#AliTalksTech Weekly Roundup

This week I touch on the report on the Future of Fintech in Africa. You can find the full report here .

18% of the World's population live in Africa - That's 1.4 billion people - while 57% of Africans are?#unbanked ?- basically living without a bank account or digital wallet. The?#Fintech ?opportunity is massive. Here's a look a the sector in Africa.

In 2020,?Stripe , one of the world’s largest privately held?#fintech ?#unicorns , acquired?Paystack , Nigeria’s very own payments company. That deal, along with a steady stream of fintech unicorn births from the likes of?Interswitch Group ,?OPay ?and?Flutterwave ?(from Nigeria),?Fawry ?(from Egypt), and?Wave Mobile Money ?(Senegal), has drawn the attention of investors and globally-minded fintech companies alike.

Sub-Saharan Africa Constitutes >64% Of Total Global Mobile Money transactions. This is the power of Fintech in Africa. This special report by?Lucidity Insights ?makes for interesting reading.Future of Fintech in Africa.

I also spoke about SoFi s one year since it received its banking license.

This original?#fintech ?student lender's first year with a banking charter is off to the races!

It’s looking like 2023 will go down as a pivotal year for?SoFi . The fintech-turned-bank could show an overall profit for the first time in its 12-year history by yearend, as management predicts, or at some point during 2024.

This combination of a nimble?#fintech ?and a bank seems to be working. More?#fintechs ?looking at this route?

A 12 dollar smartphone?in India.

India’s No. 1 wireless carrier Reliance?Jio ?Infocomm Ltd. will start beta trials for the first 1 million Jio Bharat phones from July 7. The phones, amongst the cheapest in India, will be offered with unlimited voice calls and 14 GB of data for 123 rupees a month. The device can also stream videos from Reliance’s?Jio ?Cinema and make payments.

Step back a bit and contemplate that - $12 dollars is like Kshs. 1700! A smartphone for that amount.?Safaricom PLC , upo? ??

A game changer.

State of regional trade in?#Africa ?according to?UNCTAD .

Total trade from Africa?to the rest of the world averaged?US$760 billion?in current prices in the period 2015–2017, compared with $481 billion from Oceania, $4,109 billion from Europe, $5,140 billion from America and $6,801 billion from Asia. More on this story here .

Lastly, 苹果 hits 3Trn market cap.

Is it just Apple's innovation machine responsible for this milestone or are share buybacks partly responsible?

Occurring regularly since 2012, Apple has habitually launched programs for share repurchases. From 2012 until the end of 2022, Apple spent in excess of $572 billion on share buyback programs.

Share buyback programs are often performed to reduce the number of outstanding shares in a company. Increased scarcity typically results in an increase in the stock's price, or supporting a desired target.

I believe it's both. The innovation machine is definitely chugging on. However, buybacks do help to 'correct' the share price according to Management. ??

I hope you find this conversation useful.