Uganda-UK Convention

15/09/2020

5 minutes pitch by ERIC KAMAU, Founder and MD, True African (U)

Eric Kamau, MD, from True African Limited mentioned that his has been around for 18 years, providing mobile banking platforms and sending money out, offering a service similar to what WorldRemit is doing. He said meeting people in the FinTech industry who have been able to raise money was amazing, especially hearing about their positive and negative experiences to raising money.

Eric disclosed that his company True African Ltd has partnered with MasterCard, rolling out 45000 merchants in Uganda using mobile technology. They have been doing mobile banking with Barclays bank, Standard Chartered Bank, DTB, KCB, covering 15 of the 25 financial Tier One banks in Uganda for the last 18 years. They also partnered with MTN for mobile money, basically a full circle of Fintech financial service provider.

Eric expressed his desire to raise money from interested investors. Raising finance and attracting private equity is still a challenge in Uganda. Typically, seeding money is raised through family and friends or savings as pre-seed financing. When someone wants to raise over half a million dollars, the challenge is seeing companies come to compete in the Ugandan market with a lot of money from the Silicon Valley, who are able to go further than the local players because they have enough funding to allow them to do whatever they want.

Mr Kamau said he came to the Convention to scout for business people to invest in his company which could become another World Remit.

About True African:

True African is a Value-Added Services Provider, a Communications and Information Technology company in Uganda and Kenya. As an information services provider (VASP), True African maintains a range of information categories that it provides to the mass market, mainly through partnerships with mobile telecommunications companies. In Uganda, the most popular information service is SMS Info, available on 7197 for MTN, Warid, UTL and Airtel Uganda. In Kenya, SMS info is available on 2197 on Safaricom and Airtel Kenya.

Website: http://www.trueafrican.com

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06/04/2020

3 minutes pitch by Malcolm Kastiro – Malcolm Kastiro the co-founder of YakaKo.

Malcolm Kastiro, Founder of YassaKo/ CEO, Mallan Limited started by introducing his company Mallan Limited an ICT solution company that specialises in value added services. Currently, Mallan is enabling SME’s or enterprises in Uganda to make payment to their employees or informal staff as these usually don’t have KYC’s to open up bank accounts. In Uganda, there are about 5 million people with bank accounts and over 23 million people which use mobile money and that is the niche Mallan is trying to provide its services.

Mallan is currently working on a product called YakaKo Pay an Emergency payment option for Yaka clients. This option enables prepaid electricity clients who need to purchase units but for whatever reasons, cannot do so. YakaKo Pay therefore enables them to purchase these units on credit a service fee.

Mallan is partnering with Airtel which will give them access to data for credit scoring of customers and also access to a mechanism for collection. The company is hoping to replicate their innovative services to other African countries.

Malcom called upon investors and technical people who can invest in their company and also give them technical advice.

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06/03/2020

Martin Best: FINTECH – WHY IS IT A ‘UGANDAN’ OPPORTUNITY?

In his introduction remarks at the leading Fintech session” FINTECH – WHY IS IT A ‘UGANDAN’ OPPORTUNITY? “Martin Best, Managing Director, Full Reach (London Fintech Expert – www.FullReachGlobal.com) said that “we couldn’t have chosen a better country to discuss Fintech – for London generates more investment in financial technology companies than the rest of Europe combined. And we couldn’t have chosen a better country to talk Fintech about than Uganda.”

Mr Best suggested that some guests might wonder how he came to be standing on the Convention stage – as he might not look nor sound particularly Ugandan. Mr Best explained that he spent 20 years in various Marketing leadership roles, and for 8 years was Marketing Director for the beer company Carlsberg. He said if someone had told him 5 years ago that he would be Non-Executive Director for Fintech at the Uganda Convention, he would have wondered what on earth they were taking about! In 2016, Mr Best joined a small digital money transfer company called WorldRemit. At the time it had revenue of a few millions of pounds, with just over 200 employees. Suddenly, he said, his life changed from selling beers to talking international remittances, mobile money, airtime and bank transfers in what was one of the world’s fastest growing Fintech business. Uganda became one of WorldRemit’s most important countries, and in 2017, Mr Best was honoured to meet the Vice President His Excellency Edward Ssekandi at the WorldRemit HQ in London.

WorldRemit is now worth over $1bn – making it a ‘Tech Unicorn’ and part of that growth came from Uganda – its diaspora sending money home. During those years, Mr Best spent a great deal of time with the Ugandan community in the UK, but also invested millions in activities to promote the Ugandan remittance markets globally. He saw first-hand the positive effect of Fintech – enabling people to send more money home, with lower commission, to support loved ones, family members, entrepreneurial projects and community initiatives. Fintech might sound like a rational cold term, but he saw with his own eyes how it changed lives. These experiences are what led Mr Best to set up his own Marketing & Strategy agency in 2018, with many projects also covering Africa such as launching mobile wallets and widening inclusion to different groups who can benefit from Financial Technology. That’s why Mr Best said that he was honoured to have been asked to support the Uganda Convention – to awake the sleeping giant that is Ugandan Fintech.

So, why Uganda, and why now? Mr Best said that his first answer to that would be, ‘why not’?

An economy growing at 6% percent from 2009 until 2018.
One of the IMF top 10 fastest growing economies for 2019.
38 million people, access to many hundreds of millions more in the region
An explosion of access to mobile internet which offers public, private and individuals to skip a generation and actually overtake the best
… and this year, Uganda will host the Africa Fintech Network’s flagship event – bringing the whole Fintech world to Kampala in November 2019. So now, now is the time, said Mr Best.

