Day 1 Tuesday, 15 July
Session
Time Room
[S45] Economic landscape of agricultural digital finance 16:00-17:30 Simba
Description
Originally referred to as mobile money this extremely young and fast moving industry is most recently being referred to as digital finance. Mobile money started as person-to-person payments between cell phones and rapidly served the payments needs of large entities or governments. As more and more money started circulating outside the banking system, banks began to see a competitive threat and no longer cared to sit on the sideline. The terms mobile banking (bank products on the phone) and branchless banking (non-traditional banking agents) have rapidly emerged by way of joint ventures between multi-national organisations and banks. These promising changes have not been lost on central bank regulators worldwide who have, for the most part, embraced the potential for financial inclusion and are promulgating regulatory lessons learned and best practices. Meanwhile, mobile finance – of whatever variation – can be easily integrated with digital technologies such as smart cards, scratch cards, point of sale devices, biometric identity capture, ATM’s and others. The panel will review this history, describe how digital finance can serve households and discuss the three approaches to agricultural digital finance (market research, strategic alliance, and horizontal integration into agri-value chain interventions).
Session Organisers
Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)
Moderator
[TBA], GSMA
Session Time Room
26
Birgit Deibele, Mastercard; Carol K. Kakooza, Program Director, Agri Fin Mobile, Mercy Corps; Herman Louw, Finico Technologies (Pty) Ltd; Eddie Sam Kumakech, Assistant Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, Kampala – Uganda,
16:00-17:30 Chui
Description
Using collateral management services (‘field warehousing’) to support commodity and small and medium enterprise trade finance has long been part of the arsenal of banks, including in Europe and the US. Collateral managers not only control commodities as collateral for loans, they also bring valuable commodity intelligence to financiers and can help structure loans. Where there was a lack of such services, banks have resorted to creating collateral management subsidiaries themselves. To this day, many of the largest collateral managers throughout Latin America and in Turkey are owned by banks. Africa is under-serviced in terms of collateral management. The very few international companies still active in the continent focus on international trade, while local collateral managers often don’t have the capital or systems to properly mitigate bank risks. So is there scope for a new pan-African collateral management company, perhaps one that brings together interested local or sub-regional companies under one umbrella, with upgraded capital and risk management tools; a company that could be set up by African banks keen on expanding their presence in the commodity sector? The session will discuss what the scope for such a company is, and will elicit the audience’s interest in supporting its establishment and development.
Session Organisers
Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)
Chairperson
Speakers
[S23] Pan-African collateral management
Speakers
[TBD] Please check http://fin4ag.org/en/agenda.html Alex Clemence Gideon Kwayu, Director, CGS Collateral Control Company Limited, Tanzania Nicholas Budd, former partner, Denton Wilde Sapte, France Ayodeji Balogun, Business and Investment Officer, Africa Exchange Holdings Ltd, Nigeria