Last week Wednesday, Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba was in South Africa – the first time in the Southern African region – to launch the $10 million Netprenuer Prize targeted at innovative entrepreneurs and startups in Africa. The prize will go as grants from the time of its inception to the year 2030.
This visit is not the first time the serial entrepreneur is coming to Africa. His first was in 2017 when he visited both Rwanda and Kenya for the launch of the African Young Entrepreneurs Fund.
Jack Ma joins the league of big tech executives and leaders that have visited the continent in recent times to see first-hand the much touted entrepreneurial spirit of young Africans and the growing tech industry on the continent.
The league include Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, France President, Macron to mention a few. The continent’s population which is continuously on the rise and mostly young is an opportunities for most foreign investors. There is also the widespread underdevelopment that characterise many economies in Africa.
“The day I started Alibaba I told my team, “If not now when? If not me, who? Let’s come to Africa and do something.” Jack Ma told the audience in South Africa about the desire to invest in African startups. “This continent is full of entrepreneurial young people. The entrepreneurs in Africa are first-class. They have the passion, dreams and opportunities.”
At a session he headlined, ‘Netpreneurs: The Rise of Africa’s Digital Lions’, Jack Ma explained that the Netpreneur Prize is open to small businesses in Africa which will vie for $1 million in prize money every year for the next ten years, starting in 2019. The Jack Ma Foundation will host an annual competition, with all 10 finalists receiving grant funding and access to the Netpreneur community of African business leaders for mentorship and other resources.
A $1 million grant will go a long way to revive most startups, however, the biggest winner of the prize could be Jack Ma and his business empire.
Jack Ma – a former teacher – cofounded and chairs Alibaba Group, one of the world’s largest e-commerce businesses. Although Alibaba is most popular for strides in the global e-commerce market, but it is fintech that could offer Jack Ma the best opening in Africa. And Jack Ma has the right product in AliPay, a third party mobile and online payment platform. Currently, it has over 800 million active users and most recently is looking to expand into other emerging markets.
The entire tech space in Africa has attracted significant investments, no doubt; but investments in Fintech sit on top of the pack. The space has not only attracted investment in terms of funding, product launches from foreign brands have also gained traction.
Just recently, Transsion, the owners of mobile phone brands like Tecno, Infinix and iTel, revealed it will be launching its fintech product called PalmPay. Opera has also launched its fintech product – Opay – this year. Nigerian banks are beginning to leverage WhatsApp’s payment feature to provide most convenient payment service to their customers. Google is expected to also launch a fintech service anytime soon. It is believed that part of the long term objective for the launch of Google free WiFi is to enable the rollout of its fintech service.
Why would Jack Ma bait on a space that is already looking saturated?
In view of millions of Africans that currently unbanked, the fintech is far from saturated. But more important is the fact that ecommerce appears to have hit a road block in countries like Nigeria. Players in the space have seen their market share considerably reduced by platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Most merchants now prefer to sell their products directly using these social media platforms. Jack Ma can also make a play for social marketing with WeChat which is widely seen as the WhatsApp of China with more than 800 million users.
However, you look at it, Jack Ma’s $10 million prize will in no small way help rejig the fortunes of many startups in Africa, but it is not free.
