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09^th, September, 2020: As part of its on-going Financial Inclusion efforts in Uganda and across Africa, HiPipo is implementing the Women in FinTech hackathon and summit this month.

Today, 15 women led teams have been announced for the Women in FinTech hackathon slated for 12^th to 17^th September at Hive Colab, Kamwokya, with the exception of Sunday 13^th.

The participants will for 5 days conceptualize and develop products for enhancing women financial inclusion in Uganda and across Africa. They will network with fellow Developers and Facilitators from across the World, receive Mentorship from Industry Players and Business Leaders, get access to latest infrastructure and technology in addition to taking home a variety of prizes.

Organized by HiPipo under its Include EveryOne program in partnership with Crosslake Tech, ModusBox Mojaloop Foundation and Level One Project, this women focused hackathon will culminate in to the Women in FinTech summit on Friday 18^th September.

“We received close to 30 team entries for this first of its kind women focused hackathon. Unfortunately, we couldn’t accommodate all of them this year. We thus shortlisted 15 teams that ticked all the project boxes,” Nicholas Kalungi, the Chief Operating Officer of HiPipo noted while announcing the teams, adding;

“Registration was the easier part of the project. The hard work will start on Saturday 12^th as the teams will get down to developing ‘would be world changing and lifesaving products and services’. The 15 teams’ leaders and majority of their members are women. This is part of our contribution to addressing the huge gender diversity challenge that currently exists in the financial technology space.”

The Women in FinTech Hackathon and Summit come at the back of the great success of the recently concluded 40 Days 40 Fintechs initiative and the FinTech Landscape Exhibition that attracted over 100 financial sector organisations from across Africa, between May 13 and July 30^th 2020.

The 15 Teams.

Number	Team  Name	Team Leader
1	E-Moments	Emily Nakabuye
2	Yo Uganda Limited	Penny Kamusiime
3	Team Spec	Edith Ndagire
4	W-Sacco	Nassanga Jalia
5	Kanzu Code Ladies	Aretha Kebirungi
6	GreenGrab	Valentine Masicha
7	Achors	Nanteza Nuriatt
8	UgMart	Diana Nafuna
9	Hack Girls	Halima Bukirwa
10	Team Kameeza	Suzan Mbabazi
11	Alpteq Solutions	Namubiru Aminah
12	Team Affinity	Musimenta Maria
13	Sky Code	Mourine Tumuhaise
14	Team Time	Eva Mirembe
15	Kuzimba Services	Ephrance Eunice Namugenyi

Important Dates:

1. 17^th August to 4^th September: Online Registration.
2. 4^th to 8^th September: Eligible participants announced.
3. 12 September: Women in FinTech hackathon kicks off.
4. 14^th to 17^th September: Women in FinTech hackathon underway.
5. 18^th September: Women in Fintech summit.

Ends.

Our Reporter.

Reimagining finance in emerging markets by extending financial services to the underserved and the excluded has been JUMO’s goal since inception.

This explains why it chose to specialize in social impact financial products where small businesses that are financially excluded can access loans and savings products.

Launched in 2014, the company so far reached 16 million people, with 60% of them working under small and medium size enterprises (SMEs).

During the same period, they have disbursed over $1 billion and record over 51 million interactions with customers monthly.  Over 120 million people have been connected to financial choices while the cost of transaction has been reduced significantly.

JUMO has operations in over 10 countries including South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, Tanzania and Zambia with plans to open shop in Benin, Ivory Coast and Nigeria by 2021.

They use advanced data science and machine learning to create the fastest and leanest financial services infrastructure, according to Joel Muhumuza, the country manager JUMO Uganda.

The stack, according to Muhumuza, has three main components including the Advanced Data Engine, the End-to-end banking technology and the Flexible-operating platform.

Under the Advanced Data Engine, the company uses rich individuals’ data obtained through mobile phones to create information that creates insights while the End-to-end banking technology is used to analyse and understand one’s behaviours to assess one’s creditworthiness.

 

Products

Using the stack, the Financial Technology Company (FinTech) partnered with stakeholders including mobile money service providers, to offer various financial inclusion products including credit, savings, insurance and Points.

Under credit, the FinTech offers entrepreneurs quick access to funds or asset finance while under the savings product, it builds and operates short-term, structured and long-term savings products that bear interest for savers.