Mr Best also said that Uganda was lagging behind its regional friends. Kenya and Rwanda in particular have moved faster, and have made a better narrative. But the 4 ingredients for changing that, Mr Best said, fundamentally, were to be found at the Convention, right away. So what was needed?

A government is needed that understands the sector and works with it to establish a regulatory platform. Well, today, said Mr Best, guests at the Convention had H Irene Muloni, Minister of Energy, Hon Betty Kamya, Minister for KCCA, Benon Mugisha Mutambi permanent secretary, Uganda Ministry of Internal Affairs and Elly Twineyo Kamugisha Executive Director/CEO Uganda export promotion board
Investment is needed, and those that can facilitate it from NGOs to Private and Commercial equity. Today, Mr Best said, they had Lord Dolar Popat, Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Uganda and Rwanda, Suzan Kereere, Head of Global Merchant Sales & Acquiring, Visa Inc. Private Sector of Uganda (PSFU) and several investors and start-up Fintech incubators from as far afield as Norway, Denmark and the US.
An ecosystem is needed– and today Mr Best said, they had several people actively living, working and building Ugandan Fintech – these, he said, were the real heroes of today, having flown in to sell their ideas, their vision and their passion for Fintech at the Convention. Mr Best said that guests would be hearing from the local body FITSPA as well as several Founders of exciting businesses.
Finally, Mr Best said the magic ingredient –‘momentum’ was needed! With the kind of people attending the Convention, there must be 1000 years’ worth of experience in politics, business, investment and entrepreneurship … there was nothing, Mr Best proclaimed, that cannot be achieved.

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14/02/2020

Catherine Wines, Co-Founder, WorldRemit on WorldRemit – Building growth through partnerships.

Catherine Wines, Director & Co-Founder, WorldRemit Ltd expressed her gratitude to have been invited to Uganda in 2018 as keynote speaker at the Financial Inclusion Week to share a paper on financial inclusion. She was impressed by the vibrancy in the Fintech sector when she visited The Innovation Village and FITSPA (where? In Uganda? We must state the location).

WorldRemit was started with the objective of using technology to solving problems in helping the Diaspora to remit money to their family and friends. Immigrants not only contribute to the GDP but also provide 3 times more aid by sending remittance to their home country in Uganda. Remittances account for over 50% of the EIDP. There is a need to reduce fees levied on remittances. According to World Bank, an average fee to send money is around 7% and in sub-Saharan Africa it is more than 9% equating to over $ 1.9 billion dollars taken off as fee from the remittance that would have been received and utilised for family support.

World Remit, as a FinTech company work with partners and collaborate to resolve problems. WorldRemit was set to change the money transfer transitional sector from an offline model which is still inconvenient for both the sender and receiver, taking cash to a shop, getting charged with fees and then sent to someone to receive cash at the other end.

In 2010, WorldRemit was set up to make sending money easier, faster and also to use technology to make it cheaper, as technology removed the middleman agent. WorldRemit looked at Africa which was leading the way, having 1.7 billion people who are not banking but one billion of them own a mobile device. WorldRemit realised that those people can use their mobile phones as wallets to receive money, and WorldRemit worked with partners to enable this facility to take place.

In Uganda, WorldRemit started working with Shumuk Forex Bureau and once the model was proved to be working, other partners were approached.

Talking to FinTech start-ups from Uganda, Catherine advised that they needed to network more. There are many people willing to help and, in the process, people know someone who know someone starting a business, and such collaboration is very important, which is what helped WorldRemit (helped WorldRemit how? become a success? We should add that here).

The Discovery of mobile wallet in Africa has changed WorldRemit model tremendously. It made life easier for the recipient to receive money in their mobile wallet without having to walk to the next town to withdraw the money. WorldRemit realised that when introducing the mobile wallet, they saw people sending less money but more often. It also allowed the sender to send more money, regardless of amount, to the right recipients. Mobile money has also allowed women to be included on the digital financial inclusion. The impact of mobile money has been effective in rural Africa as it helped to make a lot of people be more financially included and have access to other financial services.

Catherine called upon the government of Uganda to have enabling regulations to support nascent Fintech industry to grow as it creates a lot of jobs and also solves problems using technology.

UK is leading the way in terms of Fintech, but that is made easy because there is a lot of support from the regulators. There is a lot of different bodies that make it easier for FinTech to set up and also to have easy has access to capital. The Ugandan government must do more to give them access to financial capital and attract investors.

Catherine expressed gratitude to Alysia Silberg, General Partner at Street Global Venture Capital who presented on venture capital investing in Africa. Catherine said she always advises Venture Capital agents she meets to look at Africa now as Africa is the future.

Finally, Catherine said she was happy to see women Ministers from Uganda as it is important now to have gender balance and diversity in both public and private sector, making it better to grow a business organisation and improving the work environment.

Subhash Thakrar, the Vice Chairman of London Chambers of Commerce complimented Catherine’s presentation and added that Africa has great potential for the Fintech sector to grow. In the UK, we have schemes like Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) where tax reliefs are offered to individual investors who buy new shares in small companies to allow small start-ups to receive more funding. EIS is designed so that companies can raise money to help grow their businesses.

Geoffrey Semaganda requested Catherine to tell her story on how WorldRemit was started to reach its current status as one of the biggest money transfer companies, a story that would help inspire others. Catherine responded that she does a lot of mentoring with co-founders, helping young people to understand how to progress in life.

