties and helps matchmake them. As a supplier or buyer you will be required to provide the following information. Ÿ

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What products or services are you looking to supply or buy?

Here you will type in the product or service that you are looking to buy or supply. Use clear terms to avoid ambiguity.

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GUIDE TO BIXEX Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

Select Industry Click or tap the text field to select your industry from the dropdown menu.

There are a variety of industries to choose from such as Accounting, Airlines/Aviation, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Alternative Medicine, Animation, Architecture/Planning, Apparel/Fashion and others.

Add Products/Services This option requires that you specify the product or service which you are looking to buy or sell. Some of the options you can pick from are 3D Design, 3D Model Maker, Abstract Writing, Accounting, ActionScript, etc.

Brief Description of Products/Services This option requires you to provide a short description of the product you are looking to supply or buy. It helps to use vivid descriptions, so the other party gets a clear picture of what you are looking for.

To complete your request you'll be required to specify your location country, state and city.

relevant buyers or sellers about your request. For instance when a seller uses the hashtag #leaderbags and submits a request, BixEx will use that hashtag to notify buyers who have also used the same hashtag in their request.

Prime Contractor / Subcontractor Bixex facilitates the interaction between a Prime Contractor - the party initiating a contract and the Subcontractor - the party executing the contract. To get a contract up and running via BixEx both parties involved will have to complete the following fields.

A Prime Contractor As a Prime Contractor looking to initiate a contract on Bixex you must specify the products or services that you are looking to contract, your industry, and a brief description of products/services.

To complete the request, specify your country, state and city. Ensure to input the relevant hashtags and attach an image to provide a visual side to your request. Click or tap the “submit to server” button to complete your request.

Subcontractor

Ÿ

Hashtags The right hashtags will help notify

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

As a subcontractor on Bixex you must

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specify what products or services you are looking to provide, briefly describe your capabilities, your industry, products and services.

After doing this you can proceed to complete the request by filling in your country, state and city. Use relevant hashtags and attach an image so that Prime Contractors on Bixex can have a clear picture of the contract which you are proposing.

Click or tap the “submit to server” button to complete your request. Ÿ

Mentor / Protégé

Bixex connects an experienced industry expert (a mentor) with an emerging industry professional (a protégé) who is looking for guidance. In order to get the mentor / mentorship process underway, both parties will have to provide the following information.

Mentor As a mentor on Bixex who is in search of a protégé, you will be required to specify your area of specialty, a summary of your experience and skills, your industry of expertise. You may also have products and services that you intend to explain or sell to your prospective protégé – you will be required to also specify that along with a brief description of the service.

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GUIDE TO BIXEX Ÿ

To complete the request, specify your country, state and city. Ensure to input the relevant hashtags and attach an image to provide a visual side to your request. You also are required to provide special instruction / requirements for the product / service on which you'll provide insight for the protégé.

Bixex allows a mentor to specify the amount for the mentorship to be provided and also state if the payment will be hourly or fixed.

Ensure to upload certificates to add to your credibility.

Click or tap the “submit to server” button to complete your request.

Protégé As a protégé on Bixex creating a request for a mentor, you will need to briefly describe your need, your ideal mentor, state your industry, development areas, country, state and city. Ensure that you use relevant hashtags - this will help to notify prospective mentors of your request. Bixex allows you to upload an image. This can add more details to your request. To complete the request, add any special instructions or requirements you have for a mentor and click the “submit to server” button.

Employer Bixex provides employers with a unique and highly targeted means of finding the right talents. Whilst creating a request for a specific position to be filled Bixex allows you to add up to 10 skills required for the position, select industry, provide a brief description of products and services and special instructions and requirements.

On the final page for creating this request, you’ll need to select your country, state and city, and hashtag. Upload and image to increase the clarity of your request, upload documents and files that further explain the kind of employee you’re searching for. Click or tap the “submit to server” button to complete the request.

BixEx Gamification / Rewards Bixex uses gaming elements to reward users Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

with real cash. The ongoing BixEx referral campaign ensures that the first user to sign up 10 people on a daily basis will receive $100. The prize increases every week. The cash prize for the first week is $100. In the next week, the amount to be won increases.

A total of $20,000 is up for grabs in this Bixex campaign!

business will appear in the Bixex “Business Directory” once you a business page.

Adding a Business Page To add a business page, click or tap on the “Business Directory” tab and select the “Add New Business Page” option.

The campaign will run from Sunday to Friday, for the three weeks period. There will also be a raffle give away every week. As people use Bixex they earn points which can be converted to actual cash.

Whilst adding a business page, you’ll be required to upload a profile picture and specify the Business Name, Business Punchline, what the business is about, Employee Size, Location, Phone, Email and Language.

Bixex: The Mobile Application.

Click or tap the create button to complete the process. Once you’ve created your business page, it will become visible on the “Business Listing Page”.

The Bixex mobile application provides an easy faster way to navigate the platform.

Available on Android and IOS, the Bixex mobile application is packed with all the features you’ll find on the Bixex web application - It’s the full power of Bixex in fast and easily accessible mobile medium.

How to Install The Bixex mobile application is available for free on Google Playstore for Android and the Apple Store for IOS users.

Once you’ve installed the Bixex you can login and go on to use the platform like you will on a desktop computer - it actually quite the same except for some few differences in visual presentation. Let’s take a look.

Whilst logged in to the Bixex app, you will notice three thick bars to the top right of the screen, tap on the bars to open the Bixex menu.

Bixex Business Directory The Bixex “Business Directory” provides a platform for businesses to promote their services. The menu links to the “Business Listing Page” and the “Add New Business Page”.

On the Bixex “Business Directory” you find a list of businesses Bixex. When you click or tap on the thumbnail of a business, you’ll be taken to the business page where you can get more information about the business. Your 16

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Interswitch, Africa’s Fintech Giant Driving Electronic Payments BY: SIMEON ONOJA

I

nterswitch, Africa’s Fintech Giant Driving Electronic Payments

Inter switch is Africa's f or emost integ rated digital payments and commerce company which is driving the continent’s transition to cashless transactions.

Founded in 2002 by Mitchell Elegbe, the company processes electronic payments, builds and manages payment infrastructure as well as delivers cuttingedge payment products and transactional services throughout the African continent.

Business Elites Africa had a chat with the Founder/CEO of Interswitch Group, Michell Elegbe on the company’s Journey through the COVID19 pandemic and the future of Africa’s fintech industry.

Q: How is Interswitch tackling the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic?

A: Covid-19 has posed collective challenges for business, g over nments, and communities on a scale not seen before.

Around the world, we are rethinking the very idea of human contact within communities, and while Africa has a long history of dealing with epidemics, nations across the continent have had to make significant adjustments to try and contain the outbreak.

As with many other countries around the world, Nigerian authorities implemented a range of lockdowns and restrictions in an effort to contain the spread of the virus w i t h i n t h e c o u n t r y. N e ve r t h e l e s s, Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

throughout, Interswitch was able to remain fully operational, largely due to the systematic business continuity plan we deployed ahead of the restrictions, in order to make sure all elements of the business were able to perform with no disruption.

Although no one could foresee a crisis such as Covid-19 before this year, our investment in our technology and engineering teams positioned us well for managing the challenging circumstances that the virus has brought with it.

The lockdown had a profound impact on the life of Nigerians, with people having to adjust to working from home – many for the first time. Our employees were no exceptions. We, as with many large businesses, we’re mindful of the impact of these changes have had on our staff, as the majority had to quickly adjust to working from home, while continuing to execute a range of responsibilities, despite very different and often challenging situations. I am proud and grateful to our staff for how they have responded to this crisis by ensuring business was delivered as usual, but also for the fantastic voluntary initiatives formed by employees to help fight the spread of the virus. Key example was the N305 million charitable fund raised primarily from voluntary salary donations from staff, contributions from Board members, matched by additional funds from the company.

As a business we have been focused on how we can assist in the fight against the virus.

Early on, we rolled out a free-to-use virus symptom tracking platfor m to help governments and healthcare authorities better track the spread of the virus. The app, 18

developed by our Healthtech subsidiary, eClat, has now been employed across 20 states in Nigeria.

Q: What are some of the policies Africa needs right now to promote e-payments?

A: The digital payments market has matured quickly in Africa. However, with cash still accounting for [95% of transactions in Nigeria and 85% in Sub-Saharan Africa], there remains significant opportunity for growth.

This being said, it is important that the broader environment is favourable for investment into payment and digital infrastructure, especially in the more rural underbanked areas where access to finance and payment infrastructure is limited, which often restricts the opportunity for epayments.

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Q: What inspired the creation of the payment card brand - Verve?

A: When Interswitch was founded in 2002 it was not about solving a payments problem, but a social problem. The focus has always been on making payment an invisible and seamless part of everyday life by creating solutions that enable individuals and communities to transact more efficiently with minimal disruption to their lives.

Before Verve, international card schemes dominated Nigeria and there was a gap in the market for a domestic card scheme specifically tailored to the local consumer. In answer to this, in 2009 Interswitch launched Verve, a pan-African card solution tailored to the Nigerian people, offering products and solutions that enable consumers to transact all over Nigeria. Today it has grown to be the largest domestic debit card scheme in Africa. Not only that, Verve is now used, not only across the continent, but in 185 countries around the world, thereby effectively meeting the needs of its increasingly global customer base.

Q: What are Interswitch’s plans to expand the use of Verve across Africa?

In Nigeria we have been lucky in this respect; the government and regulators are largely supportive of the digital payment strategy in the country. However, across Africa there is a need to continue to develop key infrastructure such as affordable and consistent internet access which increases opportunities not only for payments ser vices, but entre preneurship and innovation.

Additionally, it is important to note the role the banking infrastructure plays in this as well. Partnerships with national banks are key to facilitate and develop the growth of digital payment and ecommerce services. We are already seeing this in Nigeria where The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has reduced card fees, limited ATM withdrawals and levied large cash deposits, as it continues to push its cashless agenda, and at Interswitch we have worked closely in partnership with many of the largest banks since our inception.

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

A: Nigeria, as the largest economy in Africa continues to represent the largest single geography for us. We, however, still see significant opportunity across the country as we continue to serve the financial and technological ecosystem.

The success that Verve has had as the leading domestic card scheme in Nigeria positions us well to penetrate other markets using our existing channel partners, particularly card issuers with a presence beyond Nigeria.

Sub-Saharan Africa represents a great opportunity, particularly as we continue to see population growth, greater urbanisation, growth in consumer spending, and increased use of mobiles and internet services.

Q: How does Interswitch promote financial inclusion across Africa?

percent of the Nigerian population remains unbanked or underbanked, presenting a significant opportunity to broaden access and deepen the financial ecosystem.

Interswitch is very much at the forefront of this, developing infrastructure and products to help bring financial services to those lacking access to traditional banking. Since inception we have been working to deliver electronic payment products and services to the unbanked and underserved, partnering with financial service providers, merchants, billers and other organizations, all with a shared aim of providing secure financial transactions nationwide.

Our network of agents under Interswitch Financial Inclusion Services (IFIS), a subsidiary of Interswitch Group is one of the largest agent network providers in the industry and has made significant strides in bridging the gap between unbanked and banked populations. Through this network we are able to accelerate and deepen financial inclusion in the country by providing basic infrastr ucture and facilitating a range of financial services to underserved communities.

However, there is much work to be done across the continent, and our focus remains on how we can drive access to these products and services to more communities, not just within Nigeria, but across the continent more broadly.

The digital payments market has matured quickly in Africa, however, with cash still accounting for [95% of transactions in Nigeria and 85% in SubSaharan Africa], there remains significant opportunity for growth.

A: Financial inclusion is a core part of Interswitch’s strategy and fundamental to what we do every day. Today, more than 60 19

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Q: Interswitch recently acquired eClat, a health tech company. What inspired this move?

A: The application of digital payments is sector-agnostic. With the increasing adoption of technolog y and digital payments across Nigeria and Africa, opportunities to broaden the payments landscape continue to present themselves.

For us, we like to look across the entire value chain to pursue opportunities in industry verticals where we feel we can apply our technology to help solve the challenges that a particular industry may face. The eClat acquisition is an example of this.

The healthcare industry is a good example where we can help make improvements.

This includes building and improving efficiencies that ultimately benefit the customer in ter ms of ser vice and experience. This has broader applications, as we have seen during the pandemic, where, along with eClat, we developed a free-to-use virus symptom tracking app to help governments and healthcare authorities better track the spread of the virus. [The app has now been employed across 20 states in Nigeria.]

In addition to this, Interswitch serves businesses and public sector Bodies across retail, telecoms, financial services and several other industries in the Nigerian economy. As our services are already established across key sectors, we believe growth will come with increasing utilization of digital payment across them.

Q: Do you see a future where Africa’s fintech companies collaborate more?

A: The African fintech scene is vibrant and expanding rapidly. FinTech’s in Africa are all essentially striving to solve the issues that arise from a vast underbanked and underserved population that has very limited access to finance and as a result unable to take part in the opportunities available across economies. So, in that sense, we all share a common vision, and it is a very large market.

As the landscape evolves there will be opportunities for further partnerships to develop in areas that are beneficial not just to the companies, but the communities and customers they serve. From Interswitch’s perspective, we are constantly looking for opportunities to drive growth as we and the market evolve.

Q: How do you see Africa’s fintech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: The African FinTech industry is well positioned for further growth, which could be accelerated by Covid-19, with more people turning to cashless payments during the pandemic to reduce transmission of the virus, and businesses increasingly adopting digital services to allow continuity of commerce during the crisis.

Additionally, FinTech in Africa has many things working for it – favourable demo g ra p h ics, th e exp a n sio n o f infrastructure, and greater adoption of digital technologies, as well as a significant demand for these services. This demand is largely being driven by the rapidly expanding and youthful population, who require access to financial services and banking to help unlock oppor tunities and tap into innovation and the entrepreneurial landscape that continues to flourish.

Looking locally, Nigeria is quickly becoming the tech-capital of Africa, with a vibrant, growing tech sector. However, Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly remains the fastest growing digital payments landscape in the world. Last year Africa’s tech start-up industry achieved a record-breaking year with 311 companies taking a combined US$491.6m of revenue and FinTech remained one of the most attractive sectors with 77 start-ups receiving US$107m in investment.

The growth of fintech in Africa and push towards innovation shows little sign of slowing down, and we think there are significant opportunities in the long-term.

Q: How has Interswitch’s partnerships with fintech companies panned out?

A: At Interswitch, we place great value on our partnerships, and developing these relationships has always been fundamental to what we do.

We h a v e a n u m b e r o f s u c c e s s f u l partnerships with companies across the sector, including American Express, Mastercard, Discover Global Network, UnionPay, and of course Visa. The core focus of these partnerships is broadening payments across Africa. Besides, we all share a common vision to make payments across the continent more efficient.

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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JOANNA BICHSEL: Founder / CEO Rwanda, Kenya

How Ex-Microsoft Engineer is Leading Africa's Female Tech Revolution BY: DIMEJI AKINLOYE

A

s the explosion of tech hubs deepen in Africa, with sta ggering success stories recorded and billions of dollars raised in investment rounds, only a handful of women are in the front row and taking p a r t i n t h e p owe r m ove s i n t h e continent's tech ecosystem.

With the short supply of female actors, there are even fewer digital solutions tailored to African women's self-care, which Joanna Bichsel, a former engineer and business leader at Microsoft, believes is an absurdity and she is set on a mission to democratize access for all.

After spending 11 years at Microsoft, Bichsel joined the Melinda Gates Foundation as the Principal Technology Advisor. She eventually left the robust position and headed to Rwanda, where she co-founded Kasha, an E-commerce platform selling health, hygiene and selfcare products primarily for women.

Four years later, Bichsel's decision to start Kasha is paying off. The brand has pitched its tent in Kenya and is eyeing Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

other East African countries, with about 60 employees on its payroll.

In this interview, she opens up to Business Elites Africa (BEA) about how she's building a platform that would easily become a haven for African women to shop for their most personal items - from menstrual care to contraceptives - without shame and fear of stigmatization.

You co-founded Kasha for women, why the gender focus?