Under its insurance product, it works with underwriters and insurance firms to create standalone or wrapped insurance products to safeguard people’s incomes, families, assets and businesses while under Points, it innovated a white label points programme that is used as a tool to drive and incentivise mobile transactions and empower people to build a personal digital financial profile.

It should be noted that JUMO, which is among those participating in the 40-days-40-FinTech initiative, also partnered with Airtel Uganda and launched Wewole, a micro-credit solution that provides a convenient way for Airtel Money customers and agents to access loan facilities via the Airtel Money platform.

“Our goal is to be a financial, digital bank that utilizes digital information to provide financial services,” Muhumuza said.

He alluded to the billions of people who still lack access to financial services, due to, among others, lack of the needed infrastructure.

“We thought there was need to connect entrepreneurs to the finance they need to grow and prosper,” he said, noting that the potential lies in people having mobile phones and mobile wallet that can transact and develop a financial identity.

40-days-40-FinTechs

The 40-days-40-FinTechs initiative organised by HiPipo, in partnership with Crosslake Tech, ModusBox and Mojaloop Foundation seeks to enable FinTechs to innovate solutions that facilitate cross-network financial transactions at minimal risks to enhance access to financial services.

Running for 40 days, the project will see the participating companies acquire interoperable development skills to improve access to financial services, using the Mojaloop open source software

The HiPipo chief executive officer Innocent Kawooya expressed his excitement about JUMO’s financial inclusion efforts, saying that its products are taking a lead in democratising lending and borrowing.

“We are excited to interact with JUMO, a company that is enhancing financial inclusion in over 10 countries and serving more than 16 million customers.”

“While many have not heard about the word JUMO, I am sure they have interacted with Wewole by Airtel Uganda because thousands of Ugandans are using Wewole to get micro credit anywhere, anytime,” Kawooya said.

He noted that JUMO is implementing the core Financial Inclusion principles of Equality to Access, Affordability, Reliability and Availability.

JUMO’s background

JUMO was founded in 2014 in London by Andrew Watkins-Ball. The founding team started working to prove that data can be used to predict the financial behaviour of millions of people without access to finance.

Credit risk, engineering and other capabilities were then developed with industry-leading talent.

The first ecosystem partnerships were established with Tigo, Airtel and MTN to bring short-term loan products to people and small businesses in Kenya, Zambia and Uganda.

In 2016, the company had its first funding partner – Letshego Bank, Ghana – introduced to the operating platform, enabling payment and capital providers to work together to build products.

The following year, it won the Mastercard Foundation Clients at the Centre Prize, recognizing its outstanding value for customers. Additionally, Google selected it, alongside five other African startups, for its Launchpad Accelerator programme, winning The AppsAfrica Changing Africa Award, in recognition of the game changing initiatives across Africa.

Our Reporter.

Making financial services available to more people by lowering costs and barriers to access is increasingly becoming a key focus area for Financial Technology Companies (FinTechs) that seek to ensure financial inclusion for all.

Their transformative power owes to their ability to serve the once financially excluded people, using technology to facilitate mobile payments, provide loans, bill payments and money transfers, among others.

One of the entities with potential of becoming prominent in that space is Enabling Finance, a Najjera-based money lending finance company providing affordable and easier financial services to the public.

The firm started in 2014, offering personal secured loans to university students before venturing into short-term market loans.

However, this saw the company suffer a major setback, as most borrowers did not repay the loans, pushing the company in liquidity challenges.

This, however, did not water down their spirit as they bounced back in 2017 with an innovative solution dubbed FINABLR, tier IV money lending network application that connects diligent borrowers to professional moneylenders under a friendly and enabling environment.

This product, according to Luke Yyeyo, Enabling Finance founder and chief executive officer, has proved to be a game changer to both individuals and businesses that want easy access to loans.

“As we were working to grow our portfolio in 2017, we realised that technology was the solution to lending issues faced in the past and that is when we developed FINABLR,” Yyeyo said.

FINABLR, according to Yyeyo, is flexible, allows private individual lenders to partner with the company since the country’s law does not allow unregistered lenders to get involved in the lending business and any one can apply for a loan.

Additionally, it prepares clients that could be ineligible for the current loan for future financial acceptance, enables lenders to fill in gaps for other lenders that cannot meet their professional take and also offers affordable interest rates to borrowers.

