A quick scan through the daily newspapers will show you how many people are losing their businesses to financial services providers for failure to service a loan. Financial services providers usually don’t care if you made a profit or a loss on the money they gave you; they just want their money back plus the […]
One of the biggest business challenges is accountability. For instance, it is almost impossible for any organization to determine how much airtime or fuel was used by a field staff in a given month. This is because the field staff usually pay out of pocket and claim the money later without proper proof. But this […]
Sometime in 2016, Jean Anthony Onyait was on a study trip to Tirinyi where he met a special woman that would change the story of his life. This woman was called Akello. She was a village hero! A hero because she was in police custody for failure to pay a loan received from a microfinance […]
After a long day’s work recently, Fetaru Charity Flavia was late for a surprise birthday party for her friend. To make matters worse, she needed a quick make-up but she couldn’t go to her usual make-up artiste and make it to the party in time. “Then I remembered I could order for a makeup artist […]
On top of her job as a secretary at Buddo SS, Mary Caroline Nambogga is charged with the custodianship of pocket money of students at this school. Nambogga says that this second role is actually more difficult than her primary job. First, she is not an accountant; second, some secondary school students are sharp and […]
Kampala, Uganda. We are happy to announce that registration for the fourth edition of the HiPipo 40 Days 40 FinTechs has opened. Without a doubt, the HiPipo 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has put the Innovation and Financial Inclusion bar very high; particularly showcasing both the time and lifesaving abilities of Financial Technology. Although the […]
Written by Innocent Kawooya In their paper titled “Advances in Real Time: Challenges and Solutions in Interoperable Payment Systems,” Kosta Peric, Miller Abel, and Matt Bohan discuss the complexity of dealing with cash. I refer to this paper when discussing elements like interoperability, Level One Project (L1P), and Instant Inclusive Payment Systems (IIPS) that are […]
We are excited to share with you the Women In FinTech Magazine—January 2023 edition. A magazine that is solely dedicated to Women In FinTech. These women have set an example for other women to follow. The #WomenInFinTech magazine increases the visibility of female leaders in the field and strengthens their connections to other participants. It also […]
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has transformed Africa’s financial infrastructure. Initial focus has been on giving rich and middle-income users access to advanced digital financial tools. However, the Financial Technology (FinTech) industry will not support sustainable and inclusive growth fully unless all consumers, including low-income and vulnerable groups, which are usually excluded by the traditional […]
MTN Uganda and MTN MoMo were the biggest winners at the 2022 Digital Impact Awards Africa, with the two sister companies bagging the biggest accolade of the night; the Digital Brand of the Year – Diamond Accolade. Centenary Bank came second and took home the Gold Prize. MTN Uganda and MTN MoMo’s overall victory ended […]
Following the conclusion of the entries’ submission and verification process, HiPipo is pleased to unveil the nominees of the 2022 Digital Impact Awards Africa. Digital Impact Awards Africa is a platform that promotes Digital Inclusion, Financial Inclusion and Cyber Security. The Awards recognize and celebrate stakeholders that are spearheading the use of digital mediums to […]
Our Reporter. After an intense and knowledge-packed week, the 2022 Women in FinTech Hackathon, culminated in to the Women in FinTech Summit on the 16th of September. The Women in FinTech Summit was characterized by colour and pomp as the top six teams were announced and rewarded. Even so, all the 20 Teams got their […]
Our Reporter. After over a week of ideation, designing, developing, and coding, the 2022 Women in FinTech Hackathon reached its climax on Thursday 15th September with the 20 teams presenting their final minimum viable products (MVPs) to the judges. Day five was very tense and action-packed as participants prepared for the final pitches. The 20 […]
Our Reporter. Over the years, the financial technology industry has been male-dominated. However, a lot of effort has in the recent years been geared towards changing this, some of which is already bearing fruits. According to Princess Shamirah Kimbugwe, the Pivot Payments founder and managing director, while gender imbalance is still a challenge, the industry […]
Our Reporter. Day three of the ongoing Women in FinTech Hackathon was action-packed, with participants working on their products’ MVP phase one. In products’ development, MVP stands for a minimum viable product. According to ProductPlan, a minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea […]
Our Reporter. Day Two of the 2022 Women in FinTech Hackathon concluded with Teams completing their Solution and Prototype designs. According to Boston Technology, a Solution Design is the first step towards the eventual physical deployment of any solution. It is a visual blueprint for what needs to be built out. On the other hand, […]
Our Reporter. With the 2022 Women in FinTech Hackathon underway, participants are thrilled and full of hope that they will at the end of it be better people; ready to transform the world through financial technology innovations. They attribute this to the detailed daily program designed by the organizers that mixes learning technology, developing solutions, […]
