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The app was never the prize

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Africa keeps building social apps that fail, while its payment systems quietly succeed. When I went looking for why, this is what I found. First of three parts. Why does Africa not have its own social media platforms? This question has come into my mind from time to time over the years, usually triggered by some piece of news about the social media giants that I felt disadvantaged African users. It came up again recently, set off by two pieces of information I came across. The first was a clip from a podcast where the speaker, a content creator in Nigeria, was complaining that he needed millions of views to earn what a content creator in a first-world country earns from only a few thousand. The second was a news article about Meta raising the cost of messaging on the WhatsApp Business API in South Africa. From the 1st of October 2026, every reply to a customer costs twelve South African cents (12c). This time, when the question came up, I decided to find an answer. That decision led me...
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Building Africa from the Ground

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Over the last few years, one African country after another has announced the discovery of one or other mineral resource within its territory. Every announcement has been a source of joy and pride - further evidence of Africa's great endowment of mineral resources. Every announcement has also made me afraid, afraid of how the discoveries will set off new scrambles for the continent's resources. I believe there is a better approach that countries can take to use these resource endowments to build their countries and economies and avoid the pitfalls others have fallen into. I'll go as far as saying that when we see the usual suspects deviating from some of the principles and approaches put forward here, their intent is not to build but to dig another hole for the country to fall into. Every few months now there's another one. Lithium in Zimbabwe, Mali and Nigeria. Rare earths in Malawi. Oil off the coasts of Namibia and Senegal. New gold mines in Uganda and Côte d'Ivo...
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The Money You Can See: Cash-in-Transit

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  In 2022 I was part of a project with a financial services company that distributes social grants on behalf of the state. The project had us visiting ATMs on grant days to understand ATM usage and recipient spend behaviors.  The money lands overnight. By the time the doors open, long queues have already formed at the ATMs, and they remain this way throughout the morning. The ATMs I was watching stood inside a Pick n Pay. Those who reached the ATM would withdraw the entire grant, walk into the same Pick n Pay, and spend a good part of it almost immediately. We basically watched a month's relief land and lift off again, almost in one motion. Whatever was not spent in the shop went other places. Some paid a taxi fare, some bought daily supplies from a spaza, some went into a society contribution. But follow each of those a step further and the pattern holds. The taxi's takings went to petrol from an oil company. The spaza's went to restock brands made by listed manufacturers....
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