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13/02/2020

Panel Session: Public – Private Partnership for Infrastructure Development

Areas of discussion:

Need for the public sector and private investors and businesses to work co-operatively if businesses are to thrive and sustained in Uganda.
Need for essential infrastructure and institutions that must be in place to sustain the private sector.
Uganda Freezone-Free Trade Area, and Achieving “Made/Assembled in Uganda/Africa” (Richard Jabo, ED, Uganda Free Trade Zone)
Facilitating efficient movement of goods across borders (Richard Jabo, ED, Uganda Free Trade Zone)
Improvements to attract more Private Equity (PE) transactions (governance or legislation) for leveling the PE field with western countries. (Subhash V Thakrar)

Moderator: Edward Katende, CEO, Uganda Agribusiness Alliance

Opening statement: Subhash V Thakrar B com FCA FRSA-Vice President and Past Chairman, London Chamber of Commerce

Panelists:

Hon. Betty Kamya, Minister for Kampala Capital City Authority
Richard Jabo, Executive Director, Uganda Free Trade Zone
James Mugerwa, Managing Director, Pearl Marina Development Ltd
Johnson K. Nyeko, Md, The Benconolly Group | Chairman, Mandulis Energy
Eric Olanya, Country Director, Uganda, Department for International Trade, British High Commission

Edward Katende the moderator started by saying there are a lot of opportunities in the Agri-business sector.

Hon Kamya, the minister for Kampala Capital City invited investor to look at investing in Kampala sub region. Kampala contributes more than 60% of the National GDP and also Kampala raises 70% of the annual revenue of Uganda. The greater Kampala metropolitan area has a total population of 15million people.

Kampala is an excellent opportunity for investing in tourism , the story beginning in Kampala with religious wars that were fought at the beginning of colonialism which resulted in Mwanga II, the Kabaka (King) of Buganda ordering the death of about 30 Martyrs and out of that Uganda hosts one of the biggest religious shrine in the world called The Namugongo Martyrs Shrines where over 3 million pilgrims are recorded to have visited in just the month of June 2019.
Hon Kamya confirmed by saying that sir Winston Churchill named Uganda as the pearl of Africa but she said probably he wanted to say Uganda is a garden of Eden, Uganda boasts of 60% of the world’s highland mountain gorillas, Uganda also has 11% of the worlds bird spences, Uganda is only 93 square miles.

Uganda has 1500 bird species, by comparison the USA which is about 3.6 million square miles has got only 600 bird species and the entire Europe has only 700 bird species and Uganda has over 2 million live animals and plant species. This why I call Uganda The Garden of Eden, so this makes tourism a great sector to invest in, Hon Kamya said.

James Mugerwa the managing director Pearl Marina introduced that Pearl Marina is part of Centum, the east African biggest investment company with a portfolio that extends from real estate to fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), banking and agriculture.

To date over $100 million dollars has been invested towards Pearl Marina project along Lake Victoria in Garuga and in the next seven to ten years more investments will be done. Centum believes that Uganda has a lot of opportunities but also believe that the real estate sector can be different. Pearl Marina model is different from other developments in the country. Pearl Marina Estates sits on 389 acres of prime real estate with 3km of lake frontage all developed and managed by the developer from construction to management of services, estates security, power regeneration and this managed by a single company. This gives the buyer or investor confidence that if you buy a property from Pearl Marina you are entering an agreement for 99 years because the company will be there.

The project is located in a convenient location; 22km to the Entebbe International Airport and 32 Km from Kampala, the development is set to become Uganda’s prime lakeside community. Mugerwa further explained that, Pearl Marina is currently undertaking the development of residential units and the associated infrastructure on the west Pearl estate comprising of villas, townhouses and apartments set to be completed by end of Q1 of 2020.

Pearl Marina is now a municipality with four resorts, four hotels and going to implement two international schools and an international hospital, a commercial area, a marina and lots residential opportunities has made the housing in the country different, its affordable with units that goes at lower as $39000 and that is very affordable considering also the fact that these are constructed by Roko ensuring the best quality. Investors and buyers are assured that the developer will deliver as promised and if there is any delay, the buyer will be given back their money at a premium.

James invited those who are also interested to partner in joint venture.

Richard Jabo, the executive director, Uganda Free Zone authority stated that The Uganda Free Zones Authority is a body corporate under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. It was established following His Excellency the President’s assent to the Free Zones Act, 2014 and started operations on 1st September 2014. The Agency is responsible for the establishment, development, management, marketing, maintenance, supervision and control of free zones and to provide for other related matters.

The Free Zones law was set up with the aim of promoting exports, increasing employment and increasing commodity processing from trading raw materials to finished goods but with due regard to environmental impacts during product processing.

Added that, passing of the law is a positive step towards increasing Uganda’s trade participation in the region to try and align with its counterparts in Kenya where the law has operated since 1990, Tanzania where Special Economic Zones have been in existence since 2002 following the enactment of the Export Processing Zones Act 2002 and Rwanda, since 2010.

The overall objective for adoption of Free Zones in the country is to create an enabling environment aimed at enhancing economic growth and development of export-oriented manufacturing in all sectors of the economy, in order to diversify the country’s economic base, attract foreign direct Investment (FDI), generate employment, increase foreign exchange earnings, enhance technology transfer, skill acquisition/upgrading as well as create backward linkages.

The Uganda Free Zones Authority is designing the third national development plan, one of the key strategies in the plan is to take Uganda to a middle-income status focusing on industrialisation.

