Diverse Africa: a bit of geography

When we talk about Africa — struggling Africa, Chinese Africa, mobile Africa — we inadvertently forget how massive the continent is, how different its regions are, how unique each country is. Africa’s main pain points making it so unique are roads, security, the lack of electricity, and scarce clean water supply. Just think about it, there are almost twice as more phone owners than people with access to electricity.
It is Sub-Saharan Africa that we assume when talking about Africa’s mobile money economies and fast-evolving financial inclusion. It is true though that particular regions led by strong and modern economies are creating the most spectacular cases for the digital world. And not just within this continent.
And yet, Africa is still way too big to generalise, and when referring to fintech wonders, it’s most likely we refer to East Africa region, then to West Africa, completely disengage Central Africa, and sometimes confuse South Africa (a country) with a region. So let’s see how African regions compare to each other.
1. North Africa
North Africa is actually excluded from the ‘Africa’ we talk mundanely about. It covers Muslim countries with the strong Middle East ties — the Arab Maghreb Union that was established in 1989 and includes Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia. Together with controversial Western Sahara, Egypt, Sudan (and sometimes South Sudan), Djibouti (and sometimes Ethiopia), Somalia— they are considered a part of MENA (Middle East North Africa).

2. East Africa
Consists of the headliner Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and sometimes Ethiopia, South Sudan and Eritrea.

Kenya with its 48 mln population has been the moving force for much of the mobile market development and tech innovation not only in its own region, but in the whole Sub-Sahara. Its iconic M-Pesa mobile wallet, M-Shwari mobile loan and M-Kopa mobile solar energy, among others, changed the landscape of modern African economies for better.
Every other country watched them closely. Some followed and followed fast— Tanzania. Unlike Kenya, its neighbour managed to keep the somewhat balance in top 3 mobile operator competition, and now enjoys such practical daily wonders as getting birth certificates through SMS, for instance. Uganda hopped in fast but then tried to find its profits around digital economy by introducing additional social media tax that led to unexpected results. Rwanda is tiny but cheeky, quickly taken a place right besides Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa on the innovation birthplace map, hosting one of the most important startups in the region.
Ethiopia, the largest country in the Horn of Africa by population (100 mln), is well-known for its close relationship with China. Ethiopia is a welcome ground for the Chinese industrial parks, phone-making factories (Transsion), textile manufacture (H&M, Guess) and more.
3. West Africa
Consists of economical giant Nigeria, rising star Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Cabo Verde, Benin, Gambia, Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Togo, Guinea-Bissau.

Nigeria’s aggregated GDP is larger than all countries in Maghreb Union combined. It boasts very young population with people over 60s comprising only 4% of total number of 170 mln people. Nigeria has long been the epicenter of innovation and all things digital in West Africa, attracting both Google and Facebook investment for its able youth. It is also home to Africa’s famous e-commerce heavyweights Jumia and Konga.
Ghana is a relatively small country with only 28 mln people, that nonetheless showed a surprising growth of real GDP — 8,4%, highest in the Sub-Saharan region. It’s capital Accra was chosen by Google for its AI research center set-up, so obviously the country is doing some things right. Its neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire, the biggest economy in African francophone countries, has not only took Kenya as example, but actually partnered with Kenyan to bring mobile ecosystem home.
4. Southern Africa
Economically, the region is dominated by South Africa (RSA), and also includes Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho enclaves. Angola (sometime included in Central), Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique that also can be attributed to East Africa at times. South Africa’s GDP is twice the size of Nigeria, and it also boasts young population, elderly are only 8% of the total population of 56 million.

5. Central Africa
Region with most political and economical struggle. Consists of Chad, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), Republic of the Congo, and sometimes Angola and South Sudan. Its aggregated GDP and population is on par with West Africa, excluding Nigeria. There is not much to boast from Central Africa on the fintech or e-commerce end, business starts where politics end.

However stereotypical we might think of Africa, their population is much more open to modern technologies, eager to adopt and adapt. Mobile solutions address their unique predisposition to problems and solve the cases that different continents might not have. Africa skipped the whole century of basic energy, water and financial infrastructure emergence, and went straight to modern age. So now it is up to a modern age to get African mundane problems solved in a completely new way.
What the Money is a life-style channel & show about fintech, ecommerce, business and innovations by Anna Kuzmina. From Russia. With love.
Anna Kuzmina is the deputy Chief Commercial Officer at Yandex.Money, one of the leading fintech companies of Russian origin, operating both b2c and b2b financial services. Follow Anna on Youtube, Twitter, Medium, Telegram или Яндекс.Дзене.

