Located at the heart of the Great Rift Valley in Southeastern Africa, Malawi is a landlocked country with a population of about 22 million people, as of December, 2024. The country has over the years buzzed with a lot of untapped potential in sectors such as Agriculture, ICT, Trade, Transport and Tourism among others.
That said, the young people of Malawi have in the past two decades devised means to explore and put to use the available opportunities. Many of them have ventured in Technology supported fields. Among such people is a team of four that in 2011 launched Angle Dimension; a software products and services company.
These four individuals recognized the lack of locally developed software solutions and decided that they would join forces to ‘ensure that Malawians had quality, affordable, and conveniently located software products and services at their disposal’. It is this collaboration that birthed Angle Dimension on 13th October 2011.
Over the years, Angle Dimension has continuously improved itself growing its products and services portfolio as well as its clientele. It has since grown into a digital and financial inclusion player. In matters Financial Technology, Angle Dimension has two flagship products namely Aspect Financials 360 and Smart Identity.
“Aspect Financials 360 is currently being used by SACCOs and Micro finance institutions to perform their day to day financial tasks. This product is divided in to two parts. That is the core banking system used by SACCOs and micro finance. We also have the internet banking that is used by the SACCO and Micro finance members. This enables the members to check their statements, balance and also transact,” Angella Shumba, Business Analyst at Angle Dimension, Malawi explained.
She added: “Another FinTech product we have worked on is Smart Identity. This is currently being used by Banks and Insurance Companies. It helps with Know Your Customers (KYC) procedures as well as customers verification and authentication.”
She revealed Aspect Financials 360 was as of March 2025 being used by 10 SACCOs in Malawi with each SACCO having up to 30,000 users while the Smart Identity system was being used by at-least 5 banks and insurance operators.
“Our FinTech innovations have enabled real time transactions, made transactions digital and largely paperless. Customers are able to serve time and money as they are able to transact digitally on their mobile devices with out needing to visit the financial institutions.”
Shumba nonetheless noted that one of the main challenges faced by FinTechs in Malawi is limited skilled and technically competent engineers.
“Yes, many people have degrees but the application of what they learnt in school on to the market is very minimal. People can have those awesome degrees but when they come for practical interviews, they fail them. As such, we hold bootcamps to close this gap. We believe that the 40 Days 40 FinTechs can further support the Malawi FinTech ecosystem through capacity building and seed funding.”
The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.
The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and startups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.