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The Barefoot Economist

Hugo Pacheco
Tens of paid subscribers

Ground-level intelligence on financial inclusion technology and emerging market fintech written by someone who's built agent networks across 9 African countries, not watched from a distance. Home of the Agent Network OS.

Platform
Substack
PricingFreemiumPublishesWeekly
Issues128Founded3 years agoLast Issue10 days ago
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barefooteconomist.substack.com
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Latest Issues

🧭 You won’t win the Last Mile on Price or Access

For ten years, African fintech pulled the two levers everyone agreed on: make it cheaper and make it closer, and adoption will come. The market was never asking for either. It was already served by something it trusted more, and it had been...

10 days ago
2
2

🧲 The Informal Economy Already Built the Super App

Agent networks are sold as a way to extend access. That is not what they do. They aggregate trust, and the informal economy got there first.

One last time, the counter. Look past the customer now, at the person taking the notes. That agent...

17 days ago
2
4

🐔 The 84% Were Never Waiting

Everyone reads the adoption curve as a story about time. It is a story about trust, and we have been reading it backwards.

Go back to the customer at the counter, the one who paid the extra thousand shillings without a flicker of hesitatio...

24 days ago
4
1

🧩 The Non-Consumer

I remember watching a customer hand over an extra thousand shillings to an informal mobile money agent. Everyone around me saw an expensive transaction. I saw the cheapest insurance policy in the market.

Nobody argued about the fee. Nobody...

a month ago
3

🌯 July 2026 in one idea

The African agent network is the most valuable thing an operator owns and the operator is the only party who can't put a price on it.

The buyer names a number. The market marks it up at the counter, a thousand shillings at a time. The acco...

a month ago
2
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  • Hugo Pacheco

    I help fintechs to reach last-mile customers using alternative channels

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