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00:00Hello, my name is Yinkai Bukong, and in this session we're going to take inspiration from
00:13the success that mobile money has been in Africa to talk about what disruptive technology may be
00:21next. And so I remember actually just recently, no a few years ago, I was trying to buy a ticket
00:29from Accra to Lagos, and there were only two payment options with the airline. It was either
00:36cash or mobile money, and that just shows the level of disruption that that technology has had.
00:43Mobile money didn't originate in Africa, but it got here, and it morphed into something that we've
00:49not seen anywhere else in the world. And so here today, we're discussing what's next. From stable
00:56coins to AI, we have an expert panel to discuss and share insights about what the next technology
01:04may be, but also more importantly, how to ensure that Africa doesn't just adopt it, but also adapts
01:11it to its specific needs. And so there's already hints of an opportunity, some signs of it. I'll
01:20start with you, Lexi, your general partner at Northken 22, a fund that's backed by 35 tech founders
01:28who have businesses worth a billion dollars or more, and they're part of this international network
01:36that's specifically looking to invest in Africa's big tech giant. My first question to you is,
01:43why Africa for tech specifically?
01:45Yeah, and thank you, Yinka. I mean, we could talk about all of the stats that I think everybody
01:50knows here, young population, fast-growing population, but I think what's most interesting
01:56is actually that the friction still exists, and we can talk about what happened with mobile
02:01money, but more important, how digital tools are now opening that up. So that is exactly where
02:07the market opportunity is for tech solutions now. And I think our backers saw a really big interest
02:13to not only make money on their investments and improve the lives of founders and people
02:18that they're backing, but also with a view of looking at Africa as the next growth market
02:24for them to expand maybe some of their companies into. And, you know, I think we love the success
02:32stories of our homegrown founders, but it's also super valuable to take a lot of those international
02:38learnings and overlay them on the market that we see today to build those billion-dollar-plus tech
02:42stories.
02:43And so what technologies specifically do you see being the most transformational?
02:47Yeah, so, I mean, I think we have initially saw kind of the rollout of payments. I mean,
02:54that was kind of the foundational layer that we needed, digital identity to unlock access
03:00to credit. I think what we're seeing now is a huge rise in entertainment and media from
03:06some markets. But I think more interesting, and we'll talk about that today, is the rise
03:11of blockchain and stablecoin solutions that can really unlock a lot of those very fragmented,
03:17hard-to-reach markets where there's not a lot of efficiency and drive that in a market
03:22where, because the need is so pressing, those will really become the outside success stories.
03:29And, you know, AI, I think, is quite interesting for us as well, but we're seeing more of those
03:34models that are really tackling those local solutions. Fraud has been a huge pain point,
03:39identity and verification, certainly. So a lot of those sort of systems that are needed
03:44to make some of those more not only digital solutions, but traditional industries also
03:49operate much more efficiently.
03:51Thank you. And Emmanuel, you are presenting OpenAI, which gave us CHAP GPT and has kick-started
03:59the Gen AI boom. You don't have an office in Africa yet, but you did start an initiative
04:05in Lagos. You have the OpenAI Academy. Can you speak a bit about how that initiative fits
04:11into your Africa strategy? Sure. As many of you may know, OpenAI's mission is that AI benefits
04:18all of humanity. In order for it to benefit all of humanity, we have to ensure that it reaches
04:23every corner of the Earth. We believe that AI should be as accessible as electricity, as the
04:29Internet, and as any other technology. So for this reason, me being the Africa lead of the
04:35company, trying to ensure that it also reaches Africa. And the OpenAI Academy is just our initiative
04:41to ensure that AI knowledge is democratized. We also understand that we cannot be in every corner
04:47of the world, so therefore we have created OpenAI Academy, a convening space where people can just
04:51go online and learn about the latest developments, be it about CHAP GPT, or even more broader,
04:57about AI. The way we work with OpenAI Academy is in partnership with local institutions. So instead
05:04of us coming and just talking about CHAP GPT or any other products, we want to ensure that the local
05:10context is considered as well. So for this reason, we have partnered with the University of Lagos and
05:15also launched the first OpenAI Academy in Africa, which was met with a lot of excitement, a lot of
05:20enthusiasm, and then also again, reaffirmed our need to even increase our engagement on the content.
