Nigeria Loses Out as Visa Picks Nairobi, Kenya Over Lagos for its First African Innovation Hub
- Visa has chosen Nairobi, Kenya, as the location for its Africa innovation centre, instead of Nigeria
- Kenya has recently been praised for its degree of advancement in fintech Technology breakthroughs
- Despite the defeat by Kenya, Nigeria can also brag about having a Microsoft Africa development centre situated in Lagos
Visa, a global digital payments giant, has decided to open its first innovation studio in sub-Saharan Africa in Nairobi, Kenya.
The new hub will be Visa's sixth globally after Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore.
According to Visa, it said the new hub will serve as a launched pad to further penetrate Africa's payment market.
Source: Getty Images
BusinessDay reports that Visa plans to achieve this by bringing together the entire community of creators, innovators, tech entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers, etc. to create solutions that will tackle the many pinpoints that consumers face in the financial services sector in Africa.
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Visa speaks
Aida Diarra, senior vice-president and group country manager at Visa, Sub-Saharan Africa region, said collaboration within the payment ecosystem could push out innovations that are capable of attracting these unbanked businesses and individuals in Africa.
In her words:
"Sub-Saharan Africa is a fast-growing area with tech-savvy inhabitants. As we proceed to develop digital funds adoption within the area, our aspiration is to deepen our collaboration with shoppers and companions in creating options which can be designed across the distinctive wants of Africa.”
Techcrunch also noted that Otto Williams, senior vice president and head of partnerships, innovation, and digital solutions for Visa Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa noted that Policies cannot be seen to be creating barriers to innovation.
In his words:
“The youths (in Africa) are very motivated to address the challenges that they face, to problem-solve, adopt technology, to build new things, and we have to enable them. Part of the enabling is removing barriers to the things that they need to be successful."
How 32-Year-old built a business from scratch, sells it to target for N226.5 billion
Legit.ng has reported that a company, Shipit, built by a school dropout has been acquired by Target, America’s big-box department store for a whooping N228.50 billion.
Shipit, which specialises in same-day delivery was founded by Bill Smith, a secondary school dropout and a serial entrepreneur with perseverance.
According to CNBC, Smith said his father was an entrepreneur and so he grew up seeing him doing different businesses from the time he was 5 years old. Smith says he wanted to understand business and its workings. He said his father was into the cell phone business.
Source: Legit.ng