A: Around the time the idea for Kasha was coming together, there was a lot of talk about women and girls and how “they should be empowered”. There was a lot of talk globally on this topic but when you actually looked at a woman’s day-to-day experience in getting essential products, there were little to no solutions that were truly optimized for women, especially digital solutions and solutions related to products for women’s bodies, their health and selfcare. I don’t think there’s yet a realization that most tech is built by men and for men, and that a woman’s unique experience is often 22

not recognized or catered for. As a woman, I know what it’s like to go into a store or pharmacy to get a regular product for my body that shouldn’t cause any eyes on me, but the reality is that many products for women’s bodies at all life stages are stigmatized. The situation is even worse in small towns, villages and in rural areas where everyone knows each other and the community talks. As a software engineer and someone with a background in building technology solutions, I could see ways we could improve the customer experience for women to get the quality health and self-care products they need and want, confidentially and conveniently.

Focusing on women means limited customer-base. Did you not have difficulty in convincing investors to commit their funds?

A: Women often make up more than 50% of the population and what most people don’t realize is that they are the most influential consumers for health, household and personal care products. They are the decision makers for 80% of household consumer purchases. Women themselves have monthly product needs that vary throughout the course of their lives. The misconception is that a subsegment customer base is limiting but in the case of women, that subsegment customer base purchases for the majority of the total customer base.

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When Kasha first started back in 2016, there wasn’t much of a focus or understanding by investors who invest in Africa on the topic of women as influential consumers. There was also limited market research in this area compared to developed markets. I saw the niche as a huge untapped opportunity whereas investors really wanted more proof and data. In emerging markets when you are trying something new, deep industry research is not always easy to get. Thankfully, we did find investors that saw the immense opportunity, that believed in the team, and gave us the start that we needed to grow the company.

Q: What are the best selling items on Kasha?

A: The product categories that sell well on Kasha are menstrual care, pharmaceuticals, body and baby care, and beauty products.

Q: Did you know from the onset that the business would be bankable or you just relied on market research and your gut feelings?

A: Knowing how much and how often women purchase these things and their decision-making power for family goods, it was obvious to me that this has the potential to be a very large business. Continuous learning from our customers and from the market is critical as we continue to grow and expand our services. That type of research never ends.

How has the journey been and what's the growth rate?

A: Kasha started just over 4 years ago, and the journey has been intense. Especially for consumer focused businesses in Africa, the journey of an entrepreneur is one that requires grit, determination, passion and perseverance. It demands complete commitment to the vision you are working towards.

Kasha started in Rwanda and now is in Kenya, it must be tough overseeing two markets - tell us about it, and how did you know it was time for the brand to open in another country?

to start operations in another country and to continue to grow while one subsidiary is operating at scale and the other subsidiary is just starting out. We had to adjust a lot of inter nal operations, approaches to prioritization and centralize certain functions. Having great people onboard who can handle a fast pace and ambiguity is critical.

Q: Why the choice of Rwanda in the first place, considering it’s a small market and is there a plan to take Kasha beyond East Africa?

A: I don’t think it is always right to start in a highly populous country. There are so many factors at play, and often these large countries can have a high level of complexity and fragmentation that clouds your ability to clearly iterate on the customer solution and the product. I think in many ways Rwanda operates as a start-up in itself, keen on e n g a g i n g i n n ova t i o n a n d t e ch a n d positioning itself as the launch pad for startups who want to expand to the rest of East Africa and beyond. The Rwanda government is also one that is highly supportive of women’s empowerment, enabling greater access to women’s health products like family planning and actually invests in building out the digital ecosystem that supports ecommerce in the country.

Like many other countries in East Africa, the mobile phone penetration is much higher than in other countries in Africa and mobile money usage is rapidly increasing. Kasha has always had global ambitions but Rwanda was a great place for Kasha to be built and for the business to start.

Q : W h a t wo u l d yo u t e l l A f r i c a n entrepreneurs struggling to grow their business today?

A: I believe a purpose-driven business brings a competitive edge, but I didn’t realize at the start how powerful a purpose-driven business is. Find the higher purpose that drives you and that purpose will also drive employees, investors and strategic partners to rally around you and support you. Make sure you pick investors that you like as people and who really support the vision of the business, as they will have a positive or negative impact on the company as it grows.

Q : W h a t h a s b e e n yo u r b i gg e s t challenges running the business?

A: Everything is a challenge in running a start-up and you have to get comfortable with that being the core journey.

Q: How is Kasha faring amid the Covid19 pandemic?

A: eCommerce is well positioned to weather the COVID pandemic, especially with companies that focus on healthcare products and essential goods. Kasha has fortunately not been negatively impacted by the pandemic, although constant operational adjustments are needed, and the business is growing strong.

Q: Tells us about your background education, career, family...

A: I was born in Poland and my family immigrated to Canada on refugee status when I was a few years old. I grew up in the Toronto area and studied Computer Science.

Microsoft hired me straight out of University and I spent 11 years working at their headquarters in the US. I was in engineering for about half of that time and the other half was spent as a business leader.

I managed an international cybersecurity team. I started to get into tech in emerging markets and eventually left Microsoft to work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where I was the Principal Te c h n o l o g y A d v i s o r f o r G l o b a l Development. I worked on tech solutions across East and West Africa and South Asia.

Then, I left Gates Foundation to start Kasha in Rwanda. I was living in Rwanda when Kasha started, but I now live in Kenya with my husband and two children.

Q: How do you define success?

A: Accomplishing things which are fulfilling while learning and stretching yourself along the way. Personal growth can be painful and it’s uncomfortable for a reason, but overcoming the challenges and moving beyond feels great. For me, there is no success if I don’t have a positive family life since in the end, they are the ones that will love and support me unconditionally.

A: It was definitely a rich learning experience Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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ARTICLE

Trends That Rule B2B Marketing in 2020 BY: SIMEON ONOJA

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2b marketers have traditionally played catch-up with their B2C

counterparts when it comes to adapting to the changing times. But considering the trends in 2020, the gap is starting to thin up.

Digital marketing is rapidly evolving as the method of creating content and engaging with customers is signiďŹ cantly different compared to some years back.

The B2B marketing world is currently undergoing many big changes, mostly focused on technical advances and changing SEO patterns. Let's take a look at these trends in 2020 that are shaping the B2B marketing industry.

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

Immersive Personalisation

relationship moving forward.

Advancements in technology call for smarter marketing. Presently, both B2B and B2C customers expect more and more personalization of their marketing content.

The days are gone where an e-mail template is enough.

The most important change in this area, however, comes with the ability to automate data analysis using AI (ArtiďŹ cial Intelligence) and machine learning. Techniques such as clustering and Natural Language Processing (NLP) mean that algorithms are becoming increasingly sophisticated when analyzing customer data. And by learning more about the consumer, marketers are also discovering new and creative ways to more closely customize marketing content to their desires, tastes and preferences.

Personalisation requires that marketing content is customized to individual consumers, tailored to their particular desires, behaviour and experiences with the company. This goes beyond emails - virtually every marketing material can beneďŹ t from personalisation. As time g oes on, customized user experiences will begin to affect the engagement of a customer with products at every stage of their journey from awareness to conversion, and the customer 24

Long-form Content There's a long-held mantra in the digital world that content should be short, concise and to the point. w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

ARTICLE

This logic is starting to become a bit more complex after many years. Long-form content is becoming more commonplace for marketers trying to achieve more with their SEO efforts. Content getting longer and providing more information is one of the clearest trends in B2B marketing we 're seeing at the moment.

When you publish long-form material, you will definitely encounter outcomes that are very slightly different from what you're used to. Some readers are often likely to be putoff by the vast length of the material, these type of readers simply want fast answers to basic questions. But in general, these readers are less useful to marketers. Publishing longform content attracts a specific community of readers who are genuinely interested in your ideas and are willing to make a time commitment for valuable information.

AI is taking customer experience to new levels Driven by artificial intelligence, chatbots can be used to automate basic customer services requests, meaning consumers can get answer to simple questions without having to speak with the company.

Currently, this has extensive effects on B2B websites and the whole marketing process.

So far in 2020, we have seen AI used to simplify the process of account selection, broaden online s h o p p i n g e x p e r i e n c e s, simplify SEO and a lot more.

customers who left after seeing the contact form and never returned. Marketers have started to understand that their best bet is not the lead form.

Voice-driven SEO The emergence of Siri, Alexa and Cortana have sparked a revolution in online searches and SEO in the last few years. A growing number of people turn to voice searches as a quick and easy way to answer their questions.

Today, the impacts on SEO are minimal – but we are definitely starting to see positive signs that it will profoundly impact the industry in the coming years.

Google recently rolled out the Speakable Schema Markup, which was the first sign that voice searches were beginning to affect the SEO environment. Essentially, it required content creators to markup parts of their content that would qualify for a voice search response - this usually means clear answers to specific queries in a concise way. Google would then use its own algorithms to decide how useful the markups were for voice searches.

Influencer Marketing

continued to grow in acceptance and versatility in business world. According to a recent research finding by Demand Gen Report, 95% of B2B buyers say they opt for products and services endorsed by industry influencers.

Immense sources of information and distr ust of brand messaging make collaborating with industry experts, who have the attention of consumers looking for solutions an ideal approach.

In order to highlight case studies and successes, B2B brands engage prominent brandividuals to draw top funnel interest, industry experts and practitioners to highlight industry best practices, or internal key opinion leaders and subject experts. B2B influencer marketing provides innovative solutions for maximising marketing efficiency through the entire lifecycle of the customers.

Although still in its early phase, these developments indicate promising opportunities for B2B marketers in the years ahead. However, it is only by incorporating the strengths of each evolving phenomenon into a broader inbound strategy that the true potential of the future starts to emerge.

In 2019, influencer marketing was ranked as a top 4 strategy for B2B marketers, and has

Less Gated Content B2B marketers are slowly turning away from the old strategy of getting useful customer details by locking valuable content behind a contact form, but a customer converted by the strength of the content.

Gated content only gives marketers one side of the picture. They can only see the number of people who filled out the form, but cannot see the potential Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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Terragon is a World Class Data Analytics Firm Out of Africa ELOCHUKWU UMEH BY: SIMEON ONOJA

CEO / Founder, Terragon - Fintech

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erragon is a cutting-edge data analytics company which is driving enterprise marketing across Africa. The company collects and makes meaning of difficult-to-source consumer data for telecommunications companies, banks, and other top brands.

Founded in 2009 by Elochukwu Umeh a data and marketing technology expert, Terragon is transforming the medium and manner through which companies reach their customers across Africa as well as leverages the power of smart mobile device to reach Africans across the continent.

Terragon CEO, Elochukwu Umeh spoke to Business Elites Africa on the exploits of the company and the state of data analytics in Africa.

Q: Throw more light into what Terragon does.

A: Summarily, we enable super-charged connections between brands and their customers. We are an enterprise software business. We help consumer companies in Africa connect at scale to their customers on mobile using the power and possibilities of data analytics and artificial intelligence. We use an aggregation of online and offline data, and predictive scoring to help brands, marketing agencies and platforms accurately target people across channels and devices.

We aggregate and enrich difficult-to-source consumer data, generating measurable outcomes for our clients.

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Nigeria At Terragon, we believe that genuine customer relationships can be built only when the brand knows all there is to know about the customer and so we exist to help build genuine customer relationships for businesses.

Q: What path led to where Terragon is right now?

A: Terragon began as a mobile ad network and broad digital media agency in 2009, delivering digital marketing campaigns for top brands in Nigeria. However, due to market demands, the business has morphed into an enterprise software business that leverages artificial intelligence, mobile marketing channels and data analytics to deliver connections at scale for mobile-first markets.

N ow, A f r i c a h a s ove r 7 0 0 m i l l i o n connections and nearly 70% of them are feature phones. Those that buy data, buy it sparingly, making it difficult for brands to reach the majority of their customers through only online marketing platforms.

We decided to create a software that can help us intelligently understand the customer and know the best way to reach him at any given time.

We discovered that in a world where business growth is limited by the superficial understanding of the customer across channels, deep, personalised insights that enhance customer experiences could be the game-changer for big brands. This is the gap that Terragon fills in a way no other data company in Nigeria can. To achieve this, after years of research in Nigeria and India, 26

we built our proprietary software stack.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Terragon?

A: Our People – the brains behind our products. At Terragon, we’re a team of smart, driven and fun-loving people. Our people are very enthusiastic and passionate about helping businesses connect intelligently with their customers and improving ourselves continuously while at it.

We have a data-driven culture, as free as we may seem, ever yone knows their responsibility and puts in a 101% to ensure that we serve our clients and deliver the best products. So “Terraformers” (Terragon Staff) are our biggest strength.

We also have a deep knowledge of the African space. Companies across Africa choose to work with us over global players because no one knows Africans like we do.

Also, our deep focus on data-driven solutions and artificial intelligence rivals what you can get anywhere in the world. w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

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Over time we have used our proprietary software to help leading banks and FMCG companies in Nigeria and Africa achieve their marketing goals. When we handle a campaign, oftentimes we exceed the objectives set by the client for such campaigns.

Only recently, one of our clients, a leading bank in Africa, wanting to meet with the financial inclusion mandate of the CBN, eng aged us to help drive customer acquisition through USSD. They already had great products tailored for customers who were not into online banking. So, with majority of the 60 million unbanked Nigerians, offline, they wanted to acquire 10,000 USSD customers weekly.

Q: Tell us about Terragon’s services?

A: With our proprietary software, we help leading brands across verticals to deliver personalised customer experience at scale, and in the areas of customer retention and acquisition, customer eng ag ement, precision targ eting, location-based messaging, etc. Data is at the heart of what we do and so with over 108 million unique profiles, we help brands intelligently connect with their customers.

Our platform unifies your customer data from various sources, enriches with contextual and behavioural attributes to derive insights and recommendations. We enable you to reach your customers across all ch a n n e l s, o f fl i n e a n d o n l i n e, w i t h personalized and consistent messaging at every stage of their journeys. We also provide dedicated assistance that informs your marketing strategy and support you every step of the way to ensure your business goals are met.

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We took on the project and with our software, we identified the target audience that fit into the bank’s vision for their USSD product and segmented the customer profiles matching this target audience. Our machine learning model further qualified the individuals from this audience with the highest propensity to take up the bank’s offer. We leveraged offline marketing channels to easily reach the target and also match the offline user journey of the bank’s USSD channel.

We were able to acquire 18,000 USSD customers weekly for the bank, as opposed to the campaign target of 10,000 USSD customers weekly.

For some other clients, we have helped drive app installs and account reactivation. One of our clients, another bank, wanted to reactivate accounts of customers who had not used their accounts for 6 months. We uploaded the profiles of the dormant accounts into our software to generate demographic and behavioural attributes of each of them. We further segmented the customers into smaller groups of similar attributes and then carried out some A/B multivariate tests. At the end, over 70,000 transactions were generated and over 16,000 accounts were activated.

consented first party data from events organized by the client. We uploaded the data into our Customer Data Platform for enrichment and segmentation. The client can now get real-time insights and make data-driven marketing decisions. In addition, our results are always at least 5x better than any market competitor.

Q: Where is Africa with data analytics in marketing?

A: Well, Africa is still an emerging market in this space but a lot is happening and the industry is expanding. A few years ago, no one cared about the power of data or even made data-driven decisions. Today, businesses in Africa are becoming more and more focused on the importance of data to business.

We are seeing businesses make informed decisions based on the data they collect.

Thank you to the mobile revolution, which has made market research even easier.

Brands can now easily collect information, analyse it and act on it.

A lot still needs to be done. Yes, the continent has potentials that have not been fully leveraged but we must give some kudos for the little developments. The future seems bright especially as we enter the next normal.

Across Africa, we are seeing businesses speedily adopt a digital transformation model. Definitely, more companies will move towards analysing the data they collect and make their marketing decision based on such data Q: How can data security and consumer privacy be better managed in Africa?

A: You will agree with me that data has become a high priority asset in today’s information era and the next few years will see an even greater upsurge in this fast-paced digital transformation. However, there have been serious concerns as regards data security and consumer privacy in recent years. We have seen several cases of data breach and misuse of consumer’s data.

On the data gathering aspect, we also help leading brands generate consented firstparty data which can better enhance their marketing activities. Recently, we helped a leading beverage brand get over 100,000 27

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Data protection has become very crucial especially as most countries classify personal data protection as a fundamental right. Even in business, data protection is a gateway issue for trust in the digital economy. In recent years, some top global brands have been singled out for failing to provide users with transparent and understandable information on their data use policies.

