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Google’s Expansion Into Africa: The Next Frontier
The next great untapped opportunity.
We live in a world full of signals.
The global economy and our lives are shaped by signals, seen and unseen; It can be argued with a great of credibility that little else matters in the twenty-first century.
In this great war for vast profits and market expansion, the tech giants are starting to view things quite differently.
And suddenly they have awoken to the salient fact that the huge market share which they seek lies not in silicon valley nor in that war zone disguised as a financial center — wall street — but somewhere far away.
Where might that be?
Africa.
First it was Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg went on a publicized tour around the continent five years ago. In Kenya, he found a mobile money system, which allowed Kenyans to transfer money to each other through their smart phone. Not through some app or a convoluted system but by text.
In transferring money via text, Kenya’s M-Pesa had undercut the extortionate fees being levied by the banks on its citizens. Suffice it to say that a year within its launch, M-Pesa had well over 17 million users in the country.
But what’s interesting here is that Kenya isn’t alone in pioneering revolutionary technology.
When Zuckerberg went to Nigeria, he found an active Eco-system thriving in Lagos. The likes of Paga, Paystack, Interswitch and Flutterwave were the local players that stood out.
Since then, we have had a few silicon valley players invest heavily in these organizations, with Stripe purchasing Paystack and Flutterwave becoming the very first Nigerian unicorn in its tech space.
I should also point out that here in the UK, one of the two Black Unicorns is owned by a gentleman of Somalian origin. His outfit — Sendwave —has helped made the business of remitting money to folks in Africa and beyond so easy and user friendly. Its existence has consigned Western Union and Money Gram into oblivion.
And now Google has belatedly joined the party.
