Zimbabweans Make A Plan: Innovation in Digital Payments - Webinar
🌍 Webinar Summary for: "Zimbabweans Make a Plan: Innovations in Digital Payments"
The recording can be accessed here.
During the session, we uncovered several key points:
Trust is pivotal in driving the Zimbabwean financial system. The lack of trust contributes to the disparity between the official and non-official USD-ZWL rates. This discrepancy necessitates trust among buyers and sellers, who often rely on unevenly available information. However, it also leads to a decline in trust, as participants are incentivized to exploit the rate differential.
Remittances in Zimbabwe are substantial and growing, constituting nearly 12% of GDP, contrasting with a regional average of under 3%. Since 2018, the volume of remittances has nearly tripled, approaching $2 billion per annum. Economic conditions prompt skilled individuals to seek opportunities abroad, who support their families in Zimbabwe to afford increasingly expensive healthcare and education costs.
Micro, small & medium enterprise (MSME) funding is expensive or unavailable, indicating a potential to redirect remittances towards investment and savings with better coordination.
The pace of digital payment innovation within Zimbabwe is accelerating, albeit primarily led by four well-funded entities: Econet (EcoCash), Old Mutual (O’Mari), Simbisa Brands (InnBucks), and CBZ (Zikicash). While the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has established a fintech regulatory sandbox, only a limited number of innovations have emerged thus far.
The expansion of digital financial services is enhancing transparency, liquidity, and accessibility within the informal sector, fostering opportunities for SME credit, consumer lending, and insurance products. These developments pose a challenge to traditional banks, which are already ceding market share to digital payment providers.
Furthermore, our webinar provided valuable insights into the hosting process, notably as ZOF Africa's inaugural event. We appreciated the diverse expertise of our panellists, who quickly established rapport among themselves. Moving forward, we aim to refine time management, allowing for more direct interaction with our audience to address their inquiries effectively.
A big thanks to our panellists:
Dumisani Dube, a statistician and renowned innovation ecosystem expert across Africa. Dumi provided a macro perspective to the discussion.
Nyasha Zimunhu, an ambitious young software developer who founded Zenali, a marketplace for Zimbabwean businesses and funders, and is the host of the podcast Zimbabweans, What's Next? Nyasha brought a grassroots & startup perspective to the discussion.
Takunda Chingonzoh, a digital transformation expert based in Harare. He is the founder of the Village Innovation Network and a Trustee at ZOF Africa. Takunda provided the nexus perspective, bridging innovation to the institutional.
The panel was moderated by Georgina Fleming, founder of ZOF Africa. Georgina’s background is in venture capital and she is currently building a new company, Kupa, to bridge exceptional tech talent in Africa to remote work in Europe.