TechCabal Daily – The regulations are only new…ish

Explain your job to a five-year-old

I help people with big ideas turn them into something real.

What keeps you up at night??

Haha, honestly a lot of different things – but they all boil down to economic growth in Africa and how to facilitate it. Currently obsessing over how local capital can be reallocated to fund local entrepreneurs, and catalyse our economic growth. An Africa funded and built by Africans – that’s the dream.

What’s something you wish you knew earlier in your career/life?

An existential crisis here and there is healthy and completely normal. Also, mental health is extremely important, and therapy can be really helpful.

What are you currently reading?

Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India by Ravinder Kaur

A genie gives you one wish for the African tech ecosystem, what would yours be?

Frictionless movement across borders for everything (workforce, capital, etc) – think of the economies of scale! I’d happily spend my only wish on that!

*Lewam is an Investment Director at Village Capital & Co-Founder at The Africa Playbook

Early in the week, there were reports making the rounds that the Central Bank of Nigeria had announced new licencing requirements for Payment Service Providers (PSP) in Nigeria

Perhaps because of a distrust of regulators and regulation in Nigeria, the reactions were negative. One media house for instance, used the headline, “CBN slams N4bn escrow and shareholder requirements on Nigerian fintech companies.”

Yet, a look at the new regulations show that there are few changes of note. In fact, there are reductions in the required minimum Shareholders’ Fund (SHF) and application fees.

Two major additions in the new rules are that escrow deposits are to be invested in treasury bills and all payments must be made in the applying company’s name.

In the end, this has played out like the title of one of Shakespeare’s plays: Much Ado About Nothing