05:27But it's been very exciting, be it the OpenAI Academy, but also different partnerships with
05:32Digital Green, working on agriculture, Jacaranda Health, working on maternal health. So just to see the
05:39cross-sectoral impact that our technologies have in the region and also the world is nothing short but exciting.
05:48And you've described the quite altruistic mission for OpenAI, but you've recently gone for profit.
05:54Has that changed anything about your Africa strategy so far?
05:58I would say this is a global conversation to be had, right? I'm the Africa lead, and therefore initiatives that I've
06:05mentioned are the ones that I'm driving and leading, and one being CHAP GPT Go, right? We understand that in
06:12order for us to make AI accessible, it needs to be also affordable. So CHAP GPT Go happens to be the lower
06:21lower subscription model that can be accessed, and I believe in South Africa, it costs about
06:26149 rand, and they got 7,000 naira. So just a way to ensure that it benefits all humanity, but then in this
06:34context, all Africans.
06:36Okay, it will also hook more people to AI in the meantime. Yeah. Let's move to stablecoins. Chris, from
06:44Western Union to Visa, there's been a lot of announcements in the news recently about institutions just adopting
06:50either new stablecoins as a coin or opening stablecoin wallets as a means of payment. What
06:57is it specifically about stablecoins right now that's making people excited?
07:02Yes. Well, Yinka, it's great to be here with you. And I will say I'm a little surprised with
07:07the, you know, the number of people in financial services banking that we've had on the stage. I think it
07:14wasn't until afternoon that we had the first mention of stablecoins. This is a transformative technology
07:19technology. You know, you talk about technologies that are next. I would venture to say that stablecoins
07:25are not next because they are happening very actively right now. Last year, this technology settled almost
07:32$17 trillion in transactions. That's more than Visa and MasterCard combined. This technology is happening
07:40specifically on the African continent. You have six of the top 20 countries on Earth for adoption of this
07:46technology right here in Africa. And so this is something that is very actively happening. Obviously, like
07:52you said, you have Visa and Western Union and, I mean, JP Morgan and, you know, every other major
07:57institution on Earth getting into the space. You know, the best way to think about it, because I think for a
08:03lot of people, you know, stablecoins are still this, you know, sort of scary otherworldly concept, right? The best way to think about it is the U.S. dollar is still used for international trade, right? It's still $90 million. It's still
08:1590% of global invoice settlements, 90% of global invoice payments. And the user experience
08:21of the dollar sucks. Like, using the dollar sucks. It's not a fun currency to use, especially internationally.
08:30You're dealing with, you know, intermediary banks. You're dealing with Swift. You're dealing with systems that just don't work.
08:35We're not built for the continent. We're not built for the rest of the world. They were built for the U.S., right? And so all that stablecoins do is take a currency that's extremely important in global trade and fix the user experience.
08:50They make it so that you can send dollars to anybody anywhere in the world, no matter where they are, whether you're next to me or halfway across the world for virtually free. And, you know, the reason when you look at, you know, these companies, the Visas and the JP Morgans and, you know, BOAs and all these others that are getting heavily into the space, the reason is, and, you know, the analogy I always use is if you were a bank 20 years ago in 2005, and you said, we're not going to do online banking.
09:19We're not going to do online banking. We're not going to do the internet at all. We're going to double down on in-person banking. Everybody loves going in-person to do their banking.
09:28And you opened a bunch of new branches. That bank wouldn't exist today. It would have lost all of its customers within the last 20 years. I don't know about you. I couldn't tell you the last time I went to a bank branch.
09:38It's the same with stablecoins moving forward. A bank and financial institutions like Visa and these guys that don't adopt this today are not going to be around in 20 years.
09:48It's that fundamental of a shift in the way that finance works.
