Barclays Africa's Blockchain Transaction A World First

Published: Sept. 19, 2016, 9:26 a.m.

b"It\\u2019s been a busy week for the continent\\u2019s fintech scene. \\n\\nThe past week saw MTN South Africa announce that it would be discontinuing its mobile money service due to \\u201ca lack of commercial viability\\u201d. This revelation comes months after Vodacom South Africa ended it\\u2019s catastrophic attempt at copying and pasting Kenya\\u2019s M-Pesa magic.\\n\\nMeanwhile, Madagascar became only the second African country after Tanzania to to roll out mobile money interoperability across the country's mobile networks.\\n\\nBut easily one of the catchiest headline stories of the past week was about Barclays Africa\\u2019s involvement in what\\u2019s being celebrated as the very first blockchain verified financial transaction in the world by a major banking institution. \\n\\nThe pilot deal between The Seychelles Trading Company Ltd. and Ornua saw the two companies harness a blockchain platform developed by Wave to trade a letter of credit.\\n\\nThis transaction has to be Barclays\\u2019 most overt show of confidence in the potential of blockchain technology to deliver improved efficiencies in international trade.\\n\\nAlso in this week\\u2019s African Tech Round-up, is a discussion Andile Masuku had with the Kenyan journalist, Eric Mugendi. Eric is Editor-at-large at iAfrikan.com, and also writes for his Tumbler called Kenyan Longreads.\\n\\nEric joined Andile on the show to discuss the controversy that unfolded on Twitter around the African Tech Summit happening in London on September 29th. The event\\u2019s conspicuously mostly male non-black/non-African speaker list included folks many people in the Twitterverse did not feel were representative of Africa\\u2019s tech ecosystem, and also managed to leave out many worthy participants. Andile and Eric unpacked the issues at play.\\n\\nMusic Credits:\\nMusic by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)\\nMusic licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0"