The next phase is providing the non-physical incentives which looks at work spaces of the actual zones and constructing them to provide facilities for operators to promise a more conductive environment where customs’ facilities and support are provided on site, where distributors can easily locate you.
Now the authority is undertaking a project at Entebbe international airport where a free zone facility will be constructed

Mr Nyeko started by praising Uganda immigration who served him within a short time proving the fact corruption is getting minimised in Uganda. Being in business for over 44 years, he represents a lot of companies, a chairman of Bencolly Group, The Kampala Diplomatic School. He boosted to have put professors in various top universities including the professor in nuclear medicine in south American university where among the students top of the 35 scientists nominated by MIT was also Elizabeth Nyeko, one of the directors at Bencolly Group.

Dealing with renewable energy is the new trend the world is moving towards. The whole world is now looking for clean energy, he disagreed with the minister for Kampala, that Kampala is for now but not tomorrow. He said that the rural areas are going to contribute more money to the treasury. Mandulis Energy is not only dealing in agriculture in order to harness the biomass for generating power, but is making use of the rural farmers in partnership to produce more food and after the food, Mandulis is giving more income to the farmers from waste especially rice husks and maize crops.

Since going back to Uganda from the diaspora Mr. Nyeko was well received because his family business was giving back to the society and determined to be like Fiat and Ford and are moving forward.

Very successfully giving back the society and help government Mandulis help rural people by training them in modern ways of farming so that they produce more , Mandulis provide storage facilities and training centres and, determined to make rural areas produce more money than Madhavi (applaud), right now over 27000 accounts have been opened and Google mapped over 5000 farmers, now Mandulis is building over 16 off-grids using agriculture wastes , two of the off grids are up with one running with factories being run by these bio-mass power generators and aiming at building 16 industrial parks not only off-grids but plus 20 megawatts bio-mas power generators to be built to serve Gulu city and this is already financed by Africa development bank and hasmany other partners supporting Mandulis.

Eric Olanya, Head of Trade, Uganda, Department for International Trade, British High Commission quoting the minister of finance who said Uganda’s economy is growing steady-fast. the UK departments of trade has been pushing more on financing infrastructure projects on oil and gas renewable energy and on agriculture. Uganda has been the most successful in east Africa on project financing. The British government has $600million fund for projects this year and are lobbying for more finance cover for the country and UK Export Finance is positive on good projects in Uganda.

As of now Britain is looking at supporting the oil pipeline of over a £billion of business on the infrastructure side and UK companies are supported to work with local companies in uganda to deliver on projects

Subhash Thakrar, Vice President, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chartered accountant a truly a guardian of British-Asian entrepreneurship started by congratulating Willy Mutenza for 10 years of tireless work for Uganda and in-time has raised the bar by now hosting the events at the Hilton Park Lane not only that but the quality and prominent speakers.

He asked why Uganda hasn’t got award system like is in UK because Willy Mutenza deserves an award. Uganda should also be proud of what Ugandans are here in the UK, Lord Popat is the first Ugandan Asian to be made a peer in the UK political scene and in the 140 years of the London Chambers of Commerce, Subhash was the first ethnic chairman and also born in Uganda. Also, Ugandan Asians are the best politician’s group there is in the house of parliament in all the history of UK.

Subhash said that Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects he said that the private sector is needed for partnership. For the private sector, entrepreneurship and leadership will be brought in which always is missing in the public sector. The Public sector might have the vision but the private sector will be committed to make money and it is the private sector that will bring in funding.

Recently, he said, in India, on the London stock exchange they have managed to list Masala bond, and now we should be thinking of Matoke bond and these can be denominated in local currency and a lot of money can raised. $ 7.5 billion us dollars has been raised for India in the last two years.

On the private equity , according to a deal making company called Pitch book, there has been 2,524 recorded private equity deals in Africa and in the last 10 years that number is 1600 and only 104 deals took place in the last twelve months in the whole of Africa and the biggest of all was the Airtel transaction of $16 billion dollars. Looking at Uganda specifically, there has been only 3 deals in the last 10 years, 37 recorded altogether in private equity and overall deal size are around $12 million dollars. Within East African Kenya takes the biggest share but very closely followed by Ethiopia and Uganda in private equity deals.

For private equity deals to work, similarly to what is done in the west, there has to be improved environment. There has to be easy regulatory environment for investors, the most difficult thing when it comes to private equity in Africa is difficult to visualise an exit, when people invest in private equity, they need to see their exist within 5-10 years’ time. Also, it is a challenge because there is no established stock exchange systems although some are merging in Kenya and Nigeria. Also, solid companies with solid management needs to be established Subhash said he was impressed by Mr Nyeko for having private equity money invested in his projects.

The government must create the right environment for private equity companies to invest. This means dispute resolution mechanisms, effective legal system where the rule of the law exists and less burdensome tax system.

Subhash decried that he has heard companies wanting to set up in Uganda but importing equipment they face taxes to pay, this is a discouragement as that tax may take long time to recover because when business start, they need to be able to minimise all out goings.

Subhash disclosed that they have just started a confectionary factory and have paid tax on equipment imported and that tax should be differed to be paid later.

Then there should be strong vigilance to sort out corruption and corruption is not only demanding money but also for people not cooperating, not doing thing that you ought them to do. As British investor we can’t give bribe as it will be a jail able offence in the UK.

Uganda scores in the transparency index at 149 over 180 and 149 is not a good score but a poor score. And compared with south Africa at 73 out of 180 and UK stand at 11.

