Citi Bank and Techpreneur Africa have launched a Citi Tech for Integrity Challenge for tech innovators to challenge corruption and bottlenecks that stifle transparency in private and public sectors of the economy.
Nigeria is one of the 10 countries involved in the initiative involving private firms and government parastatals across the participating countries.
Over a period of five months, the programme seeks to discover techpreneurs with innovative solutions to promote integrity in private and public sectors and connect these solutions with relevant private and public institutions for adoption, scalability and sustainability.
“Citi is providing global leadership in anti-bribery and corruption efforts by facilitating the use of digital solutions to promote integrity worldwide,” Chinwe Esimai, Citi chief anti-bribery/corruption officer, says.
“Citi recognises the incredible talent and innovation in Africa’s FinTech ecosystem, and is harnessing it through this initiative.”
Following research from prospective clients from the private and public sectors, pain points to be addressed in the challenge include providing solutions for easy and transparent government transactions, crisis management and aid, financial crimes and illicit activities, procurement, information security and identity and reducing paper, cash and manually handled transactions in both sectors.
While developing solutions that address these corruption and transparency challenges, the developers involved with the program will be tasked with providing solutions that are cyber secure and hacker-proof, an area of huge concern with technological advancements all over the world.
“Programmes like the T4i global challenge show us what is essentially the next level: Not just opening up APIs but coaching and driving adoption/engagement to foster collaboration between these two very critical stakeholder groups, while at the same time promoting global synergies among Fintech entrepreneurs from literally all over the world,” Bolaji Finnih, founder, Techpreneur Africa, says.
‘’With physical presence in 100 countries and 200 million + customer accounts (more than our population), imagine what partnering with Citi, a truly global bank, can do for you. Exciting possibilities.”
Large companies like Microsoft says it spends over $1 billion annually on cybersecurity research and development.
‘’About 50 percent organisations are unaware of internal cyber security breaches,” Olabode Olaoke, senior manager, Risk Assurance Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), says in an interview with BusinessDay.
Other key partners in the project include PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, Mastercard and Let’s Talk Payments.
According to Funmi Ogunlesi, an executive director of Citibank Nigeria, the goal of the project is to “provide digital solutions that create more stable economies across the world.”
Following the gradual growth and acceptance of tech solutions in the Financial Service Sector, the challenge seeks to explore the possibility of sustainable tech solutions in fighting the corruption phenomenon which the World Economic Forum estimates is costing economies around the world $4 trillion.
Citizens around the world, especially in developing countries, are assuming bolder stances in the fight against corruption and money laundering in governance.
It is estimated that if unaddressed, Nigeria’s corruption problem will cost her 37 percent of her GDP by 2030. For a country wallowing in dire economic challenges, this is a whopping ratio.
Using calculations from the IMF World Economic Outlook, Nigeria’s GDP could have been 22% percent higher in 2014, if it had reduced its corruption levels to that of Ghana’s.
Speaking on the government’s readiness to aggressively tackle the corruption challenges of the country, Esimai notes, “the establishment of the Efficiency Unit within the Ministry of Finance, which reviews government spending and procurement processes, is a reflection of this Nigerian federal government’s commitment to promoting integrity.”
Selected techpreneurs from the challenge will be mentored and assisted by partnering organisations to accelerate and pilot their products to suit the various pain points raised by private and public sector participants.
The idea behind the initiative is to change the decade long problem of corruption and leapfrog solutions around it using disruptive technologies.
In Kenya, a company called Fraud Vigilance has developed a database that flags fraudulent persons in private businesses, public offices, and individuals associated with card fraud, cyber fraud, payment fraud, theft, tax evasion, embezzlement, bribery and any other related fraud.
The database in turn provides private firms and public offices with real time fraud alerts, location, demographics and information on how to deal with the presence of a fraudulent individual in a certain location when discovered.
Omoneka Musa Oyier, operations officer, Digital Financial Services Advisory, International Financial Corporation, says, “The emergence and success of Kenyan Fintech, Fraud Vigilance, serves as an example of how technology can indeed be channelled to promoting transparency in Africa.”
The founder of Techpreneur Africa, Bolaji Finnih, emphasises that the solutions sought from the techpreneurs at the end of the programme were structured to address specific challenges that are unique to the country.
This, he says, will be made possible giving the crowd sourced data available to the techpreneurs collated from prospective private and public sector clients.
From mentorship and training programs and webinars over the duration of the project, the techpreneurs will be able to fine-tune their solutions to aptly cater to the sectors and pain points they seek to address.
Applications are currently being accepted for the T4I Challenge and will close on March 6.