09:52And you've mentioned how some African countries have been the earliest adopters of stablecoins. I'd love you to speak to that, but also to your recent expansion to other markets, including China.
10:04Yes. I mean, so look, this technology has, you know, proliferated around the world, right? So I think, you know, when you look at the top countries on earth for adoption of this technology, it is major economies. And then it is countries that have major payment issues, right?
10:22So, you know, look, we're all sitting in one of the top 20 countries on earth for adoption of this technology. Nigeria is one of the top 20 countries on earth for adoption of this technology.
10:30And, you know, Ghana, Kenya, et cetera, are all in the top 20 for adoption of this technology.
10:35And then you also have, you know, again, major economies and major settlement routes like China, right?
10:42So, you know, right now we do a lot of work with businesses across Africa, across, you know, South America, other parts of the world that need to make payments more easily to China, right?
10:51And, you know, the reality is that Swift is not the way to do that, right?
10:57For anybody out there that's ever used Swift, I don't think I need to do any more explaining, right?
11:02And so, you know, using Stablecoins, you're able to facilitate those payments, settle those invoices in real time with full confidence that your recipient has received those funds.
11:14And China is already Africa's biggest trading partner.
11:18So do you see the links with Stablecoins making trade even more prominent with China?
11:25I see Stablecoins making trade more prominent with every part of the world that wants to do trade.
11:32And so, you know, obviously China, there's a ton of trade going on.
11:36And so it's a huge growth corridor for us right now, East Asia, China especially.
11:40I think also, you know, you'll see a lot more growth in intra-African trade.
11:46You'll see a lot more growth in trade between Africa and South America, right?
11:49Southeast Asia and South America, Middle East and Africa.
11:52You know, all these parts of the world that, you know, again, traditionally money would have to go from, you know, Singapore to New York in order to get to Nigeria.
12:01Or from, you know, Argentina to New York in order to get to Dubai.
12:04And it doesn't need to anymore, right?
12:06It can go straight through and just make it a significantly simpler transaction.
12:10Okay.
12:11So let's move to AI.
12:13Emmanuel, you've traveled the continent since becoming lead for OpenAI.
12:19What are some use cases that you see having the most impact in Africa?
12:24And also, what surprised you?
12:26What's a use case that's actually surprised you?
12:28Yeah.
12:29Well, I've been in the role for about seven months there.
12:32And the first thing I did, I really hit the road, right?
12:35I was at a global AI summit on Africa and Kigali.
12:38But I would probably say the more impactful ones that I've seen are the partnerships that we have.
12:45Jacaranda Health, which focuses on maternal health.
12:48Really going into the clinics in Kenya and visiting and seeing the impact that AI can actually have has been, for me, quite powerful.
12:55Another one has been the agriculture aspect.
12:57I've mentioned Digital Green being another of our partner organizations.
13:01How they are utilizing AI for crop information, weather.
13:06So just to kind of see the impact that it has.
13:09But then even beyond those examples, there are so many, right, that I probably don't even have covered yet.
13:16I was with the driver in Lagos, and he showed me how he's using Sora, right?
13:21And this is a use case that I didn't even know of, that he's using it to annotate videos.
13:26I think this is actually the beauty of the technology, because it's applicable to any field.
13:31And it just depends on the respective user and the respective industry.
13:35And I think that's why I find ChatGPT as itself being quite powerful.
13:40When we speak about developers, over 4 million developers are building with OpenAI.
13:44We just recently reached a milestone of 1 million enterprise clients, right?
13:49Just to all over the world, just to show you the cross-sexual impact and the global use that it is having,
13:55beyond those examples that I've mentioned.
13:57But in terms of more powerful, I probably could not even pinpoint towards one,
14:01because there are so many that many of us, including myself, don't even know of.
14:05But I guess my role is just to continue traveling, learning, and to find better ways to make it more accessible.
14:11And Lexi, you mentioned earlier fragmented markets.
14:16And I think in the African context, that's a really big issue.
14:19So many countries, so many regulations, so many languages.