We have also seen that data privacy has become a huge public concern. In fact, the year 2019 saw an increasing focus on data privacy globally, including a variety of new government regulations. The reason for this is not far-fetched, attacks are increasing in size, sophistication as well as cost, and data breaches expose the personal data of millions of people.

In 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) went into effect. The GDPR compels organizations to prevent data from getting into the wrong hands and ensure that it is obtained through consent. It also places a strong onus on companies to respect the rights of individuals as data owners, such as adhering to requests for access.

Here in Nigeria, we have the Nigerian Data Protection Regulations (NDPR) as instituted by the National Information Te c h n o l o g y D e ve l o p m e n t A g e n c y (NITDA) in 2019. The NDPR prescribes the minimum data protection requirements for the collection, storage and processing of personal data in Nigeria; to be in accordance with a lawful purpose content by the data subject.

For us to better manage data security and privacy issues, businesses must operate within the scope of necessary regulations.

Consumers too must be aware of their privacy rights. In a survey we (Terragon) conducted earlier this year with over 100 respondents, 85% of them indicated that they were aware that their personal information was collected through their online activities. 95% further pointed out that they see notifications on cookies/privacy policies whenever they visit websites but only 4% care to read those policies or adjust their cookies settings always. So, while companies must play by the rules, consumers have to know their rights and act accordingly.

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In terms of data security, companies may need to appraise their existing data governance strategies to ensure regulatory fit. Data governance requires constant attention across major business functions — from the marketing department, pulling through to both legal and finance teams. In order for org anizations to protect themselves against data threats, they must develop and implement suitable data policies, procedures and plans.

It of course goes without saying that Terragon is both compliant with GDPR and NDPR. We also take leadership roles in various regional and global bodies to add our perspective on these issues, with the goal of contributing to robust discussions and outcomes, focused on moving the industry in the right direction.

Q: How can customers in remote areas be intelligently reached by companies?

A: I take it that by remote areas, you probably mean customers who use feature phones or mobile customers who are not always connected to the internet, because they live in areas without good internet, irregular power supply, low purchasing power, unstable income sources etc. The best way to reach this segment will be through USSD and SMS. Today through technology, people in supposedly remote areas can be reached at scale through USSD and hyper-targeted messages. Brands can even get real-time customer insight from these offline customers. As I mentioned earlier, there are over 700 million mobile connections in Africa and majority of them are feature phones. How do you reach them? You certainly cannot reach them online and so the best way to get your message across to them or get them to talk to you is through offline channels such as USSD and SMS. I’ll like to add here that even in reaching them through these offline channels, it is also important to employ personalisation. If you need to reach them intelligently, then personalisation is key. Through Technology, you can send personalised messages at scale.

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Q: In the efforts to serve brands across Africa, does your company for m strategic par tner ships with tech companies, startups, SMEs, etc.?

A: Yes, we do. Our Services are tiered to allow us serve various customers based on their capacity. From Telcos to SMEs. These partnerships are for either Data Provision (Supply) or for Insights needed to enable effective marketing decisions and campaigns (Demand).

Over the years, we have partnered with Telcos and other relevant companies to drive our goal of enabling super-charged connections between brands and their customers. We believe in strategic partnership and we go all out, home and abroad to forge strong partnerships.

Q: How can Small and Medium-sized Business in Africa benefit from big data?

A: It is not enough to have access to big data.

You have to harness it for better decision making. If MSMEs make proper use of the data at their disposal, they will be better equipped in basic areas such as product packaging, introduction of new products, pricing and placements, etc.

Also in the aspect of cross-selling and upselling, small and medium-sized businesses in Africa can benefit very well from big data. The insight from such data can also give them a hint on their typical customer and help them drive customer acquisition through look-alike modelling techniques. With big data, MSMEs can also better engage with their customers. They can drive proximity marketing and deliver personalised customer experience at scale.

However, the adoption of data analytics by small and medium-sized businesses in Africa is quite slow. Most MSMEs see the big data phenomenon as something for only large corporations; which is wrong. They too can benefit so much from big data. These MSMEs collect data too, both offline and online. From sales forms to site visits, they collect data on a daily basis. They need to now weave in data analytics and extract meaningful value from the data they collect.

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THOMAS BRENNAN Co-Founder, Franc - Fintech

South Africa

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ranc is a highly innovative investment app which provides smart advise for people who want to invest. The app also helps people who have never invested before access the leading cash (Allan Gray Money Market Fund) and equity (Satrix 40 ETF) funds in the market.

The company was founded in May 2018 by tech Wizz, Thomas Brennan and Sebastian Patel - an investment guru.

Business Elites Africa had a chat with the CEO, Brennan, on Franc's journey in making it easy for everyone to invest profitably and the company’s viewpoint on the future of Africa's fintech.

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Franc is Helping People Make Wise Investment Decision

BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Q: What problem does the Franc app solve?

A: Franc is an easy to use, award-winning investment app. Franc keeps it simple by helping consumers to invest when they aren’t sure how to start. Franc users can get access to the best cash and equity fund without minimum requirements, so users can invest any amount at any time. There is no paperwork and anyone can set up a profile on the app and become an investor in minutes. There are also no restrictions, meaning the money can be withdrawn at any point - without penalties.

Q: What path led to where Franc is right now?

A: Franc was born in 2018 when an engineer, an actuary, an investment guru and a tech whizz shared a common idea of making investing affordable, accessible and social.

After working in Discovery’s R&D lab and being exposed to a broad spectrum of financial services, Franc’s CEO, Dr. Thomas Brennan, couldn’t understand why only 5% of the country was investing, despite being top in the world for the search term ‘how to invest’. After discussions with his friend Sebastian Patel (now COO and co-Founder of Franc), the two realised this was likely because of financial barriers, product complexity and limited access. They saw an opportunity to create a simple investment app giving access to leading cash and equity funds without minimums or limitations.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Franc?

A: Franc is built for people who are not quite sure where to start in the confusing world of investing. Franc wants to help users reach their financial goals. A risk assessment helps them first discover what type of investor they are and guides them in making a decision as to how much investment risk they should take on. Franc has selected the best cash and equity funds in the market, so that you can have some cash stashed away for a rainy day and investments in SA’s largest companies for your big dreams.

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Franc’s two investment options – the Allan Gray Money Market Fund and Satrix 40 ETF – were selected because of their credibility, consistent high performance and low cost.

Members simply choose how much they would like to invest, how often, and how they would like to split their investment.

Q: Tell us about your funding?

A: Franc may be considered a startup, but is already off to a great start, having received funding from investors such as Fitech Ventures (who’ve invested in other financial startups such as Ukheshe and Bettr bank) as well as AndAfrica LLC, a Japanese firm connecting Japanese investors to African tech companies.

Q: Any Awards / Big achievements?

A: Franc’s previous awards also include: winning the start-up competition ‘Seedstars’ in 2018, winning best South African Solution award at the MTN App of the Year awards in 2019, as well as scooping Stuff Magazine’s Top Financial App in 2020. Most recently, Franc was elected as one of two South African companies to participate in Google for Startups Accelerator Africa (“GFSA Africa”) programme, taking place virtually from 29 June - September 11. The GFSA Africa programme helps startups build even better products and businesses, by matching them with the best of Google - its people, network, thought leadership and technology.

Q: What need is Franc meeting in South Africa?

A: Franc was founded based on a very real need in South Africa. Among the G20 countries, we rank the lowest in our household savings rate. In 2019, the ratio of household savings to disposable income was at 0.15%, which means the ability for a household to weather financial shocks is at an all-time low. This need has come into alarming focus under the COVID-19 lockdown in which households have been put under severe financial stress.

Only 6% will be able to maintain their standard of living after retirement, with 40% 31

of South Africans having no formal retirement savings. This is something Franc wants to change, by providing access to highperforming, low-cost investments through a simple and intuitive mobile app.

Franc’s founders believe that too many institutions have made investing overly complicated, with excessively high minimum investment requirements and exorbitant fees. Franc has removed all of those barriers, by doing one simple thing – making leading cash (Allan Gray Money Market) and equity (Satrix 40 ETF) funds in the market accessible to every South African so that they can invest for their future.

Q: Do you see a future where banks collaborate more with fintech companies?

A: Financial Institutions have faced fierce competition from fintech firms for years and are slowly realising that innovation is critical if they are to retain their customer base.

Franc believes that traditional financial institutions such as banks, collaborating with Fintechs is a great way to close the financial access gaps faced in Africa from services such as investment products, credit and savings. More and more, traditional financial institutions are accepting they cannot reach this market alone and are partnering with Fintechs who have the solutions to reach these unique markets.

Q: How do you see Africa’s fintech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: The African fintech industry is always evolving, and stats from Ernst & Young say that the number of fintech firms in Africa have recorded a compound annual growth rate of 24% over the past 10 years. It seems that the major drivers of this growth are young populations, the proliferation of mobile phone access and poor levels of financial inclusion across much of the continent. Overtime, fintech companies will challenge the traditional financial services providers, through innovative offerings such as branchless distribution and mobile banking. w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

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Cashbox: How This Fintech Startup is Helping Nigerians Curb Excessive Spending BY: DIMEJI AKINLOYE

address and phone number. You then add your bank card and create a plan. So once you create a plan it’s automated, we start to debit your bank account daily, weekly or monthly depending on the frequency you choose and the set amount chosen as well.

SYDNEY AIGBOGUN Nigeria, CEO / Founder - CashBox

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odern technology is not only making things easier, it is practically changing the way we live – from e-transportation, ecommerce to e-banking – operational processes have never been smoother.

Cashbox, a digital savings platform, is making life even better with its app that helps Nigerians cultivate a healthy savings habit and curb excessive spending.

Founded by Sydney Aigbogun nearly two years ago, with about 20,000 users shortly after launch, the platform now boasts of over 100,000 users and with about N1 billion already saved via the platform in 2020 - amid the economic woes occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Q: How did Cashbox start?

A: I was already running another business before Cashbox and our customers in that business often asked ‘do you guys offer some form of savings deposit?’ and a number of my friends who did the local ‘Ajo’ (savings contribution among a select group) all had bad stories. It’s either one person collects his own money and stops saving. There is always friction among those who do it.

This got me thinking, since my background is in finance. But we did not want to do it the normal way people have been doing it. We just wanted something you could have access to and control on your own – so we decided to use technology to run it. I met with my CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and that was how we just kick-started Cashbox.

Q: How does it really work?

In this interview with the Business Elites Africa team, Aigbogun said Cashbox was bootstrapped from inception till date, and now opening its doors to local and international investors to accelerate the company’s growth.

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A : E ve r y t h i n g i s d o n e f r o m yo u r smartphone and the computer – we have a web app and we have the mobile app as well.

The moment you sign up you just input your basic information – your full name, email 32

However, for users who don’t have bank cards, they can decide to save using our bank transfer feature. Cashbox will generate a unique bank account number for you and you can transfer into that from any Nigerian bank.

Q: You know Nigerians have trust issues, especially with traditional banks that often debit customers arbitrarily. Are there charges on Cashbox transactions?

A: Cashbox is not a bank. Before we launched that was our fear, that would people trust us to save with us since we are not a bank. We are a Fintech company. But in our first week of launch, we had about 500 sign-ups. I was expecting maybe about 20 or 50 – maybe from family and friends – but that wasn’t the case. Family and friends who signed up in our first week were not more than 10 or 15. The rest of the sign-ups were just people who heard about us on social media, online adverts, referrals and all that.

So on Cashbox, we don’t have any hidden charges. We don’t charge customers anything. Using our app is free, saving is free.

If you save N100, N100 is what you get. I saw some people recently on Twitter saying only in Nigerian bank you’ll save N5000 and when you check your balance you see N4900+. On Cashbox, N5000 is N5000 and at the end of the month, we pay interest on your savings. We pay between 7 to 15 percent interest annually on the savings balance of a customer, which is calculated daily.

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Q: How did you get funding?

A: We have been bootstrapping since inception. At the idea generation stage, we thought of raising funds but we did not want to use investors’ funds to test the market. We wanted to test the market with our funds and see how well it works. Now that we have a product that is working and we have the numbers already, we are seeking funds now.

We have several investors, locally and internationally, already showing interest.

Q: So far, how is the growth of the company – how many users do is you have?

A: We have over 100,000 users on Cashbox and we have saved about N1 billion this year.

Our marketing budget is very lean so most of the marketing comes from our users. Our users are our number one marketers. What we focus on is the product itself. We want to give our users a good experience and a great product so that when they see it, they can easily refer it to people without asking them.

Q: Are you only targeting people who are tech-savvy or are you also capturing the traditional traders who don’t know their way around the internet?

A: Initially, my focus was on the market people. Sincerely those were the people I targeted – the unbanked sector. But after talking to my team members, we realised going to that space is not going to be easy.

That’s why banks even run from the space, but that is the space we want to go into. We decided to just start with the millennials – the people we could easily reach and who already know how to use their smart phones.

We are already working on how to target the unbanked sector because it is huge. I don’t want to disclose too much information about it for now because we have competitors out there.

Speaking of competitors, there are other Fintech companies in Nigeria doing what you do, and they are also targeting the same audience as you, what is your edge?

A: The other players are doing a fantastic job and we respect the competition. The edge we have at Cashbox is that we are a Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 109

customer-centric company. We listen to our customers and we are quick to deploy.

Before Cashbox came into the space, users could only save with their bank cards but after three months of going live, we launched our bank transfer form of savings.

If you don’t have a card, which a lot of Nigerians don’t have, you could save with Cashbox.

Right now Cashbox has also launched a better bank transfer form of savings, in partnership with a third party company.

Also, we recently launched the language option on Cashbox – that’s pidgin language.

We are the only one that has that in the financial service space. You can decide to use the app in English or Pidgin language.

Q: How do people withdraw the money they have saved?

A: To withdraw, you just log into your Cashbox account, click on withdrawal, fill in the amount you want to withdraw and we will pay into whatever bank account number you give to us. The system just transfers into the bank account number the user already saved on our platform and within minutes the money is sent.

A: No, we are not CBN licensed. To the best of my knowledge, CBN does not have any form of Fintech licensing for our space.

Only the payment processors are licensed.

Flutterwave and Paystack, who handle our payment processing, are licensed by the CBN. I’m aware that CBN is rolling out some form of Fintech licensing for our space (savings platforms) which will be very good so that the sector will be regulated.

Even though Cashbox is not CBN-licensed, we act as if we are licensed. We have all forms of provisioning, our bookkeeping, our accounting standards, our reserve, our liquidity ratio are intact.

Q: What are the challenges you currently face?

A: As a startup, our major challenge has been funding because we have been bootstrapping and everything we pay for is in US dollars. We save in naira but our advertisement is in dollars, maintaining our app is in dollars, every feature we use is in dollars. As the value of the naira falls, it will affect us. That is why we are currently seeking investors, it eases the burden on us; and definitely, the return on investment for the investors will be worth it over time because this is the future. Coronavirus has shown how important the tech space is.

Q: What about security concerns, how do you protect users’ information?

A: So far, we use bank-grade security. We don’t joke about our security. Our payment processors are Paystack and Flutterwave – those are the two best payment processors in Africa I dare to say. Your card and other personal information you give us are 100% secure. What you get from your bank, in terms of security, is the same you get from Cashbox.

Is savings the only service Cashbox offer?

A: Right now, we are focusing on savings but we have plans to go into technology-driven asset management, not the traditional type.

We want people with as low as N1000 to be able to plan their financial future and not necessarily people with millions of naira.

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JESSICA RICH Chief Commercial Officer, 54Gene Nigeria - Health Tech

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4Gene is a leading African genomics research, services and development company that is tackling the need to integrate underrepresented African genomic data into research that could lead to medical breakthroughs and new healthcare solutions globally.

Founded in 2019, by Abasi Ene-Obong - a genetics expert, 54Gene has built a biobank of pan-African DNA to provide a reliable source of genetic data on Africans. The facility stores aggregated and deidentified, biological samples. The bio-specimen pool at the company is available for academic research and has the potential to be vital to the continent's drug development, disease detection and quality of life.

Business Elites Africa had a chat with the 54gene’s Chief Commercial Officer, Jessica Rich on the journey of the company and the future of Africa’s health technology.

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54gene is Integrating Africa’s Genomics Data into Global Research BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Q: What does 54gene do?