Kampala, Uganda. Following the completion of both entry submission and review process, we are excited to unveil the 20 teams that are going to take part in the 2022 Women in FinTech Hackathon, scheduled for 10th to 15th September 2022. The 20 teams have been shortlisted from over 50 submissions received. The successful teams […]
Date: November 18, 2022 Venue: Kampala Serena Hotel, + Virtual Audience Theme: Maximising the Digital Dividend Hashtags: #DIAA2022 #IncludeEveryone #LevelOneProject Season: 9 Following the consecutive eight seasons of Digital Impact Awards Africa, we are glad to announce that entry submissions for the 2022 edition is open. Digital Impact Awards Africa is a platform that promotes […]
Kampala, Uganda: When you empower one woman, you have in fact supported an entire family. This is no longer an optimistic opinion but a statement of fact. This is why HiPipo is keen to empower women with the required digital and financial inclusion skills so that they can go out there; innovate, prosper, earn and […]
Hon. Joyce Nabbosa Ssebugwawo, the state minister for ICT has challenged the youth to use technology to find solutions to pressing issues such as employment and poverty. The minister made these remarks while giving her speech at the 2022 FinTech Landscape Exhibition held at Mestil Hotel. She was the guest of honour. Below is her […]
Our Reporter. With the advancement in technology, there is always a need to upgrade from one smartphone to another, from one television set to another, from one camera to another, etc. For some, such upgrades are necessary in order to meet their daily commitments such as work, family, and community responsibilities while for others, upgrading […]
Our Reporter. In the African culture, whenever a young man is going to marry his bride, it is taken as a collective responsibility for the community to make contributions towards the success of the celebrations. This is always done through wedding meetings where people converge and manually collect money, while others make pledges and fulfill […]
Our Reporter. When a peacock is lying down, one can hardly appreciate its beauty. But when it stands and its wings are fully spread, it reveals one of the most beautiful color patterns. The same applies to digital data. Because data is unstructured and is everywhere, very few people get to appreciate its significance. It […]
Our Reporter. One of the biggest challenges faced by start-up businesses is poor record keeping, which results in the inability to make proper business analyses. The other key challenge is managing payments and money in general. It is these problems that prompted Emmanuel Kimaro, to start Bizzyn, a business management tool that enables users […]
Our reporter. Nomanini is a South Africa-founded payments platform that connects financial service providers and fast-moving consumer goods companies to consumers. Founded in 2011, Nomanini, which means ‘anytime’ in the ‘Siswati’ language, started out as a point-of-sale gadget distributor to retailers where they could be able to sell airtime to customers. It has since expanded […]
Our Reporter. East Africa has one of the fastest-growing populations, predominated by women and youth. The same region has a ballooning informal sector economy including Boda Boda riders, market vendors, and salon operators among others. Unfortunately, the majority of these have little, somewhat no clue about financial discipline, especially the art of saving. It is […]
Our Reporter. It is now 22 years since one of East Africa’s oldest financial technology companies, Craft Silicon launched operations. What started as a back-end financial solutions company has since transitioned into a huge banking and financial inclusion enabler providing a wide range of solutions, from core banking, microfinance, anti-money laundering, and electronic payments […]
Our Reporters. At the start of July 2016, news broke that two Tech giants had come together and devised an African Transport solution. The Tech Giants were Craft Silicon and Safaricom. The Transport solution was Little Cab; a ride-hailing APP that was launched in Kenya to directly compete with the likes of Uber, and Taxify […]
Our Reporter. In 2001, two young African men from opposite ends of the continent sat across each other at a dinner table and had a discussion over a cup of coffee. So intense was the conversation that problem-solving models were created on a serviette that would fuel the establishment and growth of a multinational African […]
Our reporter. FinTech Uganda Limited, a subsidiary of FinTech Group is one of the oldest financial technology companies in Africa with a variety of fully integrated models that assist over 240 financial institutions across Africa to manage payments and collections, asset financing, mortgage business, and insurance premium financing, among others. Having opened shop back in […]
Our Reporter. At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Denis Orech and two friends from Lira University decided to devise means of delivering goods and services to people in Lira town who were trapped in their homes due to a national lockdown. The three, using their knowledge in information technology, started an e-commerce […]
Our Reporter. The outbreak of Covid-19 has forced many businesses to migrate from the manual way of doing things to digital solutions. Businesses that used to manage their expenses manually using cash or cheques are now using mobile money which ultimately saves time and creates easy tracking mechanisms. According to Lyn Tukei, the Xente […]
Our Reporter. Uganda has a huge but largely underdeveloped fashion industry. According to a November 2020 article by The East African newspaper, “Uganda’s fashion industry is characterized by struggling ventures, semi-professional small-scale production, and lack of infrastructure, institutions and government support.” Even so, while thousands of Ugandans continue to find their space in fashion and […]