The company’s goal is to provide refined financial services using state of the art technology and methods, delivered through world-class customer care so as to economically empower the population.

To apply for a loan, one is on boarded on the FINABLR application through a website; one submits the loan application on the app, indicating the purpose for which they want the funds.

Enabling Finance is one of the financial players taking part in the 40-days-40-FinTechs project, an initiative of HiPipo, in partnership with Crosslake Tech, ModusBox and Mojaloop Foundation.

The initiative seeks to enable FinTechs to innovate solutions that facilitate cross-network financial transactions at minimal risks to enhance access to financial services.

40 days-40-FinTechs project

Running for 40 days, the project will see the participating 40 FinTechs acquire interoperable development skills to improve access to financial services, using the Mojaloop open source software.

“We are pleased to be part of the 40-days-40-FinTechs project. As a young company, such engagements help us improve our product and platforms. We are able to learn best FinTech practices,” Yyeyo said.

He added: “We have had a great discussion about Mojaloop and interoperability; our developers have their work cut out. New technologies are available. It is up to us to make good use of them. I thank HiPipo for organizing this.”

The HiPipo CEO Innocent Kawooya applauded Enabling Finance for democratizing money lending, saying that it creates an ecosystem that allows anyone to borrow and lend freely, which will in turn result in a democratic network that will change the narrative, especially about moneylenders as being shrewd people.

“We are talking about an economy that includes everyone; so we are talking about solutions that are enabling the last man at the bottom of the pyramid to access financial services,” Kawooya said.

He added: “We are speaking to how we can collaborate with technology providers and cut your costs and then have interoperable solutions to make it easy for lending from anywhere using technology. It is not something that can be done in one day because it is a long journey but as long you plan ahead of time, you get there.”

Our Reporter.

Talk about Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) in Uganda and they will tell you how majority die before celebrating their fifth birthday. According to experts, this is due to a number of reasons but top on the list is poor record keeping and poor inventory management.

However, a group of entrepreneurs saw this challenge and instead of joining those condemning SMEs, they chose to change their narrative by innovating ChapChap – mobile payment application to help them improve record keeping to enable their businesses stay afloat and thrive.

ChapChap, a short form for Creating Harmony Among People, is a low cost innovative digital solution that enables people to easily access financial services as well as helping entrepreneurs in making informed decisions on how to improve and manage their businesses.

According to Monica Kiconco, one of the founders of ChapChap Africa, the app helps entrepreneurs to efficiently monitor their businesses especially for those who are not always around, to run their businesses and those who cannot afford to hire professional accountants.

It thus empowers business owners to keep track of their inventory stock, sales and revenue using their smartphones.

The features that enable that include sales recording – to enable businesses record and analyse sales data so as to make informed business decisions, inventory management – to manage quantity of stock to determine when and how to often reorder for stock, the e-payment feature which allows businesses to pay for services using the mobile money and tracking expenditure on the go.

“We exist to be the leading digital platform and not only staying on top but providing convenience, user friendly platform, enhanced services, value addition and relationships and profitability,” Kiconco said.

The app is helping communities especially people in the informal sector and small businesses to make smarter business decisions that will increase their chances of making more revenue and increase their chances of survival based on the fact that information collected by the application will effectively make running and managing businesses easy.

Kiconco noted that people who have used the app appreciate its usefulness in helping them manage their businesses better.

Motivation

The ChapChap mobile payment platform was launched in 2017 in Uganda, initially allowing customers to pay for digital goods and services and do online shopping while earning cashback on their transactions. Currently, it has over 7000 active users.

ChapChap was later re-designed to incorporate a Point of Sale feature which has since been incorporated into the app.

Kiconco said they were motivated into innovating the app after a team of friends that included software developers identified a need of bringing financial services closer to the undeserved members of their communities.

It was this dream that set them on the journey to create and innovate digital solutions that would seek to serve communities in an easy and better way.

The app that now has over one thousand subscribers in Uganda is set to spread to 10 African countries starting with East Africa countries – Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.

The ChapChap team, however, expressed concern over the fact that it is costly to develop an application of such a magnitude and equally challenging to be able to bring it to the market.

“There are so many challenges and sacrifices incurred including funding and having the right human resource. But even with these challenges, we committed and determined to achieve the ultimate goal of bringing digital services closer to the community to improve their quality of life and businesses,” they said.