A: 54gene is a health technology company advancing the state of healthcare through large scale discovery and translational research, advanced molecular diagnostics and clinical programs for the benefit of Africans and the global population.

Q: What path led to where 54gene is right now?

A: While the African genome is the most genetically diverse in the world, it represents less than 3% of the global genetic database.

This means that many of the drugs currently on the market are either ineffective or potentially harmful to Africans due to this gap in research. It also means Africans lack the same access to personalized and precision medicine that is available to the rest of the world. This challenge was seen as an opportunity by the founders of 54gene, to not just ensure the inclusion of the African genome in global scientific research, but also to improve access to healthcare across Africa through research and delivering the tools to make precision medicine a reality.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of 54gene?

A: We believe our core strength is our team: the breadth of talent spans diverse ethnicities, religions and lifestyles across the globe. We play to the strength in our diversity, including a high ratio of women in our senior leadership team.

Q: How can your company help people?

A: We aim to build genetic data sets that make landmark discoveries a reality, bring clinical programs to the continent, and make advanced precision diagnostics accessible.

Africans house the most genetically diverse DNA in comparison to all other world populations combined, and insights from the African genome has the potential to p owe r m e d i c a l b r e a k t h r o u g h s a n d discoveries that will change the entire landscape of healthcare, globally.

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Q: How does your company plan to increase its data sets by the end of 2020?

A: We plan on building diverse datasets. We will include datasets which represent the very diverse populations in Africa, including those who live with a disease and those who do not. Having a broad representation of aggregate data will be very important to ensure the appropriate data is available to inform researchers and provide the best possible healthcare in the future.

Q: What are the benefits of a biobank for Africa?

A: While genomic biobank research has grown in recent years, current regulation on research in Africa can be restrictive, and for a good reason. This is because, previously, research in Africa tended to involve the extraction of samples from local populations for use in research overseas, with little benefit to Africans - so-called parachute research. Maintaining biobanks on the African continent is one way to guard against these exploitative practices.

Additionally, 54gene is committed to building infrastructure on the African continent to support research.

Q: Where is Africa with tech/data-driven health care?

A: There is a growing number of innovative companies across Africa using technology and data to improve healthcare delivery across the continent. This is great for the continent as some of the best thinkers put their minds together to ramp up the quality of life for Africans through access to better healthcare systems.

community in order to advance healthcare delivery on the continent. We worked with a number of different partners to support the government’s drive to contain the spread of COVID-19 infection across Nigeria as well as other private companies who all had the common goal of doing as much as possible to minimise the risk to the population.

54gene aims to advance research in Africa by partnering with African researchers and research institutions and also generating novel insights which would result in high impact findings from targeted research.

Q: Do you see a future where health tech companies collaborate more with each other?

A: Partnerships are essential. Many health technology companies collaborate to leverage each other's unique area of exper tise. T he health technolog y community, in general, has the goal of improving lives through better health outcomes. We gain insight and become stronger through collaborations.

Q: How do you see Africa’s health tech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: I see Africa has the opportunity to leapfrog over many health technologies currently used in the western world and could evolve quickly to have the best care and precision medicine available. I see health technology as a new and emerging industry in Africa. Many people leave for education in health sciences but there are very few jobs in this field when they return to Africa. 54gene focuses on job creation and infrastructure building. We want to support the emerging health technology industry.

Q: In the efforts to improve the global pharmaceutical industry, does your company form strategic partnerships with health tech companies, Startups, SMEs, or any other bodies?

A: It is essential to work with healthcare delivery partners and collaborate with key stakeholders in the African research 35

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Helium Health is Digitising Nigeria's Health Sector BY: SIMEON ONOJA

With our Hospital Management Suite, which includes our award winning Electronic Medical Records platform, we empower providers to administer care efficiently and in record time, and we enable health managers to get a better handle on the performance and finances of their practice.

Integrations with this solution enable health insurance companies to process claims quicker, and public health authorities receive real-time reports about suspected cases of high-priority infectious diseases. Our health financing product, HeliumCredit, leverages healthcare data collected by our EMR to decide collateral-free loans for both patients and healthcare providers. Our patient supper app, myHelium, enables patients view their hospital visit summaries, lab results and prescriptions. T hey can even book appointments and order medication on the app.

ADEGOKE OLUBUSI CEO / Co-Founder, Helium Health Nigeria - Health Tech

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elium health is driving the digitisation of Nigeria’s health sector by helping hospitals transition from the paperbased records system to a smart digital system. With its software, the startup has helped many healthcare organisations to manage patient records.

Helium Health was founded by three Nigerian entrepreneurs, Adegoke Olubusi, Tito Ovia and Dimeji Sofowora.

The company has grown into offering its customers a wider range of services since it was created. The platform now Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 108

lets hospitals monitor metrics, maintain a digital payment system, and apply for loans for their facilities.

Business Elites Africa sat with the cofounder and CEO of Helium health, Adegoke Olubusi. Enjoy the read!

Q: What is the core competence of Helium health?

To help health facilities keep providing care amidst the lockdowns and travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched a Telemedicine platform. With our telemedicine solution, hospitals can have hassle free consultations with their patients, remain competitive in this digital age, and protect their staff and patients from community spread of the virus. The impact of our Telemedicine platform on hospitals includes the increased capacity to see more patients within the same timeframe, and of course, more revenue.

To support the government’s efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed an Emergency Response System (ERS) that digitizes the end-to-end public health response to disease outbreaks. This customizable solution improves disease surveillance by eliminating silos within response teams. It introduces transparency around team performance and makes it easy to assess the response’s impact on eliminating the virus. Ultimately, it makes data-driven resource allocation possible.

A: Helium Health provides a suite of interconnected technology solutions that serve as the digital infrastructure for healthcare in Africa.

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Q: What path led to where Helium Health is right now?

A: Paper-based records dominate African healthcare and they are linked to a myriad of issues most notably is a lack of access to reliable and accurate data which leads to inefficient healthcare delivery, lack of healthcare financing, poor disease surveillance and poor health outcomes. This is why we created Helium Health.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Helium Health?

A: Beyond our superior approach to product development and the accessibility of these products, our long term strategy is one of the reasons they have been more successful than the competition in improving health outcomes. Unlike other healthtech companies that are typically focused on solving one aspect of the health system’s challenges, Helium Health has always recognized that solving the problem of digitizing health records will give them control over critical healthcare data. This data has been the foundation on which they have built connected products like HeliumCredit and HeliumPay that solve critical challenges in the sector such as the easy collection of patient out-of-pocket payments and poor healthcare financing.

Tackling the sector’s healthcare problems in such a strategic, multi-dimensional manner has enabled Helium Health to have a magnified impact on patient health outcomes.

Furthermore, our thoughtful engagement of g over nment health officials has contributed to Helium Health having a wide-scale impact on health outcomes through direct and indirect means. The implementation of their solutions at government-run facilities, which tend to be bigger and more affordable than private facilities, means Helium Health directly impacts the health outcomes of thousands of people each month.

Q: What inspired the creation of your loan product, CreditCare A: Poor healthcare financing is something

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that impacts healthcare administrators, health workers, and patients. Despite Africa representing 17% of the global population and having 24% of the global disease burden, the continent has a per capita health spend that is 50x less than that of developed countries, and a healthcare financing deficit of $66B per year. In Nigeria, the statistics are even more dire. Government per capita healthcare spend is $10, lower than the subSaharan Africa average of $23, and private health insurance penetration is less than 10%. All of these factors compound and contribute to Nigeria having some of the worst health outcomes in the world: the 2nd highest child mortality rate at 120 deaths per 1,000 births, 3rd lowest life expectancy at 54 years, and the 4th highest maternal mortality at 917 deaths per 100,000 births.

Poor healthcare financing is linked to the lack of actionable healthcare data caused by archaic paper-based health records systems.

Small-medium private health facilities, which provide care to over 50% of Nigerians, have long been deemed high-risk and thus excluded from the lending services offered by commercial banks. This categorization is primarily due to the lack of data about the o p e r a t i o n a l , c l i n i c a l , a n d r e ve n u e performance of these facilities.

It was in the light of these challenges we decided to create HeliumCredit.

is primed for rapid advancement in a manner that will allow us learn from and leapfrog the mistakes that developed economies made on their way to digital healthcare systems.

Q: In the efforts to deliver health services across Africa, does your company form strategic partnerships with health tech companies, Startups, SMEs, or any other relevant bodies?

A: Yes we do. We are firm believers in partnering to accomplish common goals. We believe we can do more together than as an individual organization.

Q: Do you see a future where health tech companies collaborate more with each other?

A: It is a future we believe is already starting and we are playing our part to accelerate that future.

Q: How do you see Africa’s health tech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: In the medium to long term we see a continued acceleration of digital technology adoption across the continent and we believe in the not too distant future, majority of people on the African continent will have access to world class healthcare that is datadriven without having to leave the continent.

Q: How has it been upgrading how hospitals operate in Africa?

A: It has been a wonderful experience to see the impact that switching to a digital healthcare system has had on healthcare facilities and the stakeholders at the helm.

Hospital administrators and public health officials are now equipped with the data that empowers them to make the best possible decisions for their facilities, identify and monitor trends, and execute interventions to stop the trends.

Q: Where is Africa with tech/data-driven health care?

Nigeria has some of the worst health outcomes in the world: the 2nd highest child mortality rate at 120 deaths per 1,000 births, 3rd lowest life expectancy at 54 years, and the 4th highest maternal mortality at 917 deaths per 100,000 births.

A: Africa is in a unique situation because while it is behind the developed world in terms of adoption to digital technologies, it

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Gerocare is Providing Healthcare for the Elderly Across Nigeria BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Gerocare is a health tech startup that provides subscription-based medical services to elderly people across Nigeria, enabling them to seek routine medical treatment.

Founded in 2017 by Ebi Ofrey, Ajibola Meraiyebu and Bruce Lucas, the startup advocates preventive healthcare for the elder ly rather than waiting until something goes wrong. Using a model focused on subscriptions, Gerocare is able to give physicians personalised appointments to provide medical care.

Using its website or mobile app, users can register and select a subscription plan for their older relatives. Once a subscription is placed, Gerocare provides for the subscribed, a regular personal health monitoring visit.

Business Elites Africa had a talk with the Co-founder and CEO, Dr. Ebi Ofrey.

Enjoy!

Q: Tell us more about GeroCare.

A: The vast majority of elderly citizens (65 years or older) in Nigeria, and many other African countries, battle severely with deteriorating health across many different ailments. In most of these cases, neither the state, their adult children nor extended families are able to manage this situation adequately. GeroCare is solving the absence of a structure for medical care for the elderly and improving on the current average life expectancy in Nigeria and the rest of Africa.

GeroCare leverages technolog y and traditional African family values of adult children caring for their parents to provide a structure for medical care for the elderly.

The company makes it easy for Africans within and outside their home countries to subscribe to regular doctor home visits for their parents. Individuals are able to register patient’s details and make payments through the GeroCare application. Patients are Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 108

immediately matched with a doctor who is in close proximity and monthly medical visits begin. The family is updated with regular information as to the health status of the patient. In addition, the family can pay for any required tests and drugs via the app for direct delivery.

GeroCare has created a cloud-based service in which all those providing health services do not need to be located in one building but can participate remotely from wherever they are through their mobile application linked to that of the primary care provider who interfaces with the patient. A system that is easily scalable and replicable across cities and across countries. Hospitals without buildings where just by interaction with your doctor at home every other thing you need can be delivered to your home.

Q: What path led to where GeroCare is right now?

A: A few years ago in the space of one year, my father had two strokes. Living a distance away from Port Harcourt made my immediate participation in his care difficult. I probably would have helped to prevent it’s occurrence. Subsequently, my mother called me to tell me her blood sugar and blood pressure was extremely high.

As a result of leapfrogging we as Africans have the potential to lead the revolution in using health technology to create hospitals at home.

DR. EBI OFERY CEO / Co-Founder, GeroCare - Health Tech Nigeria

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What she said next jolted me to a reality I had not previously been faced with. She said I had neglected them. Initially, I thought this could not be possible but after a close analysis of my life, I realized that while focused on my career, business and family I had subconsciously neglected this special group of people. It also occurred to me that this problem was not peculiar to me but to millions out there who live and work far away from where their parents are and the only time they hear anything is when something goes tragically wrong.

The simple question is, is there a way whereby no matter where we are in the world we can ensure our parents’ healthcare needs are met while constantly reminding them that we care? This led to the founding of GeroCare to solve this problem for ourselves our parents and the millions out there experiencing the same thing.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of GeroCare?

Each time I get home now and look at my father in his current health condition, I am constantly reminded of the reason why we started this business in the first place and the reason why we should not fail. This remains our key motivating factor, combined with our domain expertise in this field, to an average of seventeen years between me and my co-founders. I feel that is our unique advantage.

Q: Tell us about GeroCare’s health plans?

A: Regular home visits by a medical doctor to the elderly to provide primary health care service such as:

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 108

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Subscription service that entitles the elderly person to at least one doctor visit per month and real-time feedback to their children via the GeroCare mobile application and email wherever they are.

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Non-Subscription on Demand Doctor Home Visit. One-time doctor visit within 24 hours of payment.

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Provision of medication delivered to the home of the elderly and Home laboratory investigation.

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Home nursing care

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Community / Rural Elderly Care (House to House or Monthly/Bimonthly Outreach format)

Q: Where is Africa with health technology?

A: In my opinion, Africa still has a long way to go in terms of health technology mainly because of infrastructural deficiencies and technical expertise. I believe we should focus on leveraging tools that are readily available, like web and mobile technology. For instance, GeroCare is not involved in deep tech at this time but leverages already existing easily-accessible technology to enable us run a cloud-based hospital structure. This enables us to convert every home into a primary health care centre. Yes, Artificial intelligence and machine learning would go a long way to help us but till it is readily available lets leverage what we have.

Q: How can healthcare for the elderly in remote areas be better facilitated?

A: The main inhibition for provision of medical care in remote areas is the availability of manpower needed as such leveraging telemedicine in which doctors are able to provide care for those in remote areas by way of ultra-mini-clinics (Health Kiosks) that provide standardized outpatient services targeting the rural dwellers especially the elderly. These health kiosks would be powered by alternative energy and provided with internet facilities. Each clinic has a nurse on-site, supported by a telemedicine structure to enable our experienced doctors to participate in care remotely in consonance with the registered nurse on-site, with electronic health systems to manage patient files, stock, and communication. This is something we are already looking into and are launching a pilot in Delta State in partnership with an Alternative energy company.

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1. House to House visits once or twice a month 2. Outreach format in which the elderly patient assemble in specified locations once or twice a month.

The advantage is that in addition to offering quality healthcare and records, the service is provided for a lower cost based on a number of elderly patients being seen.

Cost is basically taken up

by Non-Governmental organisations and other philanthropists.

Q: In the effor ts to deliver health services across Africa, does your company form strategic partnerships with health tech companies, Startups, SMEs, or any other relevant bodies?

Q: What are some of the most effective ways in which your company is currently taking healthcare to the underserved remote areas of Africa?

A: We have been able to leverage on our doctor network and GeroCare software to provide quality health services at per with any standard primary health care centre to the rural communities with our Community / Rural elderly care plan.

This we do by deploying doctors armed with the GeroCare application to communities to cater for elderly patients funded by nongovernmental organizations and other concerned parties in two ways as the case may be.

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 109

A: Yes, we do. We have pharmaceutical partners, d i a g n o s t i c p a r t n e r s, caregiver partners and the likes. We see ourselves as a start-up that collaborates and coordinates partnerships with other start-ups in the digital health space to ensure complete and holistic care is provided to our patients.

Q: Do you see a future where health tech companies collaborate more with each other?

Q: How do you see Africa’s health tech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: Africa has the advantage with the concept of Leapfrogging which involves accelerating development by skipping inferior, less efficient, more expensive technologies and industries and moving directly to more advanced ones.

I strongly believe that the future of health and wellness for Nigerians, especially the elderly, lies in a combination of proper preventive care and home care services, and the future of home care services for the elderly lies in the adoption of technology beginning from the use of low hanging fruits like incorporating tools such as WhatsApp into our routine visits to the elderly to ensure active participation of all those involved in the patient-centred care.