Our Reporter. Enrolling members into savings, and investment clubs is a key stage in operationalizing such organizations. But when this is done, the harder part is handling operations, which includes keeping customers’ deposits safe, managing the risks that come with handling savings and loans, and ensuring proper record keeping. That is where Mfuko Plus comes […]
Our Reporter. The world is slowly migrating into a cash-lite and eventually a cashless global economy where all transactions are done without the exchange of cash. As a result, more financial technology companies (FinTechs) are emerging with a variety of solutions to meet consumer needs. However, most of these solutions target a fairly literate population […]
Our Reporter. One of the biggest bottlenecks of transferring funds from one country to another is the cost involved, especially if it involves different networks. It is a problem that MFS Africa; a digital payments hub, is keen on mitigating by providing access to a world of innovative, simple, convenient, secure, affordable, and compliant […]
Our Reporter. FutureLink Technologies is a community-driven marketplace for affordable financial services. It is licensed by the Bank of Uganda as a digital national payment systems operator. They work to enhance the financial resilience of Africa’s low and middle-income earners through a community-driven marketplace where consumers access a variety of financial services, mainly credit, most […]
Our Reporter. Agriculture remains Uganda’s top employer, with more than 60 percent of the population involved in agricultural activities. Despite this statistic, the industry is largely underfunded, many farm inputs are counterfeited and there is little support for harvest handling and agro marketing. By and large, Ugandan farmers are on their own, living at the […]
Our Reporter. True African is with no doubt among the legends of digital financial services in Uganda. They were among the pioneers of short messages (SMS) and later mobile banking in Uganda working with Nile Bank to transfer funds from one account to another. They even had a website where people would log-in and send […]
Our Reporter. Linmart is an online marketplace that links manufacturers, suppliers, wholesalers, retailers and shoppers to one platform called a MARKET for convenient, timely and cost-effective transactions. Started in October 2021, Linmart is an easy-to-use product where vendors sign-up for free and buyers just use their smartphones, pads or computers to conveniently contact sellers and […]
Our Reporter. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 was projected to be a short-term disruption but for some financial firms, it has triggered long-term changes on how to do business. Buladde Financial Services is among the several financial institutions changing operations to suit customer preferences and the new ways of doing business. […]
Our Reporter. One of the main reasons for the early collapse of villages Saccos and Investment groups is poor book keeping. Hell breaks loose whenever the Sacco treasurer loses or conveniently misplaces the company ledger which in turn means there is no track of members’ savings, loans, etc. To save such groups from the mayhem […]
Our Reporter. When Uganda, just like most parts of the world was put into a total lockdown following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, most businesses were forced to either digitize their services or risk an abrupt closure. But for Jumia Uganda, the lockdown was just an added ingredient to their burgeoning business because this […]
Our Reporter. The word ‘SafeBoda’ is now a household name for the majority of Ugandans who especially use Boda Bodas – motorcycles for movement in Kampala Metropolitan region. For many Ugandans, riding on a boda boda used to be an unsafe experience because the riders were reckless, didn’t have customer care and you couldn’t bargain […]
Our Reporter. In 2021, Flutterwave received worldwide recognition for becoming an African FinTech Unicorn. By definition, a unicorn company is a startup with a valuation of over USD 1 billion. Founded in 2016 in Nigeria, Flutterwave has since grown into a global Fintech company that provides an interoperable payment infrastructure for global merchants and payment […]
Our Reporter. Many Ugandan traders in the informal sector have been shut out of digital and financial inclusion drives because of their lack of required knowledge, devices and paperwork to register their businesses. In the end, boda boda riders, charcoal traders, tomato sellers, salon operators, etc., remain stuck in the cash economy with all its […]
Our Reporter. Renowned marketing and business expert, Steven Jeffes once said that “innovation is the unrelenting drive to break the status quo and develop a new where few have dared to go.” Indeed, all innovators always dare to either do new things or improve what is already existing. Many succeed, many fail while many others […]
Our Reporter. If you are a frequent user of public transport in Africa, then you know the hustle and bustle involved in getting tickets and traveling. Things like long queues, manual processes and the no refund policy implemented by a majority of the players are common experiences encountered by travelers. It is these and more […]
HiPipo, organisers of the 40Days40FinTechs initiative have welcomed the new Software Development Kits (SDKs) by the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA), saying this will go a long way in providing interoperable solutions. The SDKs, developed by GSMA’s Inclusive Tech Lab, are toolkits that software developers use to build applications using prebuilt components instead of […]