Ghanaian fintech Bezo Money raises US&750,000 to offer social financial products and services – Acquires 100,000 users

19 December 2022

The mobile phone financial ecosystem is steadily growing in depth and one of the more successful areas is small-scale loans. Russell Southwood spoke to Bezo Money CEO Mubarak Sumalia about how it is addressing the market in Ghana. Bezo Money CEO Mubarak Sumalia had no difficulty understanding what his potential customers needed and why: “I grew up in a slum in Accra and I understand why people have stayed at the same level economically and I think there’s something very wrong with this.” In order to make an entry into the annual MEST programme entry competition he went to see…

Digital TV Special: Seventeen years after the initial deadline Sub-Saharan Africa has still not completed the Digital Switch Over in Broadcasting

14 December 2022

The International Telecommunication Union set a 17 June 2015 deadline for most Sub-Saharan African countries to make the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting. Russell Southwood, who has tracked the progress of the switch over for over a decade and a half, looks at where things are now and why so little progress has been made. In previous reviews of where African countries have got to with the digital switch over, Balancing Act has used slightly different categories. In the early days, there seemed to be a logical route that involved writing a policy, gathering the stakeholders together and setting…

Sub-Saharan Africa's Broadcasting Landscape

Balancing Act is pleased to announce the publication of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Broadcasting Landscape and Nine Key Markets. The report is a joint publication with one of the continent’s leading providers of mobile-based research and insights GeoPoll.