In addition to this, we can take it a step further by leveraging ‘mHealth’ and creating a cloud-based service in which all those providing health services do not need to be located in one building but can participate remotely from where ever they are through their mobile application linked to that of the primary care provider who is the doctor that interfaces with the patient. A system that is easily scalable and replicable across cities and across countries. Hospitals without buildings where just by interaction with your doctor at home every other thing you need can be delivered to your home.

As a result of leapfrogging we as Africans have the potential to lead the revolution in using health technology to create hospitals at home like ‘mPesa’ (mobile money) in Kenya revolutionized the finance industry with inclusive banking unavailable in most of the more developed countries.

A: Yes, I do. The future is in collaboration with companies focusing on their area of speciality and collaborating with others to provide services outside their primary area of speciality.

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CHIBUZOR OPARA CEO-Founder, DrugStoc - Health Tech

Nigeria

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rugStoc is a drug procurement platform that enables hospitals and pharmacies to provide access to genuine pharmaceutical and healthcare products Founded in 2015 by Chibuzor Opara - a highly experienced health economist, Drug Stoc serves thousands of doctors and pharmacists across Nigeria.

In this chat with Business Elites Africa, the CEO spoke on the company’s journey and the future of Africa health tech industry.

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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DrugStoc is Making Access to Genuine Pharmaceutical Products Easier & Faster BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Q: What does Drugstoc do?

A: DrugStoc is an omni-channel cloudbased pharmaceutical distribution company that provides licensed health providers unhindered access to thousands of pharmaceutical and medical products they need to save lives and empower their communities.

Q: What path led to where Drugstoc is right now?

A: Prior to launching DrugStoc, My cofounder and I, incidentally, were in the healthcare space - we struggled with personal and professional challenges accessing pharmaceutical products for clients and family alike. We quickly realized there was an urgent need for a trusted pharmaceutical distribution company that provides access to affordable anticounterfeit drugs easier and faster for healthcare providers and organisations. We decided to rise to the challenge and build that company.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Drugstoc?

A: Our team is our greatest strength and as they say, teamwork makes the dream work.

Our experiential insight into the pharmaceutical distribution market in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa has also served as an added advantage.

Q: Tell us about Drugstoc’s services?

A: DrugStoc provides a platform which enables access to good quality and costeffective pharmaceutical products.

face in accessing anti-counterfeit and affordable medication for the benefit of patients.

Our vision is to empower all healthcare providers to fulfil their mandate for a healthier Africa.

Q: Where is Africa with tech-driven drug procurement?

A: There has been a significant rise in stakeholder interest and investment which is encouraging, especially in this Covid-19 season. However, there is still a lot of work to be done and technology creates several opportunities to leapfrog our broken infrastructure.

Q: How is Drugstoc helping in the fight against fake drugs in Africa?

A: DrugStoc provides counterfeit-proof procurement and supply chains, giving healthcare providers the confidence to treat their patients without worrying about counterfeit and substandard drugs. We are ISO 9001:2015 certified for quality management systems and we ensure that all our systems are built to ensure a bullet-proof supply chain.

Q: What are some of the most effective ways in which your company is currently taking pharmaceutical and healthcare products to the underserved remote areas of Africa?

A: We work with a few partners, (upstream and downstream), and providers alike to ensure that hard-to-reach and underserved areas can benefit from our cost-effective quality pharmaceutical distribution and products.

Q: In the efforts to deliver health services across Africa, does your company form strategic partnerships with health tech companies, Startups, SMEs, or any other relevant bodies?

A: Yes, we do.

We have done so already with quite a number of organisations in the past and will continue to do so as strategic partnerships are key to fulfilling our vision for a healthier Africa.

Q: How do you see Africa’s health tech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: I see the market evolving and maturing over the next 5 to 10 years as tech firms tackle those challenges which were caused or compounded by infrastructural and resource constraints. Tech creates another element by which we can measure and challenge our progress towards providing a better life for the African citizenry and populace. We’ve come a long way, but still miles to go.

Our vision is to empower all healthcare providers to fulfil their mandate for a healthier Africa.

Providing quality healthcare services is already a tough endeavour in this part of the world. What we do is to make it better by minimizing challenges healthcare providers Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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DEON NOBREGA Co-Founder / MD, Paymenow - Fintech

South Africa

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aymenow uses game elements to promote financial education and inclusion among its users and works with employers to help push South Africans out of a vicious debt cycle and into a mindset of savings.

Founded in 2019 by Deon Nobrega - a finance expert and former Springbok rugby player Bryan Habana, the startup provides a platform for financial wellbeing and inclusion that enables early access to already earned wages for employees.

Business Elites Africa had a chat with the Co-founder and MD of Paymenow, Deon Nobr ega on Paymenow’s journey in driving financial wellness across South Africa.

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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Paymenow is Driving Financial Wellness in South Africa

BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Q: How does Paymenow work?

Q: Tell us about Paymenow’s services?

Paymenow is a fintech company, offering a financial wellness and inclusion platform that allows employees early access to already earned wages. Paymenow offers a mobile app, which, through gamification, takes employees on a journey to financial wellness.

As they complete stages their status improves, and they get rewards by way of lower service fees.

1.

Q: What path led to where Paymenow is right now?

A: This is a new concept in South Africa but one that has been tried, tested and proven its success in both the US and UK over the past 3-4 years. Paymenow’s Co-Founders, Bryan Habana and Deon Nobrega went and met the two market leaders in London in September 2019, where they got insight into the business models but realised that there was a lack of financial wellness and responsibility built into the solutions particularly pertaining to those people in emerging markets, who are severely impacted by payday lending and microloans.

Instead of partnering with developed markets peers, Paymenow developed its own solution, in a way that focuses on “Business For Good” with its end goal to change a vicious debt cycle into a savings mindset.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Paymenow?

A: We believe that our fully compliant offering with a real focus on financial inclusion and education and trying to bring about behavioural change through the gamified approach is something that is not only a first in the market but also truly focuses on the Business for Good ethos on which Paymenow is built. From a tech, security and compliance perspective, Paymenow was built with “bank-grade” due diligence to ensure our offering is robust, scalable and credible.

It’s FREE to employers

2.

It alleviates indebtedness and exorbitant payday lending (5 – 10x times cheaper than the market average when compared to payday loans) 3. It boosts employee engagement and absenteeism whilst reducing staff turnover 4. Makes a positive change to your staff as they receive FREE financial education and literacy content on our financial wellness journey.

5. Our roadmap of services includes data/airtime purchases, insurance products, savings and investments products, bill payments and rewards/discount coupons.

Q: How are employers/employees joining the fight against the payday poverty circle?

A: We see more and more employers wanting to alleviate some of the financial burdens that so many of their staff currently face (and that the COVID-19 Pandemic has only made that worse) through forms of salary advances but that is sometimes a tedious manual process that puts extra strain on the employer, both operationally and cashflow wise.

Q: Where is Africa with payday solutions like yours?

A: This type of salary advance offering, having proved its success in developed markets, has definitely paved the way for quite a few startups within Africa to arise within the past 8 months to a year.

Q: What are some of the most effective ways in which your company is currently promoting financial inclusion in Africa?

around inclusive fintech startups within emerging markets) vehemently defends our Business for Good ethos.

Our in-app gamified approach, that incentivises financial education, empowers employees financially by giving them the basic tools to understand their financial wellness.

The data we gather over time, especially the voluntary credit score, gives us an objective, quantitative measure on our user’s financial we l l n e s s. We b e l i e ve t h a t t h r o u g h responsible and affordable access to alreadyearned wages and improved financial literacy, Paymenow users will improve their financial wellbeing over time.

Q: Do you see a future where Africa’s fintech companies collaborate more?

A: Yes, accelerators and financial service providers give fintechs the platforms to engage and collaborate not just with other fintechs, but with incumbents in the industries. We believe that partnerships with long-standing businesses who have client reach and credibility is the only way for startups to gain a foothold in the market. Across Africa, infrastructure and regulation is very federated and autonomous from country to country, so it will be very hard for one fintech “to r ule them all”. Instead, partnerships bringing local knowledge will bridge the gaps to form an ecosystem of inter-connected fintechs and financial service incumbents.

Q: How do you see Africa’s fintech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: As per my answer above, the fintech industry will evolve in collaboration with financial services incumbent to gain scale and credibility. Only a couple of fintechs will survive, those that embrace regtech together with sound tech underpinnings.

A: Our recent inclusion into the 7th cohort of the Catalyst Fund (a global NGO focused Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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SIMON ELLIS CEO / Co-Founder, SmartWage - Fintech South Africa

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o-founded in 2019 by Simon Ellis, Alex Platt and Nick Platt. The star tup enables companies to provide instant access to a percentage of their salaries and wages to their employees for work they have already done.

The solution is free for employees, it does not interfere with existing processes, it preserves the cash ow of businesses and reduces administrative hassle.

Employees can contact SmartWage's WhatsApp chatbot directly to securely request and receive advances on their earned pay.

Business Elites Africa had a chat with the CEO, Simon Ellis, who believes SmartWage is the solution to the huge problem of salary advance that employees have battled for years.

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Smartwage Partners with Businesses to Provide Employees with Instant Access to their Earned Salaries and Wages.

BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Q: What does SmartWage do?

A: SmartWage gives employees access to their salaries and wages as they have earned them. We partner with employers, giving them the ability to offer advances to their employees in an affordable and accessible way.

We’re here to empower employees and on a mission to eradicate payday loans and help educate people about managing their money.

Q: What path led to where SmartWage is right now?

A: The idea of SmartWage manifested itself in September 2019, when we started to realise that the way people were getting paid was changing. Why is it that, as an employee, you should wait until the end of the month to get paid? At the same time, why was it so difficult as an employer to give your employees access to what they have already earned.

We set out to solve this problem and officially launched SmartWage in February 2020. After a few months of piloting the idea and refining our value proposition, we began building a team who could solve the problem and then raised some capital in June 2020 to allow us begin execution.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of SmartWage?

A: Our ability to solve problems. We have an exceptional group of people all focused on achieving the same goal and we are relentless about ensuring we solve our customers’ pain points. At every turn, we encounter problems, and our ability to turn these problems into opportunities is our greatest strength.

Q: Tell us about SmartWage’s services?

A: We ser vice both employers and employees. For employees, SmartWage gives employees access to their salaries and wages Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

as they have earned them. SmartWage also educates employees on how to manage their finances responsibly.

Q: How are employers/employees joining the fight against the payday poverty circle?

A: As an employer, administering employee loans and advances is admin intensive, inefficient and an unnecessary strain on cash flow and the HR function, therefore it is not done. This leaves employees with no option but to take out expensive payday loans and other forms of short-term finance. The only way to change this is to change the way people are paid, and SmartWage is one way of doing this. Employers and employees who use SmartWage to educate themselves and access their earnings are joining the national fight against the payday poverty cycle.

Q: Where is Africa with payday solutions like yours?

By educating our consumers, and giving them access to finance in an affordable way.

We are giving people the opportunity to make a huge difference in their own lives.

Q: In the efforts to reach more firms with your services, does your company form strategic partnerships with FinTech companies, Startups, SMEs, etc.?

A: One of our key priorities is partnering with Start-ups, SME’s and other companies who live and breathe by the same values as SmartWage – those who focus on financial wellness for the consumer and who set out to make a difference in people’s lives. We are working on a number of strategic partnerships at the moment, one of which is with www.fincheck.co.za, a free to use and independent comparison website for all South Africans. We’re also very open to working with other companies who share our vision and are aligned from a values perspective.

Q: Do you see a future where Africa’s fintech companies collaborate more?

A: When it comes to disrupting the industry, Africa has a long way to go in comparison to the developed world, however we are seeing the emergence of a number of companies focused on changing the way people are paid.

This is fantastic news for the consumer and we view competition as a good thing - it forces us to ensure that we become the best at solving our customers’ pain points, and continue to strive for a better product. At the end of the day, the more competitive the space, the more the consumer wins.

A: Collaboration is the key to Africa’s success. We can’t do it alone, and the more we work together, the better the lives African consumers will be over the long run. As mentioned before, we are excited to have great competitors in the space because it means the consumer wins. If we can work with our competitors, to offer solutions to different parts of the UK market I think it’s a win-win.

Q: What are some of the most effective ways in which your company is currently promoting financial inclusion in Africa?

Q: How do you see Africa’s fintech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: Financial inclusion starts by giving people access – access to education and access to what they have earned which is why we are on a mission to become South Africa’s most affordable and accessible payday solution. If you have a cellphone and a bank account, you can use SmartWage, and this is how we are effectively promoting financial inclusion.

A: Africa has the highest population growth rate in the world, is home to the world’s youngest labour force, and has a rapidly growing rate of mobile phone use. At the same time the financial sector is undergoing profound changes driven by technological innovations.

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BY: MARYKATE OVWIGHOSE

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he digital marketing landscape is constantly changing and it’s getting difficult for businesses to keep up with these changes. One reason for the constant change is due to a change in digital platf or ms and t e c h n o l o g y. M a k e n o m i s t a k e , businesses that don’t follow the trend and stick their heads on the ground will be punished severely for it. Customer buying behaviour is changing with these trends, and your competitors are also aligning themselves to these trends.

As Brain Solis rightly put, “Each business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit it.

Digital Darwinism does not d i s c r i m i n a t e . E ve r y b u s i n e s s i s threatened.”

With this in mind, every business should strive to keep abreast of the latest digital marketing trends. In this article, we highlight the top 10 trends in digital marketing to help you bring up an effective digital marketing strategy for business growth. Let’s dive in, shall we?

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1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

From Voice search to predictive analytics, chatbots, image recognition, deep learning, and more, Artificial Intelligence is enabling marketers to understand their customers like never before.

According to Gartner, 85% of customer interactions will be handled without a human by 2020. For example, Netflix is utilizing AI for a personalized recommendation to their customers, and Hotel Hilton uses a robot concierge to give customers quick access to personalized infor mation about the hotel and its surrounding areas.

“In a crowded and fragmented marketplace, marketing leaders are increasing investments in innovative technologies as they strive to deliver meaningful customer experiences that differentiate their brands,”- Mike McGuire, VP Analyst, Gartner.

AI is one of the foremost emerging technologies. Initially, Artificial intelligence was seen to be used by the “techies” alone and for high technological projects. But currently, it’s widely used in all industries to gain competitive advantage, optimize new businesses, reduce cost and personalize communication with their target customers.

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2. Video marketing From about us video to how-to video to vlogging, video marketing has been one of the major sources of communication for most brands. It’s no news that text-based content is dwindling while video-based contents are getting all the views.

Customers are spending more time watching videos. An average person spends 100 minutes watching video every day and marketers are rapidly jumping on the trend.

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Some video marketing trends to look out for in 2020 and beyond includes; Live-streaming videos, Personalized 1:1 videos and Search engine friendly videos.

3. Personalization In 2020, personalization is key in the B2B and B2C markets. Customers, especially the Gen Z (generation born between 19962010) target market, are tired of generic communication from brands and are no longer friendly with brands that keep p ush i n g g en eri c, n o n -p erso n a l i z ed messages.

Personalization is said to be the prime driver of marketing. Giving customers a personalized experience increases sales by 20%. Customers want personalized emails, products, contents and more. They appreciate brands when they receive a personalized message from them. When using email for personalization, you can trigger your email on specific occasions like customers’ birthday, or when they carry out a particular action.

4. Micro-influencer Although influencer marketing is not new, micro-influencer is a completely new concept. Instead of competing with top agencies for celebrities or major influencers, Small and medium scale businesses reach out to micro-influencers that are more targetted and less expensive. Microinfluencers are niched and have between 1,000 to 100,000 die-hard followers. Brands are utilizing micro-influencers to reach their target audience. Micro-influencer marketing can be highly lucrative as businesses are making a solid 500% ROI.

5. Interactive content In an attempt to personalize communication, brands are adding interactivity to their content strategy to increase customer engagement and to learn more about their customers.

Some software development companies add mobile app development cost calculator or price estimator for a bespoke service brand.

Interactive content can come in the form of; Quizzes, Polls, Calculators and Contest and Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

App cost calculator.

8. Mobile Friendliness

6. Shoppable E-commerce

In 2015, Google released a significant new ranking factor that put more emphasis on mobile-friendliness. This gave rise to the development of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP is an open-source framework designed to enable fast-loading mobile website.

