Safaricom and
Huawei receive
Most Innovative
Service Award
at AfricaCom
Hundreds of entrepreneurs to
attend Ghana Tech Summit
S
afaricom and Huawei jointly received
the prestigious Most Innovative Service,
‘the Business of Tomorrow’, award at
AfricaCom 2019 in Cape Town. The award
recognises the two companies for offering a
revolutionary new Mobile Money Overdraft
service, known as ‘Fuliza’, which enables
users with insufficient funds in their M-PESA
accounts to borrow money to complete
M-PESA transactions. The service was
officially launched in January and has been
gaining popularity in Kenya where Safaricom
has over 23.6 million M-PESA users. Kenyans
transacted over KES6.2 billion (US$62 million)
in Fuliza’s first month after its launch.
Michael Joseph, Safaricom’s CEO, said:
“M-PESA continues to play a leading role in
deepening financial inclusion in the country.
Fuliza enriches our mobile financial services
portfolio, further fulfilling our promise to
always provide customers with relevant
products and services that meet them at their
point of need. We are glad to partner with
Huawei in bringing this commitment to life.”
Fuliza is empowered by the Huawei Mobile
Money Finance Overdraft Platform which
allows design, development and deployment
of innovative finance products. This platform
was created to enable credit overdraft
facilities in multiple payment scenarios in a
highly secure and stable way.
Leo Lu, VP of Huawei Southern Africa
Region said: “The award recognises the
two companies for offering Fuliza. With
Safaricom in Kenya, Huawei has helped
implement financial technology in the form
of services like M-PESA and Fuliza. These
have unlocked a whole new digital economy
in the country.”
www.intelligentcio.com
T
he largest tech summit in West
Africa is to take place in Ghana on
December 13. Held at the Kempinski
Hotel in Gold Coast City, Accra, Ghana,
Tech Summit brings together hundreds of
entrepreneurs, investors, digital marketers
and creatives under one roof to address
humanity’s grandest challenges via
technology and entrepreneurship.
Each year, 100 global speakers will
convene alongside more than 1,000
attendees to re-position Africa as the next
and final frontier of innovation.
and culture. From the rise of tech hubs
across the country to the global embrace
of azonto in pop culture mainstream
dialogues internationally, the West
African country is poised to be a leading
hub of innovation.
There will be panels and keynotes
from a number of the world’s largest
tech companies, including IMB, LinkedIn,
Google, Facebook, Uber, Microsoft
and Airbnb.
The Ghana Tech Summit is for local
and international industry leaders,
entrepreneurs, investors, digital marketers
and creatives interested in transforming
the world via entrepreneurship. Speakers at the event include Tom Davis,
Chief Growth Officer at Forbes, Einstein
Ntim, Partner of Africa Future Fund,
Christine Ntim, the Founder of Haiti Tech
Summit, and Johanna Odonkor Svanikier,
Ghana’s former ambassador to France
and Portugal and the President of HACSA.
Ghana has a proud history of inspiring
leadership in government, business, For more information, visit
ghanatechsummit.com. n
INTELLIGENTCIO
13