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and uh it's an enormous privilege to be
here um I'm not going to give you a
technical talk I'm going to just tell
you a little bit about the operating
environment
and the opportunity across the continent
of Africa but specifically in Kenya
where I live and work and run a small
fintech micro investment business I
thought best to start off with a global
view of Africa by night and just start
off by looking at where the lights are
and where the lights are not and that
probably portrays the most powerful
image of the opportunity and perhaps of
the social mission that awaits us all if
we so care so my name is Wayne Hennessy
Barrett um I'm the CEO of Ford Le
Capital I'm also very privileged to be
on The Advisory Board of ethereum um 4G
capital is a micro Investment Company we
provide very small loans between $50 and
$500 for one month specifically to grow
businesses we loan within 24 hours using
mobile money only and PES
or AEL money completely
unsecured and we only lend to people who
are self-employed and trying to raise
themselves and their households out of
poverty it's a touch Tech model
relationships are very very important
everywhere but particularly in Africa
but the technology makes it scalable and
makes it standardized and drives
quality we put the customer at the
center of everything we do and we
operate a relational model where Stan
and bansy here for example who work in
our Wang Gigi Branch to the northwest of
Nairobi will look after a portfolio of
maybe up to a, customers within their
territorial area and ensure that they
provide a support network for them so
they can grow their business with the
means the credit
facility but also the ways micro
Consulting and business training which
are included as wraparound services for
our customer value proposition
so I'm just going to cover a little bit
about the context of what we're doing
here and how it can apply to there I'm
not going to go over too much old ground
we're all here because we know and we
believe and we understand in what
ethereum can do and what the blockchain
can
do but if you imagine this world where
trust is no longer a
prerequisite where you don't get charged
to use a middleman to guarantee that
your own data is yours and is secure and
your own money goes where it's meant to
be you're looking at some very very
exciting
prospects the story of Africa up until
now has been a challenging
one a lot of people instantly think of
negative associations disease War
conflict hunger
backwardness that has indeed been the
case to a large degree in the 70s the '
80s the '90s Africa was not a compelling
choice as an investment destination why
is this for a number of reasons but
people adapt to the rules and to the
contexts in which they
live if you were growing up and living
in a largely Lawless
environment why would you do anything
other than cut corners and hustle to try
to get the best for yourself and your
family if by paying tax you were in fact
just rewarding corruption when the
police are still going to shake you down
or the roads or the infrastructure don't
work then why would you do that
if your support networks are entirely
reliant on people from your own tribal
group or ethnicity then you're going to
adopt clan-based
thinking and you're going to follow the
people who look after you and you're
going to look after the people who
follow you so how do you change this the
solution has to come from the bottom
up the reality is the story is changing
and has changed markedly all the
indicators are
improving if you take your lead from the
broadcast media you could be forgiven
for needing your shoelaces in belt
removed by the end of the day to prevent
self harm it's just an unremitting diet
of bad news but if you take a more macro
view there is few conflict on the
continent in fact globally infant
mortality is
improving education in literacy is
improving the technical Revolution and
the technology Revolution is penetrating
faster and further than ever imagined
before so the African century is upon us
people understand this the fortune 500s
and 100s are now amongst us and they're
investing deeply McKenzies are in
Nairobi every Big Blue Chip big four
company is in every major African City
and the opportunities for what we
believe in what we can do are frankly
enormous there are over 1 billion people
all with genuine custom
problems the agricultural sector alone
could feel Feed the World the power
opportunities sustainably through solar
and other geothermal for example are
almost Limitless together with South
America the continent of Africa is one
of Earth's
lungs so forget all the negative
connotations Africa has always been a
net contributor to planet Earth the
reality is now that we can maybe do it
in a more Equitable way the innovation
in the human capital story is on the
March
what I really want to bring home to you
is the share power of the humanity
there of the people who live by values
and keep smiling through adversity and
displaying a level of resilience which
is frankly humbling every day and I'm
thinking of my
customers so if our big dream is
internet
3.0 maybe an even bigger dream is
business
3.0 if business one was feudal barter
economies
Dark Ages stuff business two was Italian
Venetian florenti intermediation the
beginning of credit the beginning of
intermediaries and third party trusted
agents the may maybe business three is
peer-to-peer operation where you own
your own data you own your own money and
actually you have the right to put it
exactly where you want it to go
rewarding genuine value
creation and letting history judge those
who aren't quite there
just an idea of scale it's big it's