In the public sector corruption, Uganda scores only 26% and this is an area that needs dealt with and hopefully the new a corruption unit under presidential office created will tackle this vice

On the positive on the private equity Africa is the next India and we are going to see tremendous growth at over 6%.

New emerging middle class, this is seen in Uganda, Kenya and other parts of Africa who are spending money keen to buy goods and services, increasing, urbanisation is happening.

Harmonisation of communities like African community like COMESA, east African community, these are all opening up boarders and the market size increases and changing.

As the president of Uganda said Uganda may be landlocked but is much trade-linked.
Africa is benefiting from all these external investors including china, Europe, India and US.
Growth is going to emerge and that is what the private equity companies are going to chase.

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06/02/2020

Visa’s Suzan Kereere on the role of global networks in furthering local entrepreneurship and Fintech innovations.

At the 9th Uganda-UK Trade & Investment Convention on FRIDAY, 13TH SEPTEMBER 2019 – London Hilton on Park Lane.

Martin introduced Suzan Kerere the Head of Global Merchant Sales and Acquisitions Visa Inc, who was delighted to host the Fintech roundtable at this year’s business session. She discussed the role of global networks in furthering local entrepreneurship and Fintech innovations. Susan further highlighted the role of Visa in connecting buyers and sellers globally, without forgetting what it takes to make technology work around the world.

Today Visa Inc connects over 3 billion buyers to over 54 million seller points, with a simple but lot bigger ambition of being the best payment platform around the world that goes beyond card payments. Visa works with banks, Fintech merchants and other technology partners.

The most important unity that visa does, is connect merchants through technology,helping them get into the digital eco system, where they can be paid more faster and efficiently. In her brief, Susan pointed out why Visa continues to be the most preferred brand in the E-payments solutions;

Visa provides transparency to their users, giving them full visibility of their payment flows. This has enabled their customers have a record from which they can use to access credit from lenders.
Safety of data is at the heart of all Visa operations. This has given their customers and partners confidence that their information is well protected and put to right use.
Visa has endeavoured to come up with value added services on the visa digital eco system like VISA direct where merchants can now move remittances from one country to another. Another innovative digital solution is a new product called Visa on Mobo where a seller downloads and accepts Visa payments on their devise with no extra costs on their mobile phone.

Fintech is one of the most important ingredients to help economies grow around the world. Consumers want more convenience, speed, access and it is changing how buyers choose their sellers. We are seeing new businesses born from digital innovations in Africa and around the world.
For example, safe Boda, Uber’s digital make for motorcycle transport which brings transportation to commuters by giving them a technology platform to drive, get access to services and have certainty for when transport may be available. it’s no difference from what Jumia in Nigeria has done to ecommerce across Africa or Mpesa to payments in Kenya and many more.

Fintech in AFRICA now attracts over 40% of capital being raised across the continents and Visa is changing the way it does business because of the new industry trends. Some of which are, the notion of unbundling where businesses are taking component parts of services that were previously offered as simple stack and offering them as a single customised service.

She continued to share on the expanding eco system, explaining what is happening with digitisation in the banking sector. Open banking has increased several actions where players can come in to compete for business the way they could not compete before. It has completely changed the way the banks ecosystem works, as it’s much more about open data and moving data more seamlessly. This has opened more opportunities for Fintechs to provide digital solutions for various unbundled services. For example, MPESA and MCASH that have picked some elements of banking and put them on a mobile phone.

In the last few years visa has made investments in FINTECH companies like Pace-tag in Nigeria, a payment facilitator. In a small company called Branch that started in Silcom valley is now in Kenya and Uganda doing clever things with smart phone data to provide import micro loans.

Visa is partnering with IFC and MetLife to launch Fintech 50, a programme that gives access to early stage companies looking for help to unlock the ivy tech. ‘’We are extending a platform called the Fintech FastTrack to make it easier for small companies to connect with big companies and access a level playing field’’.

Zente a small Fintech company in Uganda founded by ITC has been privileged to be one of the first beneficiaries of the Visa FastTrack programme.

Susan disclosed Visa’s ambitions to bring women at the forefront of business entrepreneurship where it launched a platform called “She is next’’ at the world economic forum in Cape town. She has always had a pariah for small businesses, sparked by her mother a Ugandan entrepreneur who later grew her small business into a series of very successful beauty businesses.

Data would prove that many women like her mother typically invest over 90% of their earnings back into business and family compared to men at just about 40%. Therefore, Visa believes that investing in women small businesses is one way the company can transform society. World bank statistics on FinTech indicate that over one billion women and 70% of women owned businesses have no access to financial services while 200 million men have access to both technology and financial services. This equates to about $300 billion-dollar gap in capital to enable women participate in economic growth.

“At Visa we intend to use the platform called “SHE IS NEXT” to spot light women entrepreneurs and their efforts in a way that advances their business around the world’’.

However, she accentuated that Visa cannot do it alone. It will need everyone to get on board and stand with the Fintechs present today. She cited a partnership with the government of Ivory coast to change the way the agriculture ecosystem works both for cocoa and cashew nuts their largest cash crops. They are also doing some work with the Uganda government and Bank of Uganda to drive digitization and support through Fintech.

Visa as a company is on track to bring in about 500 million people into the formal financial eco system. It estimated that over 400 million people last year who were previously unbalanced, or underserved were onboarded onto the visa platforms and enabled to use visa products/services.

Visa’s Head of Global Merchant Sales and Acquisitions closed by saying “if you’re working anywhere in the world, in any business entity, private or public and you’re doing it inclusively, then you’re driving change. Because inclusive means, it’s more transparent, more accessible and more equal’’.