In 2020, Search engine put more emphasis on mobile-friendly websites by ranking them higher in the search result page. The focus has shifted from just creating a website but creating a mobile-optimized website that works effectively for all devices, to give their visitors a good user experience.

Although this is not a new feature, the recent increase in the adoption of this feature is so massive we cannot fail to add it. Shoppable ecommerce is a feature that allows customers to buy directly from buyers on their social media handles. 45 percent of the world population uses social media and they spend an average of two hours and 24 minutes per day - with these statistics, the rise of social ecommerce is inevitable.

Overtime social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest have introduced ways by which e-commerce businesses can link their store to their social media page and start selling from their platform through native integration.

This is widely used by both small and big businesses to reduce the friction of leaving the social media platform to their website before customers can make a purchase. With this feature, customers can easily see the product and its description, make a purchase and get the shipping process started instantly.

7. Omnichannel marketing Omnichannel marketing has to do with using different platforms to connect and market to customers. It pushes the touchpoint from a single touch-point to multiple touch-points. Daily, businesses are employing ways to be at the forefront of their customers through all their communication channels to market to them and to build a close relationship with their target market Omnichannel marketing is the practice of marketing across multiple platforms, including email, apps, social media, online catalogue, physical store and your website blog. This approach enables businesses to connect with customers on more digital touchpoints, which effectively offers a better user experience. When you carry out omnichannel marketing strategy you deliver a coherent, and consistent voice and messaging to your target market. It drives over three times as much engagement as a single channel approach.

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9. Content is still ruling Content marketing is still king in 2020.

Brands are using content to attract potential customers and turn them to loyal advocates.

Businesses are tilting more into content strategy by implementing the inbound methodology. The inbound methodology is the process of attracting customers by creating valuable content like blogs, ebooks, podcasts, webinar and experiences that are tailored towards them.

Google’s BERT update has also brought the rise of producing quality content for search engines and Visitors.

10. Voice Search continues to rise People like to talk, and with the help of voice assistants like Siri, Google and Alexa, many are inculcating voice interaction into their daily lives. The advancement of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning has made these machines to effectively understand how people search, shop and discover new things.

Most times, the way we talk is different from the way we type, this has brought rise to voice search optimization. Marketers are aware of this growing trend and are optimizing their content and website for voice search by writing in a conversational tone.

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I N T E RV I E W

EERIK OJA Co-Founder, Planet42 - Fintech

South Africa

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lanet42 is a South Africa-based fintech company which partners with dealerships across the country to enable access to a personal car for citizens who are unable to get vehicle loans.

The company was founded by Eerik Oja and Marten Orgna. It was launched as CarGet in 2017 before rebranding to Planet42.

Planet42 uses an advanced rating algorithm to process a credit bureau, affordability, and alternative data-based applications for clients. If the application is accepted, Planet42 reviews the confirmation documents of the customer, such as IDs, payslips, and bank statements, before purchasing the car from the dealership and renting it to the customer. The asset is covered with monitoring technology, as well as mechanical and comprehensive insurance.

The CEO elaborated on the company’s operations in this interview Business Elites Africa.

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Planet42 Provides Cars for People Who Can't Access Conventional Vehicle Loans BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Q: Tell us more about Planet24.

A: Planet42 is democratising mobility by enabling people ignored by banks to get access to a personal vehicle. We leverage technology to mitigate risk and promote financial inclusion by buying second-hand cars from a network of motor dealers and renting them out to customers, without the need to physically see the car or meet the customer.

Q: What path led to where Planet42 is right now?

A: While analysing various business ideas in South Africa, my co-founder Marten Orgna noticed that hard-working people with stable incomes are not able to get bank financing for a car, even though they can clearly afford it. This made no sense to him why would a bank refuse to buy a car for a teacher, sales rep, or nurse? Banks are big and clumsy and risk-averse, we saw an opportunity on the market and raised money from Europe to launch Planet42. So far we have invested the equivalent of R150 million in South Africa and we’re just getting started!

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Planet42?

A: Adaptability - we make decisions quickly and keep iterating to improve our product.

Buying cars for people in exchange for monthly payments is not a new idea, we are successful because we work tirelessly on becoming faster and more efficient. As soon as you relax and think the product is “finished” or “ready”, you’ll fall behind. A specific example of this is our proprietary scoring algorithm, which we update continuously using the data we’ve amassed through processing tens of thousands of applications over the past couple of years.

Q: Expatiate on how it works.

A: Applications submitted to Planet42 are assessed instantaneously by an automated scoring algorithm, providing a preliminary Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

assessment of creditworthiness and generating a proposal. If the customer accepts the terms, Planet42 verifies the a p p l i c a n t ’s b a n k s t a t e m e n t s a n d identification of documents, and a contract is signed. The customer’s chosen car is then bought from the dealership by Planet42 and rented out on a long-term basis. Rental payments include comprehensive and mechanical insurance, and GPS tracking.

The car can be bought out or returned at any time.

Q: How can remote areas in South Africa benefit from your services?

A: Having a personal vehicle is even more important in remote areas due to the lack of public transportation. Unfortunately, banks are unwilling to provide vehicle finance (or other services for that matter) to many South Africans, particularly in remote areas due to perceived credit and other risks. About 1 in 3 Planet42 customers are from rural areas.

Q: What does the ter m “financial inclusion” mean to you?

A: At the most basic level financial inclusion means that people have access to products that match their needs as well as their means.

It doesn’t mean that every single person should get financed - many don’t have the income to make even small payments, so offering a financial product to them would be irresponsible. However if a person can afford regular payments for something that they deem necessary for themselves, then a financially inclusive system will serve them.

Q: What are some of the most effective ways in which your company is currently promoting financial inclusion in South Africa?

A: Unreliable public transport is a major obstacle to prosperity, limiting access to employment and educational opportunities, hampering financial inclusion. Everyday activities like commuting or taking the kids to school can be needlessly time-consuming and even dangerous.

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We fill the gap in getting cars in the hands of the people who both need and can afford them.

Q: In the efforts to provide your services, does your company form strategic partnerships with FinTech companies, Startups, SMEs, etc.?

A: Planet42 has partnered with specialist firms in insurance, GPS tracking, payments, KYC, etc. These companies include startups as well as large established companies. We are always looking for better alternatives to take the product further. For example, we have switched our preferred insurance company twice in three years.

Q: Do you see a future where Africa’s fintech companies collaborate more?

A: Yes, definitely. The market is so vast that we’re better off cooperating with each other and thereby growing the pie rather than fighting over who gets the biggest slice.

Q: How do you see Africa’s fintech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: I see it evolving rapidly on the back of more and more companies being founded by immigrants like us as well as local talents like Katlego Maphai from Yoco or Tayo Oviosu from Paga. There are no monopolies in the financial services industry, so there is ample opportunity to succeed. I believe that Africa will continue to have local champions as opposed to simply having global fintech powerhouses dominate the market.

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How $100,000 Drowned this Nigerian Brand + Classic Lessons BY: DIMEJI AKINLOYE

of new businesses and startups in Nigeria fail within the first three years.

Apart from the infrastructural deficit and leadership deficiency in the country, the scarcity of integrity among the people also stifles the ease of doing business in Nigeria.

BASIL OKPARA

S

tarting a business in any part of the world is a daunting task.

Growing the business is another kettle of fish. The most notorious of them all is sustaining the business.

The challenges vary and are in different degrees – from raising capital, sustaining steady growth to breaking even, and then scaling.

Everybody is in a race to milk you dry of your capital and profit – the employees, the thoughtless government policies, corrupt government officials, the banks, even family members involved in the business are constantly looking for a way to undercut you – the list is long.

In a nutshell, the odds are stacked against you unless you learn the workings of the business terrain in the country, especially from the ones who have been burnt.

Some are stuck in a stage while some come tumbling down from their uplevel – most small and medium scale businesses hardly recover from a huge financial loss.

However, in the spirit of fairness, this is not a reflection of ALL Nigerians. As you would imagine, there is still a ton of people of integrity, who are patriotic and passionate about changing the negative perception of Nigeria.

Now, assuming the coronavirus pandemic did not come into the equation, doing business in Nigeria is a new grade of migraine. The challenges are gigantic yet the opportunities abound.

The story of a Nigerian businessman – Basil Okpara – are full of classic lessons of how NOT to do business in Nigeria and a guide for African entrepreneurs.

Nigeria is one of the world’s leading business locations on the African continent, and the catch is largely its over 200 million population and the abundance of economically-viable natural resources.

But the ease of doing business in the country is an illusion at best.

In a Twitter series he shared, he talked about how he made avoidable mistakes that drowned his promising brand.

He got the vision right, he got the product right and the market was favourable until the business sailed into troubled waters.

Q: What happened?

In 2016, out of 189 countries, Nigeria was ranked 169th in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report.

An unverified statistic also states that 80% Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

A: “In 2008 April, I registered my first company Bazz Global Concept Ltd, got my first product Bazz Tomatoes registered with NAFDAC and secured my trademark. The 56

product was produced in the Southern city of Italy called Salerno. NAFDAC remarked that the product was one of the best.

I secured an office, warehouse, vehicles for distribution, staff and distributors in Lagos mainly in Trade Fair and Ebutte Ero markets. (It’s very important in recruiting staff to make sure you recruit entrepreneurs who are committed to achieving the set goals and objectives).

Do not employ staff who are only interested in getting their salaries or because they are related to you. That’s a huge mistake. You are not in biz to satisfy family members especially those who feel entitled to your money and perceived success.

The first mistake was entrusting a brother who was not committed to the success of the business. You can love and care for your people from afar but focus on those who are not just competent but passionately committed to the success of your vision.

The business started successfully in August 2008 when our first shipment of 5 20ft containers of tin tomatoes arrived. We sold all of them within 2 months and also did massive market storms in different markets in Lagos which was successful.

We embarked on a round of radio adverts and jingles which at the time was not necessary. It was a waste of resources. In doing business, ensure that you are frugal with your money and only invest in things that will increase your sales and profits.

Explore avenues where you could achieve sales and profits without unnecessary expenses. Research and focus of minimizing expenses and increasing profits. We had a warehouse which we could use as office so we didn’t need the office space we rented.(A mistake you should avoid).

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didn’t get them to write this down. I believed her and we proceeded.

Everything was done & funds moved to the company. Bank received shipping documents but refused to pay the duty as agreed. This was where the problem started.

Anyway, business was good and we added another product to our brand, Bazz Safety Matches which was also a huge success in the market. I actually sent someone to India to tidy up negotiations and start importing.

Now, this may sound like a great idea but the mistake was that we should have consolidated before expanding to other products as this was only gonna make out budget and funds tight. One good thing was that we had separate bank accounts for them and kept the funds separated.

Now, when doing business in Nigeria, ensure you have a lawyer who you should retain or if you can’t afford to retain one, always consult a lawyer before taking any major decisions.

The benefits of having a lawyer can never be over-estimated.

So many businesses fail because they do not have legal guidance. Money spent consulting a lawyer or lawyers is never wasted. And make sure ever y ag reement is well documented and filed. NEVER BE CONTENTED WITH VERBAL AGREEMENT. Whenever you are dealing with companies who produce a brand of product for you, e n s u r e yo u h ave a M a nu f a c t u r i n g Agreement in place. The benefits of having such agreements is to ensure that your business arrangements are documented, enforced and defaults punished / compensated.

So, while I was enjoying the first year of business and expanding to other products, I was having an exclusive relationship with Zenith Bank Plc. You see, I used to have this trait, when I start using a product or company, I start getting so attached to them.

L i k e I s a i d , N e ve r t a k e ve r b a l agreements, they can be denied at any time. Every effort and proposals made to ensure the goods were cleared were not successful. We didn’t have enough cash to sort out the duties and shipping costs plus demurrages which were increasing rapidly.

don’t like to be in any kind of debt. I hate owing anyone money and I had this mindset that owing banks money was bad. (Another mistake) If you know what to do with money, use their cash.

However, it is always better to start business and run it with your cash. There’s a peace that comes with doing business with your cash especially if you are someone that can’t sleep peacefully if you are in debt. That’s how I stuck with Zenith Bank.

We developed a working relationship, I would visit the manager whenever I needed to do some transactions and she would come to my office at times especially when I’m upset with them. She would come running to pacify me together with my account officer/relationship manager.

In the process of trying to raise enough cash to clear the goods, the customs gazetted the containers and auctioned them. Actually, I was reliable informed that their boss(name withheld) gave them as gifts to some people.

This experience shook me. I was devastated.

It took me quite a few years to pull myself together and continue on this entrepreneurial journey. I made mistakes, I learned from them and I’m conquering still.”

For some reasons, I won’t mention their names and the branch here now. We were manufacturing and importing our products and I normally made wire transfers to my manufacturers in both Italy and India. Then at some point, I decided to raise a Letter of Credit(L/C).

I refused to entertain the courting of other banks who used to troop into my office almost on a daily basis asking me to bank with them. Skye Bank approached me those early days, I asked what they could do for me to make me ditch Zenith Bank,

For my manufacturer in Italy but before then, I had a meeting with the bank manager and we agreed that the bank would pay the custom duty while I focus on the shipping company. We agreed on this before I authorized the Letter of Credit for 5 containers worth $100,000.

They offered to give me N100m loan at 20% interest per annum but I refused because I

Like I said earlier, the huge mistake was that I

Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

Another mistake was that we did not separate the containers, we had all 5 containers issued a single Bill of Lading so you can clear them one by one. Always ensure you have enough cash to sort out all charges and if you are doing multiple containers, issue single bill of ladings.

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Olubunmi Agunsoju

Elizabeth Tayo-Ojo

Admin & Finance Manager, Rodrill Movers

Senior Accountant, PAMC

Olubunmi is such a pivotal asset to the company. With her, one can go into autopilot mode because you know that things will not fall through the cracks. She is reliable and dependable, a true star.

She is a chartered accountant with proven ingenuity in the application of accounting principles and standards in solving clients' ďŹ nancial accounting issues.

Emmanuel Agim

Since she joined the Power House Management Consulting (PAMC) team, Elizabeth has helped improve the company's professional credibility among clients.

Head of Operations, Gieoz Corporate Driver Ltd. Emmanuel is in charge of the day-to-day running of business operations. An expert in recruitment and management of eet operations, including payroll management, training, development and background checks.

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SPECIAL REPORT

Covid-19: Africa's Aviation Begins Long Journey to Recovery

BY: ADEMOLA ASUNLOYE

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rior to the outbreak of the coronavir us (COVID-19) in many countries of the world, the aviation industry in Africa was one of the fastest-growing industries.

The pandemic continued to disrupt life and businesses, bringing the African aviation industry to a halt for several months accompanied with huge losses.

Despite the unrest caused by the pandemic, Africa’s aviation is set on a long jour ney to success through resilience.

numbers to the right. While the former projected that passenger traffic to and from Africa would increase by 5.4 per cent yearly over the next two decades, predictions from the latter, IATA, is indicative that Africa would be the second-fastest-growing aviation market; with more than double passenger numbers to 334 million within the same period as predicted by Airbus.

of 972,000 tonnes.

For over a decade, the number of passengers carried by scheduled operations in Africa increased by an all high 73.57 per cent to 91.99 million in 2018, where South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were the top 5 countries with most passengers.

A report from the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) in 2019 showed that the Africa aviation industry recorded net losses in three consecutive years from 2016 while contributing $80 billion to the GDP.

In 2019, Dr. Bernard Aliu, the president of t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l C i v i l Av i a t i o n Organisation (ICAO), said that Air transport contributed about $55.8 billion to Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while supporting over 6.2 million jobs.

Be that as it may, in the same year (2018), the industry supported about 6.9 million jobs, transported 91.99 million passengers, where 67.1 million (or 72.94 per cent) of them were tourists. In the same year, Air freight carried

by African airlines scheduled operations increased by 0.3 per cent in 2018, with a total

According to the long-term traffic forecasts of ICAO, passenger traffic for the Africa region is estimated to grow by 4.3 percent annually till 2045, while freight traffic is projected to grow by 3.9 per cent (exceeding the world average) annually over the same period.

