March 26, 2012
Any Hope for Nigeria??
I am still so proud of the team that I worked with on M-PESA, sadly nobody mentions them thats why I keep honouring them …Susie Lonie..the perfect mobile money project Manager, Lesley Ann Vaughan, Tim Murdoch, Andrew Measures, Chris bowley, Steve woolfries..and Papa M-PESA Nick Hughes. Things were so structured and Kenya offered them the right atmosphere …Safaricom supported us during this time.
I could go on and on on the past but let me skip years after to West Africa.
I had a dream for the Nigeria people. On arrival I hoped that we had everything in place as a Telco..We scoped, developed, Installed…this time it was with Eric, Craig, Sarah, Phillip of Kabira..now Tibco.. then the regulation slapped us on the face… No TELCO LED.
I was mad…who advised these people? how can people who have for so long refused to go to banking halls come to your banking halls now because of mobile money..??
I have not stopped and will not stop asking the logic behind Central Bank of Nigeria, trusting independent operators to run mobile money and not trusting telcos who for so long have catered for millions of subscribers under their care.
I still firmly believe that we got it wrong here in Nigeria. You want to run a mobile money service…read the word mobile …derived from a mobile handset/phone it means that there is a simcard inside…
who better understands the mobile phone better than a telco.. what do banks know about mobile phone.. even their mobile banking runs on the Telco platform.
We got it wrong lets admit it, lets licence the Telcos. Licences were issued in September last year and because all licenced operators rely on the telcos …the process of getting financial inclusion has stalled.
Central Bank and Nigerian communications commission need to swallow their pride and issue licences to Telcos. If they believe truly in Financial Inclusion.There is nothing wrong with M-PESA and Safaricom. The people of Kenya are happy, the Central bank has reports every month… whats the difference??? an independent operator in nigeria will definitely have the agents deposit cash with the settlement bank …same as M-PESA .
Central Bank, Was it fear that made you make this grave mistake… why are you killing the financial inclusion dream I had??
Its my opinion:)