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06/02/2020

How can NGO’s support local partners (role and scope of ICT)? by Martin Labbé, International Trade Centre

The International Trade Centre (ITC) is a multilateral agency which has a joint mandate with the World Trade Organization and the United Nations through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Through its work, the ITC contributes directly to 10 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

ITC supports start-ups around the world especially in Africa to go to international markets. In the Tech sector, ITC has been doing it for 10 years mainly in Africa and south Asia, working with established IT companies and Tech start-ups having a particular focus on FinTech because they are extremely successful on the continent and because they support financial inclusion. Financial inclusion according to World Bank definition is where individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs that are delivered in a responsible and sustainable way.

Financial technology, often shortened to Fintech, is defined as the technology and innovation that aims to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. It is an emerging industry that uses technology to improve activities in finance. Banks are moving to the FinTech’s space and new players are coming in the sector, disrupting the market, taking the financial and innovation industry by storm and increasing it with lots of opportunities. 1.8 billion adults around the world do not have access to financial services, at the same time, among the 1.8 billion, 1 billion have mobile phones and half of them have smart phones giving them access to a whole range of innovative financial services digitally. With the cost of handsets going down, as a result, they have been increasing in the number of digital financial services on the continent. Every year, there is double digit growth in venture capital in Africa which mainly goes to three leaders countries, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya followed by a long tail of others countries including Uganda where much smaller investment is going to.

For instance, in Uganda Safe Boda has been able to attract investment and has gone from series B and soon moving to series C but most other FinTech companies are still in series A and it is a challenge to get them to connect to investors willing to invest over $8 million plus.

Nigeria’s financial digital services and names like Flutewave, Paystack, Interswitch are some of the companies that are not only successful on the huge Nigeria domestic market but also elsewhere on the African continent. This is a good example on how to develop a product that services both the domestic market but also foreign markets. For these to work in Lagos and Kampala, a combination of factors to build a strong ecosystem to support FinTech sector is needed.

Infrastructure is needed before anything else, as without infrastructure nothing can be possible.

The progression in financial technology has been possible because the internet infrastructure was put in place. The government of Uganda plays an important role in facilitating the deployment of infrastructure and also in making sure that the policies and regularities that are affecting the financial sector and FinTech are both supporting the development of the private sector in the FinTech and at the same time, taking into account the interest of the public.

London has a good example of Regulatory Sandbox that allows businesses to test innovative propositions in the market, with real consumers and then scale them up once a concept has been proven and has now been replicated in Rwanda.

The government of Uganda should do the same thing in a controlled environment to give Fintech an opportunity to experiment new services.

There is evidence of a need for the domestic market to absorb new services. Finding a gap is a big challenge. The trends are really positive but a country like Uganda is not quite there yet. Human capital is extremely important which is not about strength in numbers but about strength in quality of education. It is about people getting digital skills, and maintaining a focus on quality rather than quantity. The best universities should focus on training quality skilled professionals rather than training a large number of people who have average or below average skills.

The digital transformation economy sector is not about FinTech, only, it is everything. Skilled people are needed for the digital transformation, and it is now difficult finding them coming out of universities.

ITC as an organisation is trying to contribute to Uganda ‘s IT development sector, as part of an eco-system of supportive players like the chamber of commerce, FITSPA, Tech hubs, Incubators, Accelerators.

The culture of entrepreneurship can be nurtured by awareness campaigning in role models. Some people brought by ITC from Uganda (Malcolm Kastiro, Founder of Yakako, Jean A. Onyait, Founder, Akellobanker and Allan Rwakatungu, Founder, Xente) are role models the young generations can be inspired by.

The work of The International Trade Centre (ITC) is to build resilient eco-system contributing to it and they do it by mapping the eco system using an in-house methodology and also by supporting smart public dialogue to improve regulations of the sector. Also, everything has to be gender centres (what is this word centres? Is the meaning about gender equality?) . The tech sector is set to be opened to women but the reality is very few women actually work in this sector.

ITC partners with multi players who are mainly the tech hubs in the tech sector, like the Innovation Village, and Outbox in Kampala. These are also start-ups organisations which struggle for sustainability. A new book is being launched with solutions, a publication that looks at the good practice in terms of services monetization.

Another work of the ITC is to build capacity of the managers of these organisations, the founders and staffs, working on company evaluations, accounting, business plan, value proposition. These are important for start-ups to tick all these boxes to make them investable, and ready to be introduced to investors and opportunities. ITC does this in Africa and Europe.

Martin expressed disappointment that the UK wants to leave the European market but at the same time there are historical ties with the Commonwealth and this will give opportunities to get closer to its Commonwealth members.

ITC was proud this year to participate at mobile congress, having the 1st African stand at an event attracting over 100,000 people every year, where Uganda and Senegal start-up showcased at the event.

Johnson K. Nyeko, Md, The Benconolly Group | Chairman, Mandulis Energy one of the speakers posed a question to Mr Labbe: In the past, the ITC sponsored non-traditional Ugandan agricultural products in the world market. Remember Dr Spencer Cook who headed the project – is that project still there now?

Martin Labbe answered that Uganda has gone a long way and now and ITC is no longer sponsoring agriculture products. It has now expanded in digital financial services products that are being sold outside Uganda and Africa.

Another question was asked if Mr Labbe had looked at ways of attracting Ugandans in Uganda who have the capacity to invest in these start-ups. Mr Labbe talked of $100,000 which currently in Uganda can’t buy a small piece of land and yet investors in the start-up could raise money in double digits returns.