Before COVID-19 Months before the pandemic, Africa’s aviation was filled with positive outlook. The sun seemed to smile on the African aviation i n d u s t r y e ve n a s A i r b u s a n d T h e International Air Transport Association (IATA) made predictions that skewed the Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

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SPECIAL REPORT

If the increase is anything to go by, then aviation-related employment in Africa is estimated to increase by 58.06 per cent to 9.8 million jobs by the end of 2036. The increase will ripple into the air transport GDP by an increase of 184.95 per cent, that is, to the tune of $159 billion over the same period.

aviation industry’s revenue will shrink by 44 per cent in 2020, while global GDP will contract by circa 3 per cent. Even though Africa is the second largest continent by size and population, it is not left out in the strokes as its airlines account for about 6 per cent of the world's air traffic.

From January this year, there have been a sharp Year-on-year (YoY) traffic drop for African Airlines. Although January and February 2020 led positive figures as their Available Seat Kilometres (ASK) separately surpassed last year’s figures.

COVID-19 Disruption

The increase in the number of cases of the coronavirus sickened the African continent as it recorded its first recession in about 3 decades, losing nearly $55 billion in the travel and tourism sectors from April to June 2020.

However, African airlines began to record YoY capacity reduction by 19.7 percent in March, by 77.7 percent in April, by 79.2 percent in May and by 76.2 per cent in June 2020.

During this pandemic, Africa alone saw fewer flights than other regions. There were times that the entire West and Central African region recorded a single daily departure, according to the data from the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Similarly, the Revenue Passenger Kilometres (RPK) have been dropping from January in comparison to the months of the previous year (2019). There was minor but positive impact in January and February this year compared to the two months in the previous year. March 2020 saw a YoY traffic decline by 48.3 per cent, then a further 76.3 per cent in April, 89 percent in May and 88.9 percent in June 2020.

On the contrary, this positive outlook for the continent of Africa is becoming nightmares as the COVID-19 bite harder. The grounding of flights resulted in losses to the airlines which consequently affected the sectors that are dependent on aviation such as tourism and trade.

At the early days of the pandemic, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) DirectorGeneral, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stalwartly frowned at travel restrictions.

Although this was initially heeded by some senior African health policy leaders, however, as the coronavirus spread across the world, countries in Africa were prompt to implement tough air travel restrictions and lockdowns.

Even though, airlines were shut against passengers, it continued to deliver essential high-priority cargo to move supplies and aid workers across Africa in a bid to tackle the coronavirus disease.

As COVID-19 continued to stifle the economies of many African countries and pose risks to life, 36 countries in WHO’s Africa region, including Nigeria, closed their borders to international travel.

Subsequently, 8 more suspended flights from regions/continents with high cases of COVID-19, while others had partial restrictions.

As the days go by, more coronavirus cases were being confirmed in all the African countries. As of 6:31 am on August 28, 2020, the total coronavirus cases reported for Africa were 1,225,249 confirmed cases, 957,854 recovered cases and 28,910 death cases. This puts the recovery and death rates to 78.18 percent and 2.36 percent respectively.

As a result of the huge impact of the coronavirus, IATA estimated that the Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

While Africa cumulatively recorded (few) scores of daily departure on average, the continents of Asia, Europe and North America on an average saw several hundred departures daily from their respective international airports.

An assessment conducted by AFRAA on the impact of COVID-19 on the aviation industry in Africa in July 2020 showed that African airlines combine is projected to suffer a huge loss of $8.56 billion in revenue in 2020. This was based on the assumptions of 30 percent traffic recovery on Q3 2020 and 65 percent traffic recovery on Q4 2020.

The passenger revenue dropped by 17.41 percent in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020 to $2.42 billion from $2.93 billion from the same quarter in 2019. The effect of the pandemic was still mild in the first quarter since the virus was slow to reach the African continent compared to other parts of the world. Then, flights were still much active, especially that the first case in Africa was recorded in Egypt in mid-February.

As we scaled through the second quarter (Q2) of 2020, the passenger revenue further dropped by 87.60 percent from $2.42 billion in Q1 to $0.30 billion in Q2 2020. When compared to Q2 2019, it had dropped by 30.13 percent from $3.04 billion. It is however expected that the industry will start to revive sometimes from Mid Q3 2020 when they might have fully reopened.

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Across African Airlines in June 2020, capacity nosedived to 16.436 billion ASKs. This represents a decrease of 76.24 percent from the previous year.

Across all airlines in Africa, a peep into the top 15 airlines (from top to least): Ethiopian Airlines, EgyptAir, South African Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Kenya Airways, Air Algeria, Air Mauritius, Tunisair, TAAG Angola Airlines, Safair, Air Austral, Mango, Nouvelair Tunisie, Air Cairo and Nile Air revealed that they all recorded a negative ASKs in April, May and June 2020 in comparison to the same months in 2019.

Ethiopian Airline recorded the most decline, while Nile Air recorded the least, in that order.

According to The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA), Covid-19 crisis also affected global air cargo capacity as it declined by 35 percent. Even though the African aviation industry recorded cargo capacity drop by 39.4 percent between May 2019 and May 2020, according to IATA, a rise on demand derived from the COVID-19 crisis led to an improvement of cargo load factors by 21.10 per cent YoY in May 2020.

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SPECIAL REPORT

Reopening of airports Faced with the difficult choice of whether to continue the lockdown of airlines which h u r t t h e i r e c o n o m i e s o r we l c o m e international flights that threatens their survival, African countries finally decided to take the skies again.

Some countries like Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, and Zambia among others decided to set the pace for others to follow.

As African countries begin to reopen their borders and air spaces, the risk of infection surges cannot be overemphasized, hence, effective measures to mitigate those risks need to be taken.

As part of the new normal, face masks and physical distancing will remain mandatory with compliance on other stringent measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

For a seamless and effective restart, there is a need to follow duly the harmonized set of recommendations and measures that ICAO and its industry partners have provided.

Applicable risk mitigation measures should be taken by the general public while specific measures for operators should be strictly adhered to. Many Western governments are providing massive state-guaranteed, lowrate loans to rescue their national airlines which have been out of business for months. This is even worse for the African airlines that have been dealt with a fatal blow by the coronavirus.

Alex Vines, Africa program director for London-based research group Chatham House mentioned that many African airlines were already in trouble before the COVID19 pandemic hit the continent.

Cheikh Tidiane Camara, the for mer European director for defunct pan-African airline, Air Afrique, told Radio France International that there won’t be many companies that will be able to emerge from this crisis, adding that it will be necessary to restructure the African airspace.

Many countries on the African continent, especially those who have been on a Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

borrowing binge are already struggling to debt-finance emergency interventions like education and health, and they do not have access to funds at appealing interest rates.

The impact of the pandemic goes beyond businesses, it also affected long-lived ambitions for better regional trade and political ties between African countries where travelling across and within such countries has long been a major obstacle.

Some of the African airline companies among the lot that has borne the major brunt of the COVID-19 are Air Zimbabwe, a single-plane carrier that incurred $300 million debt (according to the Associated Press); Kenya Airways; Royal Air Maroc; ASKY Airlines whose fleet of 9 aircraft is still grounded; Ethiopian Airlines, which already reported huge revenue loss of about $550 million between January and April 2020; and South African Airways, which has not made a profit since 2011.

According to a report by Associated Press, the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa warned that airlines that were struggling before the pandemic will likely end up filing for bankruptcy or seek bailouts. Hence, some strategic steps need to be taken.

The way forward

countries with large middle-class individuals who journey on vast distant provincial capitals, and where such a country lacks ground transport alternative.

Also, every African country will need to decide on a business model whether they would prefer a state-owned airline or enable private local players to maintain their main aviation services.

It will also be necessary for these countries to allocate financial resources to their airlines in order to restructure their existing aviation assets while providing them with the required governance and policies for successful transformation.

These countries will achieve more through a mutually benefited relationship with partners and/or competitors - whether private, public, domestic, or regional.

Another key thing to note is that, to maintain local aircraft connectivity jobs, regional cooperation will be more important than anything else.

As the African aviation industry slowly takes flight from its biggest challenge in history, it is of utmost importance that countries should conduct comprehensive entry and exit screening as part of the overall national response strategy.

Some of the reparative approaches that African airlines can take is to adopt a domestic low-cost strateg y aimed at stimulating traffic flows through low prices.

However, this strategy might be applied by 62

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MOHAMED YOUSSEF CEO / Founder, Zedny - EdTech

Egypt

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edny offers year-long online learning and development for an employee at a fraction of the cost of one offline training course and can serve as an external employee performance evaluator through its AI integrations.

Found in 2018, by Mohamed Youssef ElBaz, The platform incorporates gamification into the HR growth process to enable individuals to achieve their full potential in the job market and regularly improve their skills and business acumen.

Business Elites Africa sat with the founder and CEO to discuss Zedny’s journey and the future of educational technology in Africa.

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Zedny is Empowering Human Capital in Africa BY: SIMEON ONOJA

Q: What does Zedny do?

Q: Tell us about Zedny’s services?

A: Zedny is a recently launched Egyptian Edtech company which provides comprehensive learning and development solutions in Arabic for companies and individuals from the age of 20 and up. The platform provides a learning management system (LMS) tracking employees’ progress and skills, while artificial intelligence (AI) learns about each user and guides them through their development via video graphic courses, animated video book summaries and comprehensive skills assessments.

A: We provide a comprehensive L&D solution for companies and individuals with many learning products under a club subscription model.

Q: What path led to where Zedny is right now?

Our market penetration strategy is to help individuals and companies with an “all you can eat buffet” of learning. This comes as part of our mantra: “Know everything about something and something about everything.” A year-long subscription in Zedny for any employee or individual with a growing library of content costs less than one single traditional course.

A: There are many challenges like funding, learning in the mother tongue with quality content, internet infrastr ucture and connection, etc.

We think the biggest challenge is having the right Edtech companies make a deal with the blessing of governments under the support of a large global organization to help with the funding. When all three stakeholders align in terms of objectives, miracles will happen.

Q: In the efforts to provide your services across Africa, does your company form strategic par tner ships with tech companies, startups, SMEs, etc.?

Q: Where is Africa with edtech?

A: It was a long path working and perfecting what we do. It started more than 3 years back, building our methodology and Arabic content library to more than 200 online courses and more than 400 animated video book summaries of global bestsellers.

Having planned all of this in a blue ocean where very few players existed with limited Arabic content was very appealing, but after COVID-19, this became a major need to institutions and companies within Egypt and the Middle East and the demand couldn’t be higher.

Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Zedny?

A: I would say the employees in Zedny who are the believers in our mission, did the R&D, found creative ways to do things better and faster almost every month and are actually challenging themselves to benchmark against the best in the world.

This is our biggest asset. Additionally, the fact that everything from media production, platform development, learning innovation and the upcoming gamification launch is produced and done in-house, is definitely a strength.

A: Africa’s population is 1.3 billion and the average age is 19.4 years old. This is a mega potential for Edtech, making Africa the most promising market globally and giving the sector the opportunity to empower African youth.

The traditional ways will not suffice and there are not enough funds to build physical schools and universities for all of these numbers. Edtech is the only solution for a brighter future in our beloved Africa.

Q: What can be done to increase the adoption of edtech by African employers/employees?

A: Many players will enter that space in the next few years. Employers will need a solution to deliver on their needs but also a cost-efficient one in those challenging time.

A few success stories of companies adopting Edtech and publications like yourself highlighting this would be a good trigger for others to try it. It is a long road ahead but things are moving very fast now.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges facing edtech in Africa?

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A: We just started so we have some work to do here, but we are definitely considering partnerships with stakeholders in other African countries in order to reach every corner of the continent one day. We have a very ambitious plan, which needs to happen step-by-step first before we start running.

Q: How can Small and Medium-size Businesses benefit from your services?

A: We offer very attractive cost-efficient solutions for companies who need to learn on-the-job skills in Arabic and in the future you can expect us to introduce other languages.

How do you see Africa’s edtech industry evolving over the medium to long-term?

A: The future of Edtech in the world will depend on Africa as one of the biggest untapped markets. We believe that the next unicorns (companies with $1 billion valuations) in Edtech will include companies of African origins.

It is an exciting time for Edtech and there is so much more to be done and we are looking forward to being part of empowering people, companies and countries in the development of their human capital. w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

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Top 7 New Technology Trends in 2020 BY: MAUREEN ISAIAH

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onsidering how fast new technologies are springing up every day, this list might even become obsolete before it gets published. That is how fast computer s c i e n t i s t s a n d o t h e r t e c h n o l og y enthusiasts are chur ning out new technologies by the hour.

Knowing and learning the new technology trends will help you in your business, career, or whatever endeavors you are pursuing.

Most businesses fail because they choose to continue with traditional running a business while their competitors keep up with the constantly shifting trends.

Seeing that most businesses operate with technology, for you to remain on top of your competition, you have to ensure you are closely following new technology trends and possibly implementing them in your business practices.

If you are a career person, you need to learn these technology trends to compete in the job market.

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What new technology trends in 2020 you need to know so you don’t get left behind?

Read on to find out the top 7:

Artificial Intelligence In 2019, the global artificial intelligence market size got valued at $39.9 billion. It was projected to grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 42.2% from 20202027.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been trending for a while now. But that’s because it’s still at its early stages of developments and there are lots more to uncover.

The AI program was built into computer systems to mimic human thinking and making decisions. It helps perform tasks like speech, image and pattern recognition, medical diagnosis, weather forecast, and other complex tasks. The fun part is that AI performs these tasks better and faster than humans.

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You can find AI presence in voice assistive technology like Siri, ride-sharing apps like Uber, streaming services like Netflix, or even search engines like Google and Bing. AI can be useful for simple tasks like train scheduling to complex ones like assessing business risks.

According to estimates, AI technology may create over 60 million jobs by 2030. It will create jobs in data science, data analysis, machine learning, support and maintenance, and testing. But at the same time, it could take away over 70 million jobs.

Machine learning According to Fortune Business Insights, machine learning might reach $117.19 billion by 2027. It was valued at $8.43 billion in 2019.

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Machine learning is linked to AI. Here, computers are programmed to learn what they cannot do initially. This becomes possible by taking insights from data and discovering patterns.

Applications using machine learning helps to mine and analyze data. It is also useful for pattern recognition, network intrusion detection, and even helps web search results.

Machine learning is gradually being utilized across various industries and hence the need for professionals that can handle this technology. Such professionals include researchers, data scientists, engineers, and developers.

If you’re interested in learning how to use this program, you can choose to specialize in any of its subsets, such as natural language processing (NLP), neural networks, and deep learning.

central data processing.

It is all about drawing the computing power closer to the data source by decentralizing processing power i.e. instead of transferring data to cloud centers, it gets stored in the edge of the network. This solves distance communication between a client and the server, thereby increasing data processing speed.

Edge computing is useful for processing time-sensitive data, which has no connection to a centralized location. This technology is likely to create more jobs for software engineers and other IT professionals.

A report published by Fior Market believes the global edge computing market should reach $18.36 billion by 2027 with a CAGR growth of 26.5% from 2020-2027. It was valued at $2.8 billion in 2019.

don’t need a third party to validate transactions or control the data. Every transaction is consensus-driven.

Many payment-type and security venture companies are springing up to prevent data leakage, money laundering, and internet fraud. One of such company gaining public attention is the Chainanalysis, which aims to end money laundering.

Countries are allowing the use of blockchain in their services. For example, China has approved its use in services such as Alibaba Group, China Industrial, and Commercial Bank (ICBC), amongst others. In the United States, IBM conducted an accelerator program with blockchain as its focus.

Report Linker report estimates global blockchain technology market to reach $142.5 billion by the end of 2027. It is currently pegged at $4.4 billion.

Cybersecurity Robotic Process Automation Another technology that is helpful in automation is Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA comes in handy for mundane and repetitive tasks which can be tiring to do.

It automates complex and costly business processes thereby speeding up office tasks and saving money.

According to the Grand View Research market report, global robotic process automation market size is set to experience a CAGR of about 40.6% from 2020-2027. It was valued at $1.40 billion in 2019.

RPA is estimated to threaten the job market, seeing it can carry out activities of different professionals ranging from doctors to financial managers, and even menial jobs.

However, RPA cannot wholly automate most tasks; it’s more of partial automation.

So, people can still get to keep their jobs.

Internet of things (IoT) Cybersecurity technology has indeed been around for quite some time, but it's still trending because of its constant evolvement.

Since cyber threats continue to spring up daily, technology must improve to solve the problems.

Hackers are not planning to give up on their trade any time soon. Instead, they are coming up with more sophisticated methods to get through tight security measures.