really big you can fit all of China into
the land mass of Africa you can fit East
and West Europe you can fit Japan you
can fit India you can even put Plucky
Little Britain onto Madagascar over
there in the corner okay it is colossal
there is no such thing as Africa it is
as diverse a place as any in the world
between east and west North and South
anglophonic frankon banto there are so
many different
subcultures individual environments
contextual analyses that need to be done
but there are Universal customer
requirements that are there crying out
to be solved so there is a clear need
now to service the need of these billion
OD people to establish scalable reliable
sustainable things which is the power of
what we can
do so mobile money a little bit on that
I mentioned that we everything on Essa
if you're not familiar with Essa I'm
afraid you're about 9 years late it's
basically money by SMS okay it's run by
safaricom they developed the system with
a dfid grant it is now emulated by a
number of other Telco companies and it
is on the march in Africa it is secure
it's transparent it's instantaneous and
it transforms low-level cash
transactions by removing the need for
physical cash which of course is
vulnerable to corruption to theft and
all the other issues as well as the
accounting in the handling Kenya is the
leading country in terms of mobile money
adoption anywhere in the world people
pay each other by zapping smss to one
another on their phone we lend to our
wonderful customers from mobile tablets
in the field directly to their phones
within 24 hours they repay Us by zapping
it back on a pay bill number our system
instantly notices it and we're able to
pick it up so imagine you're operating a
world where you don't need Trust imagine
you're operating a place where you can
see exactly where things are going and
you can set up a business using a
distributed application that you can
access from the Serengeti or indeed
anywhere else and you can put your
knowledge-based value anywhere in the
world this is even before we get onto
Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies this
suest using Fiat currencies so a
practical example we are fintech micro
investment we've got a great core
banking system proprietorial cloud-based
it begins in the field where I'll ask
you if want a loan I'll credit score you
based on your personal economics I'll
geotag you take your picture that fires
through to somebody else who make sure
everything happens correctly the money
gets to you instantly after we've done
our due diligence you repay it you get a
follow on loan it's great it's wonderful
we love it we're raising now to scale
across the rest of Africa if there's any
investment interest please find me
afterwards but it's a very very exciting
space but we want to do more our problem
is like any credit credit industry is
that we need to feed the machine we're
call constantly raising in order to on
lend to scale to increase our financial
inclusion footprint that normally
involves private Equity rounds and all
the rest of
it with an ethereum architecture we
could potentially take donations debt
financing Equity options from anywhere
in the world and on lend that directly
to our
customers investors can see exactly
where every dollar goes specifically to
point of use and back again that's very
valuable and that's very exciting we can
collaborate within a wider ecosystem
where with people like order Orga sorry
we can do more accurate credit based
risk scoring based on the reputations
people build we can help with
individuals creating their own
reputations through the conduct of their
businesses and give a much fairer kind
of dynamic to their
lives within this ecosystem there are
all these other applications who have
spoken here or will speak later who can
do enormous things in Africa and aside
from doing our own thing we do our best
to be the ethereum champion certainly in
Nairobi and across Africa also a little
bit more of that later but the
possibilities as we know are virtually
Limitless but for the people actually
there now who are learning about
ethereum they're the people who unlock
solutions for their own
communities so how do we make it happen
well last week I'm delighted to say that
we sponsored the first Nairobi ethereum
Meetup which was a magnificent success
it was a lot of fun that's Andrew kbe my
CTO taking the MinGa coding school in
Nairobi through the initial startup
within two hours these guys had
downloaded the GitHub and they had
started building their own smart
contracts Tech investors take note
coders run on muffins no muffins no code
never underestimate the power of the
muffin so watch out Pi Piper because
nairobi's on the
March what else can we do keep promoting
keep talking keep connection keep
promoting the ecosystem maximize the
uptake this is our own effort at getting
onto the ethereum
project we're working on it make the
business case Drive the technology let
the technology unlock the opportunities
for the business cases and keep
Connecting People okay everything that
we do is about people all right the
technology connects people and it
connects ideas all right so keep
communicating when we reach out to you
please answer up help us along the way
we'll do the same if there's anything we
can do to help people understand or
enter Africa in any way all right and
let us all work together to do this
that's my f magnificent CEO FMA and one
of our wonderful branch managers Edith
and machakos all
right it's a very very exciting space
that we're in so please by all means all
questions welcome um I fly back to nairy
Monday morning contact details freely
available thank you very much
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