MOBU — Undeniably Taking Centre Stage in Mega Opportunities in AFRICA! (Part 2)

6 min readJan 8, 2019

In the previous article MOBU discussed its important role in both crowdfarming and drone technology, two of the Top 10 business opportunities in Africa!

Some other Top 10 Business Opportunities in Africa:

1. Fintech

With fintech being identified as being one of the top business opportunities in Africa, MOBU’s vision is spot-on! There are a wide range of opportunities that are opening up in Africa’s financial services space.

MOBU Cash and How it will Disrupt the Banking Sector in Africa

MOBU Cash offers a payment solution to provide crypto- fiat, fiat-crypto and fiat accounts in up to 21 currencies including debit cards accepted world-wide.

Africa’s underdeveloped financial services industry presents very tough, important and widespread problems that need to be solved. After more than 50 years of banking on the continent, just about 34% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa have bank accounts or access to formal financial services. It is clear the traditional model of banking is too slow, inflexible and incapable of spreading financial access at the pace the continent requires.

But with the spread of mobile phones and the Internet across Africa, the continent’s entrepreneurs are leveraging technology to deepen financial access in ways the banks never have. They include bill payments, bulk disbursement, international remittances, merchant payments, mobile airtime top up, mobile banking, person-to-person transfers, peer-to-peer lending, micro insurance, and several other interesting opportunities.

In the area of overseas remittances for example, Africa loses more than $1.4 billion annually in charges alone. Western Union and MoneyGram have been long-time monopolies in the remittances segment, and are clearly ripe for disruption. Western Union charges up to 30% which is ridiculously high in comparison what MOBU Cash will offer them amongst other convenient benefits.

Opening up, growing and disrupting Africa’s financial services market will certainly transform millions of lives on the continent and create a league of millionaires in the process.

2. Affordable Housing

Africa is experiencing the world’s highest rate of rural-to-urban migration. And by 2030, it is projected that up to 50% of the continent’s population could be living in towns and cities.

Potential Opportunity of Low Cost Housing Security Token Offering (STO) via the MOBU Security Token Issuance Platform

Urbanisation is great, but where will all these people live? And even if the governments tried, they cannot build homes fast enough to meet the teeming demand for accommodation.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the housing deficit is estimated at 20 million homes. But beyond conventional housing, there is an interesting trend of homes being built from cheap and durable alternatives, like shipping containers. In Kenya, entrepreneurs like Denise Majani are also converting shipping containers into amazingly creative residential and office accommodation at half the price of contemporary housing.

So far, most of Africa’s housing developments have focused on the premium and elite segment of the market. While the large margins from this segment have been very lucrative for investors, the biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs like MOBU will emerge from directly or indirectly providing housing at scale, and at affordable prices.

3. Automobiles

Currently, there are just about 44 vehicles per 1,000 people in Africa. This is significantly below the global average of 180, and lower than the motorization rates of other developing regions like Latin America, Oceania and the Middle East.

Potential Opportunity of Automobile Industry STO via the MOBU Security Token Issuance Platform

Currently just about 50% of Africa’s roads are paved. The current development drive will cause this percentage to increase. Estimates suggest that vehicle sales on the continent could reach 10 million units per annum within the next 15 years. MOBU is in the perfect position to play a major role to address the current demand for automobiles in Africa.

4. Low-cost Private Schools

It is estimated that 1 in 4 African students — a total of 66 million — will be enrolled in private schools by the year 2021.

For example, in Nigeria, the number of low-cost private schools in Lagos, its commercial capital, is estimated to be as high as 18,000. By comparison, in 2010–11 the city had just 1,600 government schools. In Tanzania, the Silverleaf Academy is a chain of low-cost private primary schools that charge a daily school fee of $1.50. The school uses a technology-based approach and offers a curriculum taught by internally-trained teachers.

This trend of low-cost private education is leading entrepreneurs, including MOBU to come up with several interesting models.

Potential Opportunity of Low-cost Private Schools STO via the MOBU Security Token Issuance Platform

Security Token Issuers that wish to establish low-cost private schools in Africa can use the MOBU platform to tokenize their business. This business venture does good and makes money at the same time!

5. Urban Logistics

The future of Africa is in the cities. And by 2030, up to half of the continent’s 1.4 billion people will be located in the cities.

Currently, about 60 African cities have a population of over 1 million people. At the top of the pack are cities like Lagos (21 million), Kinshasa (10 million), and Cairo (9.5 million).

Potential Opportunity of Urban Logistics STO via the MOBU Security Token Issuance Platform

This is the very reason behind distributed ledger technology used by MOBU.

One of the biggest problems that appears to be worsening with the growth of Africa’s urban populations is congestion. Most cities on the continent do not yet have well-diversified transport systems, so getting around town can be a very frustrating endeavour.

In Kenya, Twiga Foods uses technology to pool the orders of several urban retailers, saving them a trip to the market by delivering to their doorstep. It is now the largest distributor of a number of basic food staples in Kenya, and the startup raised $10.3 million last year.

Urban logistics will likely remain one of the most promising emerging business opportunities in Africa!

6. Healthcare Services

With poorly-funded public hospitals, and a significant brain drain of African doctors to countries outside the continent, waiting for the government to fix the continent’s healthcare sector or waiting for international “donor” funds will not work. The same thing has been done for decades and very little has changed.

With 25% of the global disease burden, a rapidly growing population, and a rising middle class, Africa’s healthcare market presents a huge opportunity.

Potential Opportunity of Health Care STO via the MOBU Security Token Issuance Platform

Africa’s $21 billion healthcare market could double in size in just 10 years. This growth in outbound medical tourism costs Africans millions of dollars every year.

To arrest this ugly situation before it gets much worse, Africa needs a private-sector led transformation of its healthcare industry that requires both the innovation of local entrepreneurs, like MOBU and investment from local and international investors.

Final Thoughts

There are endless opportunities in Africa but African entrepreneurs tend to lack access to capital. MOBU is on the forefront to become the perfect channel for this deal flow, secondary market and a few initiatives of its own using distributed ledger technology to solve a significant number of these identified problems.

Distributed ledger technology increases corporate efficiency, ability to identify fraud, enhanced resilience to cyberthreats, cuts costs, increases transparency, streamline processes and adopts more automation.

The future is here!