The Flip

In the first episode of this season, we argued that the future of work is a traditional development playbook. Considering the nature of most African markets today - informal, fragmented, subscale -  and considering the fact that most employment comes from the agriculture sector, the traditional development playbook says that development starts by increasing the productivity of the informal sector...

How are jobs created? While throughout the season we're going to be looking at that question primarily through a technology and innovation lens, in this episode we're going to start by exploring this jobs question through a more traditional development and economics lens. Because as we'll see, though the future of work might be remote work or the creator economy or any other nascent categories, th...

Introducing The Flip Season Four. African countries will be adding more people to the workforce in the next 10 years than the rest of the world combined. Where are the income-generating opportunities going to come from?  All this season, we're exploring the future of work.  Thanks to MFS Africa for their sponsorship of the entirety of Season 4 of The Flip. Follow The Flip on Twitter @theflipafrica...

Read Sabi: Platforming Trade in Africa on The Flip. We’re trying something new - an audio version of this week's partner edition of The Flip Notes, together with Sabi. Along with narration from The Flip's Justin Norman, you can hear Sabi’s co-founders, Anu Adedoyin Adasolum and Ademola Adesina, tell part of the story in their own words. The Flip Notes Partner Editions are our occasional sponsored...

In this episode, we're going to explore web3 in the African context. The premise of web3 technology, and tools like NFTs, in particular, is that they can and perhaps will create new paradigms and economic models and that these models will have positive implications for creators and fans alike. And we believe that the decentralized and permissionless nature of web3 blockchains and protocols can hav...

African culture and content is taking over the world - from Afrobeats and amapiano, to Nollywood and Netflix originals, to fashion. To what degree can Africans monetize their creativity not only on the continent but globally? To what extent can Africans, as owners of culture and intellectual property, participate in the upside? And if content has been largely an export product, to date, how do *we...

Food prices are disproportionately expensive in African markets. In some countries, consumers spend 50% or more of their income on food. It's a logistics problem and a retail fragmentation problem, and it's also an agriculture and processing problem. So in this episode, we explore the agriculture and processing value chains on the continent.  [04:44] - Lack of processing capabilities is a problem...

How can Africans receive greater access to quality healthcare? That's the problem we'll attempt to explain in this episode, and it's a wicked problem. In this episode, we go deep into the healthcare value chain from diagnostics to labs to clinics and pharmacies, to better understand how it all works and how those we speak to in this episode are working to get improved care to Africans across the c...

As MFS Africa announces its $100 million Series C, The Flip's Justin Norman and Sayo Folawiyo sit down for a conversation with MFS Africa's Founder and CEO, Dare Okoudjou. [02:34]- First question, on MFS Africa's recent acquisition of Baxi, and their expansion into Nigeria. [05:36] - Why Nigeria? And why now? [09:15] - On MFS Africa's expansion capabilities.  [12:49] - Beyond remittances. - on tra...

As we began our exploration into retail and the so-called B2B commerce platforms, we kept asking about the nature of last-mile retail. Why is it so fragmented? And can we expect retail consolidation?  In this episode, we explore why retail looks the way that it does in African markets, and how B2B commerce platforms are working to empower retailers in the context of the way in which last-mile reta...

As we continue our season on value chains, in this episode, we explore logistics.  The cost of goods and food is disproportionately higher in Africa than anywhere else in the world, with consumers in some markets, spending 50% or more of their total income on food alone. A major reason for these high prices is logistics.  So how do we fix this? How do we improve the efficiency of logistics on the...

This episode concludes our three-part fintech series this season. In the first two episodes, we tackled payments. In this episode, we explore the other layers of the financial services stack - namely, identity and data.  Africa Stack is a play on India Stack - India's pioneering platform of open APIs and digital infrastructure that underpins the country's rapid move towards a paperless, cashless,...

In episode one of this season, we explored how money moves within borders in Africa. In this episode, we explore how money moves across them.  [01:27] - Africa is the most expensive region in the world to send money to, according to the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide report.  [07:26] - Why are there such limited cross-border payment options within Africa? [08:30] - And why is sending mon...