Mr Labbe answered that there is a Kampala Angel Investment Network called KAIN (www.kain.co.ug) which can be reached for opportunities. Venture capital companies not only come with money but also with skills and this is why Venture Capital (VC) and Private equity (PE) are key to start-ups.

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06/02/2020

What makes African startups investable? By Alysia Silberg

Alysia Silberg, Founder and General Partner at Street Global Venture Capital, started by acknowledging the presences of the following people.

The esteemed ministers, ambassadors and members of government, friends, colleagues and Mr. Willy Mutenza.

Alysia described what she saw on global and regional levels as a technology investor which shared insights regarding startups, venture capital and economic development.

Alysia is a mathematician, statistician, data scientist, investor and she is trained in law. She is an African, having spent the majority of her life in Africa. She is also European and North American. A self-made entrepreneur, experienced technology entrepreneur, global business person Alysia continually engages with governments, corporate leaders and global asset managers.

Like many people in the world, she became an entrepreneur by necessity at a young age. Therefore, she knows the importance and power of entrepreneurship as well as its challenges. She loves entrepreneurship live alone investing and it’s her greatest interests.

Entrepreneurship and Investment, the two essential parts of Alysia’s life, came together in founding of a venture firm that invests globally in startups. The strategy has these components which reflect what is happening in the world.

They believe many of the future defining startups and unicorn investing opportunities will originate outside Silicon Valley.

They invest in companies addressing global challenges: in health, financial access, business productivity, access to goods & services and infrastructure.

They serve as a bridge between Silicon Valley and the world: the bridge is composed of knowhow, capital and powerful relationships.

They foster an ecosystem to help bring startups to their full potential: our relationships include governments, media and corporations.

They are performance focused. It is the pillar of there strength.

Diversity drives investment performance. Diversity allows them see opportunities others cannot see, embrace or act on. Such as those in the emerging markets.

Diversity helps them attract the world’s best entrepreneurs. Diversity helps them engage

with the many stakeholders necessary to help a startup succeed. Diversity helps them think creatively about how to help a startup realize its full potential.

Investment performance drives social impact. Investment performance comes from investing in strong, self-sustaining, highly scalable companies that can grow to be worth a billion dollars or more.

Performance also delivers social impact because these strong companies can then achieve the scale and longevity sufficient to make an ongoing difference — in improving health, finance, productivity and infrastructure — via continuous innovation and service.

They amplify their effectiveness because investing relatively modest sums in startups can lead to world changing companies. In this way, venture investments can contribute in a greatly magnified way to positive social impact.

Diversity, bridge building, investing, performance, impact. That’s their core. And it’s an idea offered to everyone.

Alysia further said that with the African economic development and startup development, they often get asked questions such as: what does it take to build a startup ecosystem, should they do a startup ecosystem, what have you learned from Silicon Valley, what are you seeing in terms of trends and opportunities. Below are some of the answers.

Governments have a responsibility for fostering economic development in a way that is best for their people. So, the first advice is to ask— what is the context you’re working in, what is needed, what are you trying to achieve and what are your specific goals.

The type of entrepreneurship you support, the types of startups you support, how you do it, etc., all of that hinges on the context and goals you’re working with. In one region, you might be supporting financial technology entrepreneurs and, in another region, it might be agricultural entrepreneurs. In one region it might include supporting high growth startups that expect aim to grow into large, pan-African companies, and in another it might be supporting many small businesses and farmers.

On the topic of startup hubs.

It’s hard to engineer startup hubs. Often the best startup hubs emerge naturally, and governments take the role of helping them thrive.

Startup hubs usually emerge in areas where there are educational institutions, experienced entrepreneurs, larger tech companies, skilled workers, strong infrastructures, supportive financial institutions, favorable laws and regulations, local cultures that promote innovation, government R&D efforts, cool cultural scenes, etc.

Governments can help startup hubs come alive. Great things for governments to do include ensuring there is:

Sufficient housing
Strong communications infrastructure
Supportive financial services institutions
Safety, especially for women and diverse people
Access to financing
Strong mandates for officials to work collaboratively with startups on regulatory issues
Supportive financial systems
Supportive laws and regulations
Legal support for startups
Government R&D
Access to materials and services for design, prototyping and testing
The participation of successful entrepreneurs
Support of successful business people who reinvest their personal capital
Ease of doing business

These are the things that have historically made Silicon Valley successful. It takes time. But, with the right investment, right strategy and right policy, a lot can be accomplished. San Francisco had very little technology inside the city itself until salesforce.com became the anchor success and other technology companies were encouraged to locate there. Now the city is transformed.

On the question of ease of doing business, in California or Delaware, you can incorporate a business via a web form. In Silicon Valley, attorneys will work on promising startup’s corporate documents for free until the startups receive funding. Leading banks give startups free banking services. One might even encounter government officials at the airport who are familiar with Y Combinator’s global startup demo day. Everything is oriented towards being standardized and to support business.

<African Startup Investing Trends> Venture capital and African investing trends.

It’s important to note that growing a company with venture capital is a highly specific way of growing a company. The vast majority of businesses that contribute to our societies and economies grow via other forms of financing.

Venture funds require companies to reach billion-dollar valuations in 10-12 years, the typical fund lifetime. And so, a company needs to be able to grow unnaturally fast using capital. To grow fast and reach the required size, the company needs to operate in a very large market. Within African, there is the potential to grow such companies in Africa in sectors such as fin tech, health care, infrastructure, On demand delivery of resources and other areas.