14:22How do you see, and you also mentioned payments.
14:26So how do you see solutions like stablecoins or AI starting to address the fragmentation of the African market specifically?
14:34Yeah, well maybe I'll start with what I think the future looks like.
14:37I think in five to ten years, my ambition would be five years.
14:43We won't be using SWIFT anymore, like Chris mentioned.
14:46There was another panel before that mentioned there were 42 payment switches on the continent.
14:52I think that those will rapidly not become the main point on which we transact money.
14:58And what this means for everybody here and every African is it will be faster, cheaper, less fraud, more transparent.
15:07And that's a future I can't wait to see.
15:09I think when it comes to AI, look, what Africa has struggled with, and we see this with our companies,
15:16is expanding from one market to another, reaching different community groups.
15:21And I think AI has a huge role to play in plugging kind of all of this fragmented markets and friction together
15:30to allow businesses to operate much more efficiently.
15:33I don't think we should be focused on building foundational models,
15:37but there are lots of solutions that can be leveraged off of open source models to build local solutions
15:43that will really fix a lot of the problems that we face and really drive that growth,
15:47as well as capturing data sets, which I think aren't necessarily available to the rest of the world.
15:52Yeah, and including data sets, actually.
15:56Apart from data sets, we also know that globally there's a race for GPUs for computing capacity
16:02to be able to process all this data.
16:05In Africa, there's also a challenge of connectivity.
16:08In 2024, just 38% of Africans were online, even though that number is growing.
16:15So how do you overcome such infrastructural challenges so that we can actually capture the benefits of AI on the continent?
16:25I think that's probably quite a complex question that I don't envy governments to solve it,
16:31but I do believe it is a cross-industry responsibility, right?
16:36I used to work with this initiative called GIGA.
16:38It's a UN initiative that focuses on school connectivity, right?
16:42And this is where, for the first time, I saw how complex that issue is.
16:45Not so much an issue, but it is an issue.
16:48But the collaboration it requires, right?
16:51So I think it just comes down to not only one company to solve it.
16:56It's going to be a collaboration between governments, multilateral institutions,
17:01and just a multi-stakeholder approach towards solving the issue.
17:05And then I think then we can go and have many more people benefiting from AI.
17:09But I think with any issue, it requires a multi-stakeholder approach
17:12and a broader collaboration as opposed to pinpoint towards one company.
17:15It's rather a collective that is required.
17:18And just briefly, speaking of governments, let's look at regulation and policy.
17:23What's the opportunity cost if African governments don't put in place policy or regulation fast enough around AI?
17:32I don't know whether it's a matter of speed.
17:37I think it's probably just in any other jurisdiction or any other place in the world.
17:42It's a matter of introducing legislation that also at the same time enables innovation.
17:47I think safety is quite an important feature to be considered of.
17:54But at the same time, there also needs to be an assurance that the policy that is in place or regulation that is in place
18:01actually enables innovation so that any technology can benefit the continent.
18:06But I think this is more of a global conversation as opposed to only an Africa conversation.
18:10I think there's a risk in Africa of over-regulating before we see how this is going to play out.
18:15I think China and the U.S. are both taking a stance of if we over-regulate, we'll kill innovation and we won't win at this race.
18:21I think that's a difficult balancing act that Africa certainly needs to face.
18:25But clarity is very important.
18:27And I think with AI, it's the same with stable coins.
18:31This is a fundamental shift in technology akin to the internet.
18:34Everybody knows what happened to the U.S. economy because of the internet.
18:38Right?
18:39Everybody in this room, I can almost guarantee, is using some type of U.S. company's technology because of the internet.
18:44Apple, Google, et cetera.
18:46If you open up regulation and enable that innovation to happen locally, the next Google can be an African company.
18:55The next Google can be a company from South America.
18:58It can be a company from Southeast Asia.
19:01It can be a company from these other parts of the world, not just another Silicon Valley company.
19:06And on that note, that's a wrap.
19:08But thank you so much, panelists, and thank you, audience, for your attention.
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