Remittance from Nigerian diasporas (those living outside the country) has exceeded the national budget if you use black market rate. Remittance brought in $25.08 billion last year while our 2019 national budget is $24.53 billion if you use black market exchange rate. Of course there are many elements of the remittance inflow which the World Bank system does not capture. Largely, if you add all of them, the government may decide to create another ministry – Ministry of Remittance Taxation – to boost internally generated revenue in Nigeria! Lol.

With the burgeoning trends of the African diaspora, the citizens of the continent provides a massive economic opportunity both inside and outside Africa. According to the World Bank, the 10% increase in remittance inflows from 2016 to 2017, and is only expected to grow more in the coming few years. While the outside world may see the rising number of Africans moving abroad, this is actually fueled by the relative improvement of economic activities in OECD countries, not by a relative declining of the conditions within Africa. The economic value that Africans creating abroad are the main sources of remittances for Sub-Saharan African countries.

[…]

Nigeria which led the continent in remittances in 2017, fell to second in 2018. The figure, however, increased by 10% from $19.64 billion in 2016 to $22.3 billion in 2017. There are two main reasons behind this growth.

This number for Nigeria is more than the total national budget.

LinkedIn Comment on Feed

Looking at the chart, in other words, if a country is making progress, or show signs of development, less people travel out, and you have decreased remittance…

Head or tail, it’s a pathetic situation, the paltry national budget of less than $25B is nothing, with the level of deficits we are already in. So as the remittances grow, the national productivity output lowers; and decay in infrastructures will accelerate…

There is serious problem here, the countries that have been answering “developing countries” may remain so forever, because the tides are already against them.

You cannot develop a country of Nigeria’s size via remittances that go to families, herein lies the challenge.

We are about to spend half of the year on elections and squabbles that go with them, while more people line up at Immigration offices, waiting for their “calls” to be answered.

Poor execution destroys more startups than any competition. That is why after they are gone, the market frictions remain unfixed. Spend more time thinking on your execution than worrying about competition which may not really matter in inventive but not innovation societies. Inventive societies are full of ideas but innovation societies are full of products and services.

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

It is in execution that capabilities are tested, not at ideas or talking stages. Both in football stadiums and TV studios, we have ‘coaches’ all over the place, until you bring them to sit on the bench; then the brain begins to short-circuit…

Of course when you are starting a business, it’s very easy to sit in your house and imagine how you will acquire 10k customers in six months, or sell N50 million worth of products/services per quarter. By the time you go out to talk to the first prospect, you suddenly realise how tough it really is out there.

Yes, ten people can have similar product ideas, including those who are worried about their ideas being stolen. Anyone who can execute better will always have better chance of winning. What makes a TV or car to come alive is not found in any textbook, it’s always hidden!

The Problems With Inventive Societies [Video]

You must have received an email from our team if you did register for the webinar which takes place tomorrow (and to be repeated on Saturday). If you have any question, reach the email they have provided below. Of course, you can still register before today’s midnight in Lagos; learn how here.

Hello,
Thank you for joining us for Q1 2019 Tekedia Business Innovation Webinar on Friday (repeat on Saturday). We are truly honoured to be spending hours with you.

This is the page where the webinar will hold tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday. You are free to join either. Click and login as a test now: [link via your registered email]

Please login with your Tekedia credential and password, as provided, by the webmaster. Please note a minor adjustment on time to accommodate more participants.

Dates: Friday March 22 2019 (repeat, Saturday March 23, 2019)
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Farmcrowdy, the agro-financing marketplace in Nigeria, has raised $1 million from Cox Enterprises, Techstars and Ajayi Solutions to finance growth across all Nigerian states.

Press Release

Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s first and leading digital agriculture platform which allows Nigerians to invest in agriculture, today announced that it has closed on additional seed funding of $1 million. This follows on from the company’s initial investments of $1 million in 2017. International investors Cox Enterprises and Techstars, along with local investor Ajayi Solutions have participated in the round as the startup prepares for an upcoming Series A fundraise later in 2019.

Farmcrowdy will use the investment to continue building their award-winning model, whilst expanding across Nigeria to cover 50% of all 36 states in the country over the next 12 months.

Today, the company has also announced the launch of the Farmcrowdy Group, which will support the startup’s mandate of building agritech solutions that enable the achievement of food security on the continent of Africa.

Pioneers of digital agriculture in Nigeria since 2016 and with a team of 50, Farmcrowdy has empowered over 12,000 farmers across 14 states in the Nigeria, reared close to 2,000,000 broiler birds as part of its poultry farm cycles and cultivated over 16,000 acres of farmland with over 35,000 farm units sold to date. With farm sponsors in Nigeria and across the diaspora, Farmcrowdy is effectively growing a community model that is set to continue the empowerment of local farmers and facilitate food production in Nigeria and eventually across Africa.

Onyeka Akumah, Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy says “Today’s announcement of this additional funding, marks another milestone for us as we amplify our presence in the country and explore new opportunities. We are delving into the possibility of utilising drone services for field analysis, improving our farmers yield with additional research and 3D mapping, as well as entering into formidable strategic partnerships that will grow the impact of our work. We’re continually grateful that we have a group of investors who share and support our vision as much as we do. It is a great source of motivation for the entire team as we look to the next phase of growth as a company.”

In a bid to improve the management of Farmcrowdy’s farmers and farm operations, the startup has also launched the Farmcrowdy TFS App, available to its Technical Field Specialists that will aid in better profiling farmers, managing inventory, as well as data collection and analysis from existing farmers.

