The GSMA Mobile 360 – Africa conference took place in Kigali, Rwanda from July 17th to 19th 2018. Our team was there to participate to the event and our CEO spoke in a panel on improving digital services adoption in Africa. This conference gathers more than 1000 stakeholders in the industry including startups, mobile operators, and regulation agencies to discuss about “Digital Africa”. This year, the main question was: how to avoid creating a two-tier Digital Africa ?
Bizao @ GSMA Mobile 360 – Africa
Left to right : Christin Roby (West Africa Correspondant, DEVEX); Fernando Gordo (CTO, Huawei); Aurélien Duval-Delort (CEO Bizao); Karanvir Singh (CEO, Yegomoto); Mahir Sahir (Head of Google Africa).
The GSMA Mobile 360 – Africa conference took place in Kigali, Rwanda from July 17th to 19th 2018. Our team was there to participate to the event and our CEO spoke in a panel on improving digital services adoption in Africa. This conference gathers more than 1000 stakeholders in the industry including startups, mobile operators, and regulation agencies to discuss about “Digital Africa”. This year’s challenge was about answering specific to the digital economy in Africa : how to avoid creating a two-tier Digital Africa ?
During the event, the GSM Association (GSMA) presented 8 startups funded by the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator program : Ensibuuko (Uganda), Farmcrowdy (Nigeria), Jamii Africa (Tanzania), LipaMobile (Uganda), Lynk (Kenya), Musanga (Zambia), MaTontine (Senegal) and Sudpay (Senegal).
By following the different discussion panels, we could see that mobile operators such as Orange, Safaricom, Vodacom and MTN have understood the interest of partnering with local startups. As Aurélien Duval-Delort (CEO, Bizao) said: “We need to rethink the way we define the digital revolution in Africa. Let’s start with basic services and applications that are meaningful for people and can easily be adopted. […] It should not be a copy-paste of Europe’s or the United States’ app-based solutions, but rather a broader approach at connecting people to digital services, via USSD, SMS, vocal, web, apps, chat…”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]Mobile Money was the second high-value topic on the event. This innovation has a tremendous impact on the African digital economy. According to Statista, the value of mobile payment transaction will rise from $25 billion in 2016 to $275 billion in 2021. This represents an average growth rate of 62%. (Source)
The GSMA Mobile 360 – Africa was also the occasion to participate in a workshop around MaaP RCS APIs. The MaaP (Messenging as a Platform) & RCS (Rich Communication Services) enables a digital ecosystem around integrated messaging applications. This combines the features of a web chat (sending images, GIFs, sound…etc) with AI, chatbots, as well as multiple APIs % and plugins. Mobile operators will now be able to distribute conversational and commercial experiences to their users thanks to A2P RCS messaging.
The RCS Business Messaging post by the GSMA shows well the benefits of RCS messaging.
