Accra, Ghana, August 28, 2020//-The sustained expansion of mobile money platforms is helping to drive Ghana’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector boom.
At the same time, its transformative effect on the economy is in full swing. The mobile money (MoMo) growth is also deepening financial inclusion as well as providing companies with new avenues to develop and market their products and services internally and externally.
New opportunities for startups
Indeed, the platforms have created new opportunities for startups, introducing a range of new innovative products and services to the market as well as opening job avenues for the youth.
It is important to note that a new generation of companies has surfaced to harness the potential of digital technologies. These include big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in Ghana as the country is becoming a more and more dynamic startup market.
Unlocking local innovation potential
Early this year, MTN and Ericsson cemented their intent to unlocking the local innovation potential of the continent with the just ended Hackathon dubbed MoMo Open API.
Code Faunta team of young app developers beat over 1000 developers to pick up the ultimate prize of $2500 and a trip to Sweden to visit Ericsson’s Innovation Center after their innovation ‘my Contributions’ App’ was adjudged winner of the MTN Ghana edition MoMo open API.
The winning app has been designed to allow members of social groups like churches, staff teams and alumni groups to make, track and aggregate contributions on one platform.
Another app-Telebanka virtual assistant Chabot which enables customers to perform transactions through text or voice and creates interoperability between a customer’s bank account and MTN Open API was adjudged the second best.
The app was developed by team Zero Stress. They took home a cash prize of $2000.
Farm Financing App, a crowd-funding platform for farmers that use alternative data to determine their creditworthiness before their project is approved was adjudged Third Best. The developers received a cash prize of $1500.
During the awards presentation ceremony, the Commercial Senior Manager of MobileMoney Limited, Abdul-Majeed Rufai, applauded the winners for their creative approach to solving local problems using mobile applications.
He reiterated MTN’s commitment to availing its infrastructure to developers in competitions such as the MTN Mobile Money Open API, to stimulate local innovation and democratize monetization of local innovations,. He noted that this will help the youth to find gainful employment through community transforming innovations.
For Serigne Dioum, MTN Group Executive for Mobile Financial Services said: “I am very pleased about our inaugural MoMo Hackathon, which highlighted the depth of talent among our developer community.
Tapping into this talent will help us make unique solutions that are tailored for customers in our operations and contribute to driving financial inclusion in our markets.”
Nicolas Blixell, Vice President at Ericsson Middle East & Africa said: “Innovation and cultivating a culture of nurturing talent are two areas of priority for Ericsson.
We take pride in the fact that in collaboration with our partner MTN Group, MoMo Hackathon provided a platform to local talent to showcase their solid potential to address substantial social and business needs.”
MTN and Ericsson Mobile Money Open API challenge was launched in October 2019 and ended on 24 Jan 2020.Developers were required to create applications that use MTN MoMo APIs, to monetize both consumer and business opportunities digitally.
The challenge which is an initiative of MTN Group was organized across five countries namely: Ghana, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Zambia.
In the agriculture sector
The scope of the startups revolution is limitless. In the agriculture sector, the mobile money platforms are supporting agritech startups to provide a range of services such as weather, payment channel(s), price information and applications of fertilizer to farmers across the length and breadth of the country.
For instance, MobileMoney Limited, a subsidiary of MTN Ghana has taken steps to provide simple payment platforms for the country’s cocoa and poultry industries.
In 2018, with the support of the GSMA Mobile for Development mAgri programme, MTN Mobile Money piloted mAgric, a mobile-based tool that enables the digitisation of the entire procurement process in the agricultural last mile. mAgric supports farmer registration and mobile money payments from agribusinesses to farmers, as well as data analytics and monitoring for agribusinesses.
By digitizing cocoa farmer identifications (IDs) and digitizing the process of procurement and payment of their cocoa beans, the farmers will be motivated to do more as they will be getting value for their sweat.
The project provides unparalleled opportunity for cocoa farmers to transition from cash to digital payments with the primary focus of making the value proposition for cocoa farmers stronger.
A huge number of cocoa farmers in the project implementation communities have largely been digitized as they have access to more financial transactions through the MTN mobile money platform
General Manager for MTN Ghana Mobile Money Limited, Eli Hini, who disclosed this, explained that his outfit was working with cocoa processing companies to buy cocoa beans from farmers and pay them directly without using clerks or agents.
This cocoa platform is more secured and farmers are assured payment without any excuses and also provide easy and safe access to the funds by the farmers, he told journalists in Accra yesterday as part of activities to mark this year’s MTN Mobile Money Month.
For the poultry industry, Mr Hini was confident that the platform would help the poultry farmers buy and pay for inputs from suppliers as well as selling their poultry products such as eggs and live birds, with ease.
The initiative according to him forms part of the company’s digitization of agricultural value chains for cocoa farmers in cocoa growing communities in the West African country.
Growth Fintechs
The country’s fintech industry which began in 1997 following the introduction of the Sika Card, a new financial product by the then Social Security Bank (SSB) Ghana now Societe Generale Ghana Limited is being boosted by mobile payment.
The Sika Card allows cashless transactions in the country.
Fast forward in 2001, IT Consortium launched its platform for Business-to Business Solution, while the Government of Ghana introduced the e-zwich, an interoperable payment system in 2008.
The advent of Mobile Financial Services by MTN Ghana in 2009 with nine banking partners has democratized mobile money transactions in the country.
The democratization of mobile money transactions in the Ghanaian economy has instigated a paradigm shift to a new kind of retail banking system where large segments of the unbanked populace are being absorbed into the financial services sector.
With the aim of driving and accelerating the rate of innovation in the space, there are 71 registered fintech businesses operating in Ghana today, Mr Hini said at MTN Mobile Money Stakeholder Forum.
Easy access to internet data
Thanks to mobile money operators namely MobileMoney Limited, a subsidiary of MTN Ghana, Vodafone Cash and AirtelTigo Money, the majority of mobile phone users are able to purchase internet data from their wallets with ease.
Additionally, the falling costs of internet devices and market competition, access to the internet has risen steadily in Ghana.
According to DataReportal which is designed to help people and organisations all over the world to find the data, insights, and trends to make more informed decisions, there were 14.76 million internet users in Ghana in January 2020.
The number of internet users in Ghana increased by 1.0 million (+7.5%) between 2019 and 2020. Internet penetration in Ghana stood at 48% in January 2020, DataReportal added.
Key mobile players
As with telephony, the internet market is dominated by mobile phone usage, with 929.96 million subscriptions using mobiles to access the internet at the end of the fourth quarter of 2019, according to data released by the National Communications Authority (NCA).
This figure represents 98.75% of the market share when compared to 27.42 million recorded in the third quarter last year.
This is high by regional standards; while comparable figures for all data subscriptions are unavailable, the penetration rate of 2G and 3G subscriptions in Ghana was 88.8% in December 2018, second only to South Africa (105%) in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the NCA and GSMA Intelligence.
This shows that the country’s mobile data market is well established.
MTN Ghana is the largest operator in the mobile market, according to data from the National Communications Authority (NCA), while Vodafone Ghana is the second-largest mobile operator.
Occupying the third position is AirtelTigo. The smallest operator in Ghana is Glo Mobile, a subsidiary of Nigeria’s Globacom.
Also, there are five Broadband Wireless Access operators in Ghana namely; BLU Telecommunications, Broadband Home (BBH), Busy Internet, Surfline and Telesol.
Bottom line
The growth of mobile money channels, internet networks and smartphone ownership has augmented the adoption of digital services and the application of digital technology to business practices in the country.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