Therefore, as long as hackers continue hacking, cybersecurity will keep involving and remain a technology trend.

Cybersecurity which was expected to decline in 2020 from $66.87 billion to $65.46 billion due to the Covid 19 pandemic is projected to reach $91.1 billion in 2023.

RPA offers IT professionals who are diligent in learning numerous career opportunities such as business analysts, developers, project managers, etc.

The cybersecurity job role remains one of the hardest to fill even though the available positions grow three times faster than other tech jobs. Roles can range from the chief security officer to an ethical hacker or security engineer.

Edge computing

Blockchain

Edge computing, an offshoot of cloud computing, was designed to solve the problems found in cloud computing and

Blockchain, like cybersecurity, keeps evolving because it has a lot to offer to the world of technology. With blockchain, you

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The Fortune Business Insights report estimate IoT market to reach $1,102.6 billion by 2026. This is due to the advancement in technologies relating to artificial intelligence.

The Internet of Things is not only present in the new technology trends in 2020, but it is also a future trend. More and more devices such as cars, home appliances are being connected to the internet.

Consumers are enjoying the benefits of IoT. Some of these devices can enable them to hail a ride with Lyft, track fitness, or even preheat the oven while still returning from work. On the business side, benefits such as data collection and analyzing is what makes IoT indispensable. With technolog y, businesses can improve customer services, predict maintenance, and so on.

The IT professionals available for IoT jobs are not enough because they don’t have adequate skills. Some of the skills needed are IoT security, data analytics, cloud computing knowledge, device knowledge, etc.

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MANSOOR HAMAYUN Founder / CEO, Bboxx BY: SIMEON ONOJA

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boxx is a renewable energy solutions company which designs, deploys and finances decentralised solar-powered systems across africa.

Founded in 2010 by Mansoor Hamayun, Christopher Baker-Brian and Laurent Van-Houcke, Bboxx is improving the standard of living for families across Africa by offering accessible, secure, and renewable electricity.

Business Elites Africa caught up with Mansoor to discuss Bboxx’s journey so far and the future of Africa’s energy tech industry.

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Bboxx is Improving Access to Renewable Energy Across Africa Q: What does Bboxx do?

A: Bboxx is a next-generation utility, transforming lives and unlocking potential through access to energy. We exist to solve a major global problem: energy poverty. It is unacceptable that 840 million people across the globe live without access to energy and a further one billion live without a reliable electrical supply. To overcome this issue, we use IoT (Internet of Things) technology to provide pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar energy to off-grid communities and those with an unreliable grid across Africa and Asia. We operate in 11 markets, with some of our biggest ones including Rwanda, Kenya, Togo, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We are also proud to be contributing to 11 out of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Q: What path led to where Bboxx is right now?

A: In 2010, myself, Christopher Baker-Brian and Laurent Van-Houcke met while studying electrical engineering at Imperial College London. Throughout our travels we witnessed first-hand the challenges businesses and communities faced due to unreliable or lack of electricity. We saw the potential to create an affordable, sustainable and commercial solution that would tackle this.

We founded Bboxx when we graduated and have got to where we are today through forging strategic partnerships along the journey. Our $50 million Series D funding r o u n d l a s t y e a r l e d by M i t s u b i s h i Corporation is a key example. We have also partnered with governments in Togo and the DRC on our mission to bring energy to as many people as possible. As we celebrate our tenth year in business this year, we are proud to have reached a major milestone – having positively impacted over one million lives through access to energy, and we have ambitious plans for the future.

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Q: What would you say is the greatest strength of Bboxx?

A: Our people are crucial – their innovation, commitment and ambition make everything possible. And our technology is absolutely core to what we do. It has enabled us to scale quickly and bring clean energy to as many people as we can. Everything runs on Bboxx Pulse®, our comprehensive management platform. Bboxx Pulse® allows us to remotely monitor and manage our Solar Home Systems (SHS) spread across vast and distributed global locations. The data we collect allows us to better service our customers.

Q: How is Bboxx tackling the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic?

A: T hroughout the ong oing global pandemic, we have found that demand for our services has been robust, as energy truly is an essential need. We have been innovating though to ensure that we can keep the lights on for our customers even in tough times.

We introduced the ‘crisis energy’ scheme in Togo, the DRC, Kenya and Rwanda, providing bonus days of energy for free for customers who pay upfront. In the DRC we have also been providing vital electricity for lighting in hospitals as well as donating hand washing stations for local government.

Q: How is Bboxx reaching remote areas in Africa?

A: Our technology, Bboxx Pulse® enables us to remotely monitor and manage our hundreds of thousands of Solar Home Systems (SHS) spread across globally distributed locations. This makes running our business incredibly efficient – from our head office in London, to our manufacturing in China, to our Next Generation Utilities (NGUs) in the likes of Rwanda, Kenya, Togo and the DRC. It also means that we can expand energy access to customers who were previously thought to be unreachable.

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In our latest development, we have recently launched our most affordable and sustainable product yet, the bPower20 product, which will make energy access accessible at scale in Africa. We are rolling this out in a few markets this year, and it will appeal directly to off-grid rural customers with lower energy needs. On the other end of the energy spectrum, last year in Togo we partnered with world leading electricity company EDF, our Togo joint venture partner, to power an entire rural village with solar.

Q: What can Africa expect from the Bboxx and CANAL+ partnership?

A: Announcing our partnership with France’s leading international pay-TV company CANAL+ was a hugely exciting milestone for us as a business. We have always seen ourselves as a truly trusted partner for our customers, so it is great to be able to bring additional value-added services into people’s homes for the first time that improve their quality of life. T his partnership has lots of significant synergies.

Q: Where is Africa with energ y technology?

A: The growth of mobile money in Africa, combined with the falling cost of solar has meant that Africa’s off-grid solar sector has been able to bypass traditional grid infrastructure and lead the way in the uptake of much smarter solutions.

Q: Do you see a future where tech companies in Africa collaborate more with each other?

A: Collaboration has been key to our own success to date, as we have leveraged the expertise, reach and scale of companies ranging from EDF, Mitsubishi Corporation, CANAL+, Orange, among others.

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How Covid-19 is Bleeding African Tourism BY: DIMEJI AKINLOYE

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frica’s Game Reserves, Parks, Beaches and Historic sites that attracted a large number of foreign tourists before the coronavirus pandemic are in trouble – the type that may take long before it recovers from.

Like others, Somkhanda, a communityowned “Big 5” Game Reserve in South Africa has pivoted to meat selling as it now faces a loss of up to 90 percent of its revenues.

The pandemic has put businesses all over the world on their toes, forcing many to devise other means to sustain cash flow while some have had to lay off a chunk of their staff to survive.

The reserve had in the past sold its meat, albeit cheaply or sometimes they are given away to reduce the population of its animals every year – depending on the weather condition and the availability of pasture needed to nurture wildlife. This was done as a stock management strategy.

Africa’s recreational industry and the aviation sector are the most affected with the month-long Covid-19 lockdown that confined everyone to their homes. Even as many African nations are easing the lockdown, most safari tourism businesses, a multibillion-dollar sector, on the continent are still under locks and keys.

“During dry winter months when water and nutrition for game were reduced, sustainably harvesting Somkhanda’s game numbers helped to protect the remaining animals from starvation,” said Meiring Prinsloo, the game reserve’s manager.

Between January and May 2019, African t o u r i s m s h owe d a 6 % g r ow t h b u t international tourism contracted to -47% in 2020.

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However, the last five months have forced the company into commercial meat marketing.

The game reserve, which before Covid-19 was said to be a sought-after for restaurants and foreign tourists, is now raking in about 72

USD 2,875 to USD 5,730 monthly from the commercial sale of meat.

“Instead of culling and just giving that meat away or selling it at a very low price locally, we tried to market it. We would rather have the doors open,” said Roelie Kloppers, Chief Executive at the Wildlands, a comanager of the reserve in the heart of northern Zululand.

A monthly survey by SafariBookings shows that the pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the African safari tourism landscape. It reveals that three out of four tour operators have experienced about 75 percent decline in bookings.

Findings also show that 93 percent of operators have lost at least three-quarter of the bookings they normally record at this time of year.

The figure is disturbing, moreso that so many people in East and Southern Africa rely on the industry. With the operators now unable to hire local staff in light of the current realities, an economic catastrophe is imminent. w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

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Prior to Covid-19, the Somkhanda Game Reserve supported more than 200 families surrounding the facility because the reserve is the only source of income for the community.

However, there is a rescue mission underway to support the community. The Wildlands, the non-g overnmental conser vation program that co-manages the reserve, has collaborated with other South Africa-based reserves – Bosveld Game Meat and KZN Game Meat – to expand wildlife ranching and game meat harvesting of Somkhanda.

The partnership is aimed at reaching a wider market, and the income generated would be used to fund ongoing sustainable conservation and community development efforts within and without Somkhanda.

The South African government had said that the pandemic could cost 400,000 jobs in the tourism industry.

According to the UN’s World Tourism Organization, Africa received 71.2 million tourists in 2019 and the sector employed nearly 25 million people but the pandemic has slammed the brake on that growth as African countries have already lost nearly $55 billion in revenue in the last three months.

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Data given by the African Union shows that travel and tourism contribute 9% to Africa’s economy.

"It’s been a disaster in 2020 we were growing, now we are decreasing," said Sisa Ntshona, Chief Executive officer of South African Tourism.

Ghana is also reeling from the ripple effect of the pandemic. Shortly before Covid-19 became a pandemic, Moses Femi Gbeku, a Ghanaian tour operator had six tours lined up, with tourists from US, Canada and other parts of Europe already in Ghana preparing for the experience, only for it to be cancelled abruptly.

"I had my last tour just before COVID-19 actually became a pandemic, and after that I had about six tours canceled”, said Gbeku, who runs the Accra-based Mofeg Travel and Tours.

He said his company usually operates seven tours a year in several West African countries - with six tours cancelled already, it means Gbeku is out of business for the year and at least 20 tour guides and other staff are jobless.

According to him, the 20 staff in-turn have at least ten dependants, leaving about 200 people stranded.

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On the reopening for international travels, only Tanzania and Tunisia, which are popular for their game parks and beaches respectively, are the major African countries that have lifted the ban on international flights as they are now welcoming foreign tourists amid fears that coronavirus cases could surge.

Morocco and Mauritius have eased their national lockdowns but foreign visitors are still not allowed into the countries.

Kenya, Seychelles and Rwanda resumed international passenger flights on August 1 but with a caveat – visitors will be tested for Covid-19 and the result must come back negative before they can be admitted into the countries.

In 2019, Rwanda reported its highest annual growth in tourism and attracted 1.63 million visitors, earning $498 million.

The most populous African nation, Nigeria, has also slated August 29 as the tentative date for the resumption of international flights.

As much as the gradual opening of international borders is good news to African tourism, the business will not be as usual again and recovering from the economic loss will take a long time.

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Business Elites Africa Magazine highlights Africa’s leading executives, entrepreneurs and business minds from multi-national corporations to thriving local start-ups. These executives who lead these organisations all have a story to tell and advice to offer.

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10 Strategies to Attract & Retain Millennials to Your E-commerce Business BY: ROSEMARY EGBO

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illennials make up a large percentage of the number of people that visit e-commerce platfor ms. They are people bor n between 1981 to 1996. If millennials make up a large percentage of online buyers, it’s only logical that your ecommerce marketing strategies should be aimed towards attracting and retaining them. Running a brick and mortar shop shouldn’t stop you from creating an e-commerce platform for your business. You’ll gain a lot of sales from these millennials if you choose to tap from the numerous benefits of owning a well-optimized e-commerce platform.

Here are strategies on how to attract and retain millennials.

1. Optimize Shopping Experience on Every Device Despite 52 percent of millennials browsing and shopping online through their mobile phones, it’s still advisable to optimize the shopping experience for all devices.

Millennials use their phones, iPads, laptops and desktops to shop online, so don’t leave any stone unturned.

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According to Neil Patel, easy-to-tap button, big, clear images, and seamless loading make your e-commerce platform more powerful.

2. Leverage Social Sharing Inculcating social sharing as a core part of your marketing strategy is a step in the right direction. Statistics show that many millennials would rather consult their online and offline friends, colleagues, family members before buying a product or service.

Instead of focusing entirely on influencer marketing, channel your efforts to enable your products or services to enjoy social sharing.

How do you achieve social sharing?

Proffer the right solutions to their challenges Ÿ Meet their needs and they’ll naturally tell their fellow millennials about their experience using your product or service Ÿ

3. Highly Personalized Emails are Still Powerful

millennial shoppers’ names in the subject lines. It’s more about knowing why they abandoned their carts or left a product page, and proffering actionable solutions.

Millennials are retained by e-commerce platforms that show interest in their personal needs. Send personalized emails to millennial buyers from the data you’ve collected from your website.

4. Leverage Quality Data From Live Chats Add qualitative data to your quantitative data by creating transcripts for your live chat. Live chat is to provide immediate answers to questions or challenges millennial shoppers might have while navigating your website. If you notice that shoppers are all asking the same question, it’s time to add the question and answer to your FAQs. The more you pay attention to data from live chat, the more optimized your website becomes.

Many e-commerce platforms don’t often get i t r i g h t w i t h p e r s o n a l i z e d e m a i l s.

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optimized will come from the buyersusers.

Keep in mind that millennials will turn to your competitors if the user experience on your website is bad.

7. Use Loyalty Strategy and Coupons Life is a game of interest, and millennials aren’t left out. To get social sharing and loyalty from millennials, there should be something you’re offering them in return.

Millennials are loyal to e-commerce platfor ms that incorporate loyalty strategy.

5. Create Millennial Centered Content Strategy Millennials want answers to every question they search on the internet. This is the reason why you should make sure that the content on your website is answering their questions about your products and services.

Content on your website should be targeted towards telling people about everything there is to know about your products and services.

Millennials are power searchers – 23 percent of millennials say they tend to research before purchasing. Endeavour to use good images in your copy, sales pages, blogs, and about pages. These millennials shoppers don’t like being trapped in a website, make exiting easy by adding the easy opt-out feature to your website.

6. Test Your Site Using Real Shoppers For maximum optimization, don’t judge your e-commerce site from your perspective.

You’re the seller and there are things you may not be able to see from the seller’s perspective. It’s called ‘user experience’ because observation on how well your site is Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 110

To get them to push and talk about your products and ser vices, answer the question “What’s in it for them?”

Coupons are a way smart e-commerce platforms reward and retain millennials for social sharing and loyalty. Millennials are also more likely to buy products or services that offer coupons.

Statistics have shown that 63 percent of millennials would be more likely “check-in” to business social media channels if they’ll get a discount or coupon for doing so.

8. Tell Stories on Social Media Millennials are still very much interested in stories. Storytelling portrays the human nature behind your brand. Millennials want to patronize e-commerce businesses that share resonating stories.

Use short stories on social media platforms to pique their interests and create brand awareness.

9. Show Reviews and Ratings on Your Product Page Millennials are always on the lookout for reviews and ratings before purchasing any product or services online. Not including product reviews and ratings to the website will increase bounce rates on your website.

After reading those well-written product descriptions, the next thing millennials want to read is the product reviews.

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This is because millennials make their choices based on validations from people that have used your product or service. 90 percent of consumers admitted to buying products or services after going through ratings and reviews. It means you should add reviews and ratings to your website to increase sales.

Keep product reviews and ratings real.

Every buyer won’t give you a five-star rating, but those that appreciate your product or services will drop good ratings and helpful suggestions.

Millennials trust product reviews more than product descriptions. What people say about a particular product or service matters to millennial shoppers.

Note that the way you handle complaints, criticism, and suggestions goes a long way to determine if millennials will patronize your business. They see everything.

10. Evoke Positivity by Choosing Call to Action Button Colour Wisely As minor as a ‘Call to Action’ button colour is, it can increase or reduce conversion rates on your website. Choose the right color for every call to action button on your website.

For example, you don’t use red to take positive actions.

The human mind has been wired to see the red colour as a danger or exit sign. Use primary colours like yellow, blue, or green for your Buy Now or Add to Cart button.

Conclusion As long as e-commerce is concerned, millennials are with the money. E-commerce is about the number of sales you make and to convert millennials into customers, you need to devise strategic means to attract and retain them.

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