According to Cody Simms, a Partner at Techstars who did a follow-on investment in this round of funding after their previous investment, said, “Techstars has been deeply impressed by Farmcrowdy’s mission to end poverty in Africa one farmer at a time since we first invested in the company in 2017 as part of Techstars Atlanta in partnership with Cox Enterprises. We are excited about the continued growth of the Farmcrowdy platform and thrilled to continue our support of the business with the most recent financing.”

For almost two and a half years, Farmcrowdy continues to inspire a renewed interest in farming across generations. In order to better serve the startup’s existing farm sponsors and attract new sponsors to the platform, the startup is in the process of upgrading the Farmcrowdy app to optimise user experience which currently has 90,000+ users and farm followers.

Farmcrowdy’s $1M Seeded Agro-Aggregation Construct Business

OneFi, the parent company of Paylater, a digital lending startup in Nigeria, has acquired Amplify, a fintech company in Lagos. OneFi recently raised $5 million (debt) from Nairobi-based Lendable to transition into a full-fledged digital banking institution. As expected, OneFi is dropping Paylater, going with OneFi at the interim. (I had written few days ago: “So, the name of a digital bank cannot be Paylater!“.) So, the name change is the way to go.

Of course, OneFi does not need to be a “bank” to offer banking services. With this acquisition, the company will deepen its consumer and social finance using Amplify technologies which it acquired. So, the parent of Paylater is no more just an online lending startup but a digital financial institution.

This consolidation is expected in the African fintech sector which is getting more competitive with likes of WhatsApp and Alipay on the way.

Lagos based online lending startup OneFi is buying Nigerian payment solutions company Amplify for an undisclosed amount.

OneFi will take over Amplify’s IP, team, and client network of over 1000 merchants to which Amplify provides payment processing services, OneFi CEO Chijioke Dozie told TechCrunch.

Nigeria’s Paylater Raises $5 Million as It Transitions into a Full-Service Digital Bank

The Full Press release

Amplified Payments Ltd [Amplify], a fintech company that builds and facilitates payment solutions and digital financial transactions in Nigeria, has today announced its acquisition by One Finance Limited [OneFi]. The deal, completed for an undisclosed fee, took effect as of March 1st, 2019, and sees OneFi boost its financial services offering, as the company adds Amplify’s assets, tradements and  flagship products, AmplifyPay and mTransfers, to its growing portfolio.

Conceived in 2015 by co-founders Segun Adeyemi and Maxwell Obi, who first met as Entrepreneurs-in-Training at MEST Africa’s Entrepreneurial Training Program in Accra, Ghana, Amplify has scaled quickly to become one of Nigeria’s leading online recurring payment processors, supporting over 1,000 merchants and facilitating digital transactions for four of the country’s largest banks.

The company’s core products, AmplifyPay – a payment gateway specialising in recurring transactions – and mTransfers – a keyboard banking solution that enables consumers to conduct bill and P2P payments in any chat app – have propelled the three-year-old start-up to a market-leader in Nigeria’s financial processing space.

As a result of the acquisition, Amplify co-founder and CTO, Maxwell Obi, will join the OneFi team to oversee the payments direction of the company, whilst co-founder and CEO, Segun Adeyemi, will depart as he pursues new ventures. Commenting on the acquisition and his new role, Maxwell says, “The key factor which stood out in our decision to work with OneFi was that we saw them as an extension of our vision. We stepped into this industry to use our payment solutions to facilitate a growing economy, and OneFi’s focus on financial inclusion feeds well into this. It’s a real example of a collaborative effort, and I’m excited to see the next chapter of our development.”

Paylater, OneFi’s consumer-facing lending platform, was launched in 2016 by Nigerian finance entrepreneurs Chijioke and Ngozi Dozie, and provides hassle-free loans without the need for human intervention or bias in decision making. Through its app, which has been downloaded over one million times, Paylater has deployed over $50M across 750,000 loans, approving over 1,500 loans a day at an average of $80 per loan. In late 2018, the company became the first African fintech platform to secure a credit rating. The acquisition of Amplify is the next step in the company’s journey, seeing the platform pivot to a one-stop-shop offering additional products such as savings, bill payments and credit reporting.

Chijioke Dozie, OneFi Founder and CEO, adds, “Today’s announcement signals OneFi’s first acquisition; a strategic decision that kicks off our transformation from a digital lender to a diverse digital financial services platform focused on transactions, payments and loans and will ensure we meet our ambitious goal of doubling our size in Nigeria this year. We have long respected the Amplify team for their ability to provide innovative solutions under adverse conditions, and we look forward to blending our expertise  to power the future of fintech infrastructure and digital payments in Africa.”

Amplify also secured their first investment from MEST Africa, the Pan-African incubator, training program and seed fund, in 2016, when Adeyemi and Obi graduated from the program and the company officially launched. Amplify is the 5th MEST Africa company to be acquired and the first in the fintech space.

MEST Managing Director, Aaron Fu, concludes, “Seeing Amplify exit to such an established and well-known player in Nigeria’s fintech sector is a really significant moment in MEST Africa’s 11-year history. Watching Segun and Maxwell develop Amplify into a market leader in just three years has been thrilling to see, and we expect to see many more African tech start-ups take this route to market. Our hope is that the Amplify journey will be an inspiration to thousands of entrepreneurs in the making.