Within the productivity, fin tech and health sectors, Helium Health is a good example of a venture-backed startup that can grow to be a large pan-African company. Helium Health noticed that African hospitals and clinics needed a software platform for improving operations in patient records, billing, workflow and other areas. They also saw that African hospitals and clinics needed software tailored specifically for their needs. This customer centric approach paid off and the Helium Health team is on its way to becoming the gold standard in Africa. They can help millions of people too.

Building enterprise software and productivity tools for Africa’s specific needs is a large opportunity.

Africa will often use traditional infrastructure and newer infrastructure solutions. Many infrastructure needs will be solved or augmented with distributed and networked systems. This is happening in areas such as food, transportation, payments and energy.

In developed markets on demand delivery of goods and services is generally a luxury. In the emerging markets, people want the same quality of service and goods, and delivery networks are required to address these needs.

<Agriculture and Investing>

Agriculture is such an important part of Africa’s economy, stability and contribution to all of our lives. my work.

The future of agriculture is closely tied to technology, information, automation, integrated supply chains and integrated markets.

She said that they had recently invested in a company building a food distribution network for all of Indonesia. The company, Eden Farm, is using technology to inform and connect all of the market participants — from farmers to restaurants. It will increase quality and reliability. It will help support stable pricing. Their goal is to substantially increase the financial well-being of a million farmers and serve the many other businesses that rely on a food supply network. What will help Indonesia is a further integrated food supply chain and market.

In the US, they’ve invested in an autonomous tractor company because farmers in places like California and throughout developed countries face labor shortages. The company is called Bear Flag Robotics. We also invested in a company, Cloosiv, helping regional coffee chains compete with Starbucks with mobile ordering, stock management and other point of sale and financial software tools.

Alysia said that with the examples given above it clearly shows, two different regions have very different needs for the agricultural and food economies. But technology can support both types of needs.

So, the question will be, where is the biggest return on investment and technology as applied within Uganda and various regions inside Uganda. What does the ideal portfolio of investments look like?

We know that a portfolio approach helps.

There are big trends in agriculture — moving from raw commodities to value add products, premium prices for goods that are sustainable and fair trade, premium prices for goods that have reporting and data, new consumer economies in Asia, global competition, the application of data to crop selection and management, the use of data for price stability, farm financing innovations, soil and resource management techniques and much much more.

Capitalizing on these trends and using technology to capitalize on these trends in a way that is adopted, sustainable and readily works for the people on the ground is the key.

All of this is also an important opportunity for the UK and Europe. The UK and Europe can build even stronger bridges composed of technology, capital, information and relationships with Uganda.

Many countries and many investors are interested in investing and doing business with Africa. It will be increasingly important for all of us to continue to differentiate and add value to maintain our competitive advantage. I can speak from my own experience. A few years ago, Silicon Valley investors tended to overlook African tech startups. This is no longer the case. These are now some of the most sought-after investing opportunities, especially in fin tech, logistics and on demand services.

She further said that they maintain a strong position because they added value within Africa through the educational programs on entrepreneurship. And they also maintain strong networks with various communities, while participating in African media and important forums like this one.

They also maintain a strong position with the best founders and in the most sought after investing opportunities by working very hard to listen to them (regarding the context they’re working in, their strategy, their goals), to help them and to develop real and lasting relationships where there is added value even before working with them formally.

Alysia concluded by appreciating all those who helped in one way or another. “I would not be here without the kindness and help of others. A rainbow of people. In Africa, we come from community-oriented societies. In Africa we look after the person next to us, the person next in line. We find what we need inside ourselves and with the help of our families, friends and communities. There is often a lot of chaos around us and sometimes in our lives. We depend on the kindness and strength of others. It’s about building and working for something bigger. Let us all come together in the strength of kindness and caring for others, caring for the world, caring for community and building a good future together for everyone. Thank you very much.” She said.

She also specifically acknowledged Kofi Kufor and John Kufor, and other people who contributed thoughts to this talk.

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01/02/2020

Allan Rwakatungu, Founder, Xente in a 2min pitch at the 9th UK-Uganda Fintech Session.

Rwakatungu and co-founder Francis Nkurunungi co-founded Xente. Xente’s vision is to become Africa’s largest digital commerce and digital payments platform by developing relevant products for consumers and businesses.

Xente’s platform enables any company or department in any industry to successfully launch, manage and transform into a digital and cashless business.

At Xente we are passionate about one thing – bringing your businesses into the global digital and cashless economy. Why? We realize that if your business continues to rely on old business models of brick and mortar locations and use majorly or only cash as a means of transacting – your business will not competitive in the long run.

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19/10/2019

Private Partnership for Infrastructure Development

Subhash disclosed that they have just started a confectionary factory and have paid tax on equipment imported and that tax should be differed to be paid later.

Uganda scores in the transparency index at 149 over 180 and 149 is not a good score but a poor score. And compared with south Africa at 73 out of 180 and UK stand at 11.

In the public sector corruption, Uganda scores only 26% and this is an area that needs dealt with and hopefully the new a corruption unit under presidential office created will tackle this vice

On the positive on the private equity Africa is the next India and we are going to see tremendous growth at over 6%.

New emerging middle class, this is seen in Uganda, Kenya and other parts of Africa who are spending money keen to buy goods and services, increasing, urbanisation is happening.

Harmonisation of communities like African community like COMESA, east African community, these are all opening up boarders and the market size increases and changing.