40-days-40-FinTechs

ChapChap is among the Financial Technology Companies (FinTechs) that are participating in the 40-days-40-FinTechs initiative project organised by HiPipo, in partnership with Crosslake Tech, ModusBox and Mojaloop Foundation.

The initiative seeks to enable FinTechs to innovate solutions that facilitate cross-network financial transactions at minimal risks to enhance access to financial services.

Running for 40 days, the project will see the participating 40 FinTechs acquire interoperable development skills to improve access to financial services, using the Mojaloop open source software.

The HiPipo CEO Innocent Kawooya commended ChapChap founders, saying they are doing a real transformation of businesses through digitization.

He said that HiPipo will ensure that companies which are embracing technology are helped to move a step ahead to achieve inclusive financial inclusion for everyone.

“With 15 years in the business of digitalization of Africa, we want to see ChapChap become a global enterprise and we will be glad to have contributed towards you becoming a multinational technology company,” he said.

Our Reporter.

With an increasing number of Ugandans having busy work schedules, it is increasingly getting clear that the future of television is going to be mobile.

A growing number of Ugandans, especially those with smartphones are increasingly using them to watch their favorite television programme at their convenience while on the move.

Watching television on the move has been enabled by the established of content creating and aggregating companies that are investing their time and money in to delivering TV, Radio and Movies on smart phones and tablets.

One of such is YOTV, Uganda’s leading mobile APP video platform. Established in 2015, YOTV has over the years grown its client base to more than 150,000 subscribers and these numbers keep increasing every day.

YOTV is one of the firms participating in the 40-days-40-FinTechs project organised by HiPipo, in partnership with Crosslake Tech, ModusBox and Mojaloop Foundation.

While YOTV is a TV on a mobile phone, its commercialization model is based on financial technology. Its subscription payments are done through mobile money.

It offers hourly, daily, weekly and monthly subscription to its users at Shs500, Shs1, 000, Shs2, 500 and Shs, 10,000 respectively.

Given that it already has a big platform, the mobile television service provider is now looking at both consolidating its first line business – TV, Radio and Movies and venturing in to a value addition model for the future. This would see the YOTV APP offering addition services such as home shopping, movie tickets, airtime and paying bills.

The YOTV Channels chief executive officer Aggrey Mugisha said the idea to start the mobile television was informed by the desire to address the television and radio availability and affordability challenge that most Ugandans were grappling with.

“Many people have TVs; they pay a lot of money for subscription but never have a chance to watch them because they are busy people always on the move. We thought and decided to enable such people to have TVs and radios on their mobile phones so that they can watch at their convenience,” he explained.

He added: “Imagine having one APP that has TV, Radio, Movies, airtime, paying bills and home shopping all in one place.”

According to Mugisha, all that will be enabled by interoperable integrations, which the Mojaloop open source software provides.

Running for 40 days, the project will see the participating 40 FinTechs acquire interoperable development skills to improve access to financial services, using the Mojaloop open source software.

Mugisha applauded HiPipo and its partners for organizing the 40-days-40-FinTechs initiative, saying that the Mojaloop software would come in handy for YOTV channels’ commercialization model.

Last year, YOTV won the Digital Impact Awards Africa prize for best disruptive innovation.

Mugisha noted that while they are indeed changing the TV industry, they will continue pursuing other opportunities in the digital space.

”The YOTV APP is top notch and can offer value added services in the future.  That is why these discussions on collaborations, Mojaloop and interoperability are timely,” he said.

The HiPipo CEO Innocent Kawooya said: “It is so exciting to rub shoulders with YOTV channels. Indeed you have had so many challenges and exciting moments. I hope that excitement does not die on the way,” he told YOTV.

Kawooya explained that for Technology in Africa to thrive, the people driving it must keep their feet on the accelerator and keep moving.

He said Uganda has a big and untapped market, with limitless opportunities, which must be explored to improve the communities and grow businesses.

Kawooya added that the 40-days-40-FinTechs initiative is going to change the way financial technology is done anywhere in Africa and the world at large.

He noted that HiPipo is doing a lot research and advocacy for ICT, Finance and Education.

“Our story started in the digital arena and we continue to feature in the story,” he said, adding that the 40-days initiative is meant to shine a light on successful stories like YOTV.

“We are happy to celebrate you, learn from each other and also discussing the development of Africa.”