We hear a lot, in the African tech ecosystem, that the competition is with cash. Virtually every country in the world is on some form of a journey to move from cash to cashless. Many African markets, however, are quite far on that journey. And to understand how to accelerate this trend on the continent, we first need to understand how money moves. [04:55] - For most Africans, the mobile money expe...

Introducing The Flip Season Three. This season is about value chains - we pop the hood across sectors and take an in-depth look at what's going on underneath. 

Each episode during our narrative episodes, The Flip's b-mic, Sayo Folawiyo, and founder, Justin Norman, sit down for a retrospective conversation on the topic explored in that episode. However, our current series of conversational episodes explored one theme across the series - digitizing analog and fragmented industries - we opted to have one retrospective conversation that reflects on the entir...

 In this episode, we talk edtech with Wambura Kimunyu, the Group CEO of Eneza Education. Throughout the series of episodes, we’re exploring the entrepreneurs in start-ups digitizing informal and fragmented industries on the continent. And for Eneza Education to remain affordable and accessible, it means distributing text-based content to basic mobile phones via SMS, and acquiring customers via rad...

In this episode, we explore entertainment for mass-market consumers in Africa with Guy Kamgaing, the Founder and CEO of StarNews Mobile. Throughout the series of episodes, we're exploring the entrepreneurs in start-ups digitizing informal and fragmented industries on the continent. And in the media space, that means building a product fit for the realities of mass-market consumers. In a world of a...

In this episode, we talk about cryptocurrency with the Co-Founder and CEO of Bundle, and the Founding Partner of Microtraction, Yele Bademosi. Beyond trading and price volatility, what is it about crypto that excites Yele and so many others on the continent? Throughout the series of episodes, we're exploring the entrepreneurs in start-ups digitizing informal and fragmented industries on the contin...

In this episode, we talk about savings and credit cooperative societies, or SACCOs, and the outsize role these member-owned community banks  play in African and emerging markets. While millions of Africans belong to SACCOs, it's an industry that Kwara's Cynthia Wandia calls "as analog as it gets". Kwara is a Kenyan startup building software to digitize SACCOs, and in this episode, we talk to Cynth...

In this episode, we continue our exploration of the entrepreneurs digitizing informal and analog markets, with Nomanini's Vahid Monadjem. Nomanini is a fintech platform for informal retail merchants in cash-heavy economies, and Vahid, the company's Founder and CEO, believes the best "way to move beyond cash is for us to be really interoperable with it." In this episode, we talk about specializatio...

In this episode, we open the black box of last-mile retail distribution with MarketForce 360's Tesh Mbaabu. 90 percent of trade in Africa is informal, and MarketForce's software-as-a-service platform to better manage their field sales agents and distribution. We'll talk about product, the considerations in building products you use at the last mile and the needs of the multinational FMCG companies...

In this episode, we explore digital savings with PiggyVest's Odunayo Eweniyi. PiggyVest's competition is the wooden box that Nigerians were using to save cash. We'll talk about how the company designed the product to compel mass-market consumers to save digitally; how their use of social media and word of mouth built trust and engendered a savings culture, how Odun think about new products, like c...

In this episode, we speak to Jihan Abass, the Founder and CEO of Lami, an insurance-as-a-service startup based in Nairobi, Kenya. Lami's platform enables insurers, banks, and other partners to offer  digital and flexible insurance to African consumers.  4:12 – First question: formal insurance penetration in Africa is 3%. What's the problem and how is Lami trying to solve it? 6:45 – What does flexi...

Our exploration of the entrepreneurs and startups digitizing analog and fragmented industries takes us to Nigeria, for a conversation with Helium Health's Co-founder and CEO Goke Olubusi. Helium's electronic medical records are providing the digital infrastructure for healthcare sectors across Africa, enabling a variety of stakeholders to make data-driven decisions. 4:26 - First question: what doe...