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 |  | Pricing | Freemium | Publishes | Weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues | 131 | Founded | 3 years ago | Last Issue | 9 days ago |
| Active | |||||
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🐕🦺 The Network That Can’t See Itself
The advantage that keeps winning in African finance is observation. Anyone can move a customer’s money. Seeing enough of their economic life to price the risk lets you lend to them, insure them, or build something on the relationship. That...
💰 MTN Doesn't Want to Become a Bank. It wants to stop renting one.
Everyone’s watching MTN chase a banking licence and calling it “telco becomes bank”. I feel that may be the boring question here…. The interesting one is why the profit formula is flipping and what it reveals about lending in Africa, which...
🔦 Liquidity is not your problem. It’s the only problem you can see.
Two sentences I have heard from almost every operator I’ve spoken to since I launched The Agent Network Free Diagnostic back in April this year.
We need to expand the portfolio.
Our agents don’t have liquidity.
They arrive as two s...
🧭 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...
🧲 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.
Agent networks are sold as a way to extend access. That is not what they do. They aggregate trust,...
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Authors
The writers behind this newsletter.
I help fintechs to reach last-mile customers using alternative channels
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