Ghana’s Ponzi bet, M-Pesa’s disruptor, Nigeria’s e-payments

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Leading by example

This year, we’ve spent a lot of time in this column talking about the lack of data in Africa and about the problems with presenting useful data in an easy to understand and helpful fashion. You could say we’re a little obsessed with this topic at Quartz Africa because we’re also fortunate to work at a publishing house that has developed its own chart platform called Atlas. This means we are usually very keen to help explain the world with charts. They can sometimes do more in the space of 300 words, than 300 words would.

As our East Africa correspondent Lily Kuo explains in this post we’ve decided to take the plunge and seek funding to help bring Quartz’s Atlas platform to leading newsrooms across Africa with our #AtlasforAfrica project.

We’ve applied for the Innovate Africa fund to take Quartz’s chart-building platform, Atlas, to newsrooms, journalism schools, and other organizations in half a dozen African countries for free. We’d offer training in how to use Atlas as well as work with local partners developing specific data-driven reporting projects. We’d also like to create database with an intuitive interface that collects and sorts links to Africa-related data resources — Atlas for Africa.

Our goal is to promote better presented and supported stories about Africa, for Africans, something that we have tried to do at Quartz Africa. Quartz Africa, launched last year, sees Africa as home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies, a hotbed of trade and investment, and a global laboratory for innovation. Data is an important part of that and Atlas, centered on storytelling and collaboration, has been instrumental to our coverage.

As you can see, this is about more than just a grant or funding, but about being part of a wider movement to use innovation to support greater transparency on the continent. The paucity of data from African governments and institutions is still an issue, but we look forward to employing the numbers to which we do have access to encourage more availability from other institutions. We also expect to be able to tell better stories.

Our aim is not to eschew vital reporting or ignore nuance in favor of the data, Quartz’s ideal story would include all three of those important features. We intend to join our partners in newsrooms around the continent and use the numbers and our Atlas platform to visualize and explain the opportunities of Africa’s countries as well as we chronicle its challenges.

Yinka Adegoke, Quartz Africa editor

Stories from this week

Zimbabwe’s 40-year land reform failure. Almost four decades after independence, land reform remains at the heart of Zimbabwe’s political and economic challenges. American University’s Beverly Peters digs into the history of a seemingly intractable problem even as president Robert Mugabe gets set to be in power till he’s 99 years old.

Ghana is next in line for a Russian menace. No sooner had the, now infamous, MMM Ponzi program been suspended in Nigeria, than news came through that it is set to open shop in Ghana. The controversial scheme already has operations in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

A big boost to Nigeria’s e-payments sector. Tencent, the giant Chinese investment company and Comcast Ventures, the investment arm of the largest US cable TV company, joined Singularity Investments and Spark in a $1.3 million round to back Paystack, a Lagos-based online payments startup. The caliber of the investors and the huge market opportunity in an underserved region promise bigger things, writes Yomi Kazeem.

Kenya’s top banks are working on an M-Pesa disruptor.  M-Pesa, the mobile money platform, is a dominant economic force in Kenya and banks want a cut of the action. They have been quietly working on a platform to enable person-to-person bank  transfers without going via the M-Pesa platform, explains Joshua Masinde.

The controversy around Bridge International’s schools for Africa’s kids. In this op-ed, Nimi Hoffman looks into the teaching model and the push-back against the private school chain, which is backed by luminaries including World Bank, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. With hundreds of schools operating, it has garnered praise from many quarters, but also sparked outrage with others and even been shut down by one government.

Sharing data to beat cancer in Africa. Cancer is on the rise in Africa but most countries don’t have the human or technical resources to help deal with this challenge. One way they can help reduce their costs of treatments is to share more data about what they do know.  IBM’s new data tool ChemoQuant could help alleviate those problems, explains Lynsey Chutel.

CHART OF THE WEEK

Africa’s young soccer stars don’t have much cause to stay home. Unpaid wages, attacks by fans and a lack of bonafide contracts; there’s a long list of reasons some of the world’s most promising young footballers are likely to play anywhere but at home in Africa. Some have even been desperate enough to illegally migrate across with deadly consequences.

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Other Things We Liked

A 21st Century gold rush built on the backs of refugees. In a multi-country multimedia Huffington Post report that starts in the city of Agadez, Niger, Malia Politzer and Emily Kassie follow the money trail of the refugee crisis. They explain how it supports an economy which includes people smuggling, weapons-dealing and prostitution and is now valued at well over $300 million.

Keep an eye on

DRC: Will he or won’t he? It as emerged DR Congo’s leader Joseph Kabila may be willing to agree to an election date for 2017 which will see him exit afterward. But most watchers also urge caution.

Our best wishes for a relaxing weekend and pleasant holiday period with family and friends. Please send any news, comments, unpaid footballer wages and Ghanaian cedis for 40% return in 30 days, to africa@qz.com. You can follow us on twitter at @qzafrica for updates throughout the day.

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