Like it happens somewhere inside your head, independent of the world. Clean. Untouched by the medium you use to capture it.

But thinking doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

It happens through interfaces.

Keyboards. Voice. Pen and paper. The notes app on your phone. A voice memo while you’re walking. The margin of a book.

And here’s the thing: those interfaces don’t just capture thought. They shape it.

The speed at which you can externalize an idea. The friction you encounter. The rhythm of the input. All of it changes not just how much you produce, but how you think. What kinds of thoughts become possible. Which ones you notice. Which ones you commit to.

I’ve been sitting with this for months now, ever since I started using this tool that’s been genuinely valuable since mid last year: Wispr Flow, an AI voice dictation tool.

I’ve dictated over 83,000 words so far. That’s effectively a full nonfiction book manuscript. The stats show I’m averaging 96 words per minute.( Top 5% of all flow users ).

What’s changed for me isn’t just speed. It’s flow.

Being able to capture thoughts on my phone or laptop while walking, reflecting, or pacing, it removes this friction between thinking and creating. Long-form writing, structured thinking, idea capture. All of it feels more natural now.

For anyone doing knowledge work or writing: tools that reduce cognitive overhead compound quickly.

But.

Despite it being transformative, two realizations stood out. Not about the technology itself, but about behavior, cognition, and what actually feels satisfying.

These insights matter because they reveal something deeper: productivity tools don’t just change how much we produce. They change how we think. And not always in the ways we expect.

The thing about defaults

Even with a dedicated shortcut on my laptop and phone, I frequently default to typing.

This surprised me at first. The tool is there. The friction is low. The benefit is obvious. And yet when I sit down to write, or think, my hands move to the keyboard almost automatically.

This isn’t a failure of the tool. It’s a feature of the human brain.

The behavioral reality

Research in behavioral psychology and neuroscience consistently shows that habits are encoded as automatic motor routines, not conscious decisions.

Once a behavior becomes “good enough,” the brain stops reevaluating it. Habitual actions are triggered by context, not intent. Efficiency alone rarely overrides entrenched routines.1

This explains why shortcuts don’t automatically change behavior. Tools don’t compete with other tools, they compete with muscle memory.

Typing, for many knowledge workers, is deeply coupled with thinking itself. Studies on skill automaticity show that once an action becomes automatic, it’s executed with minimal cognitive oversight, even when alternatives are available.2

So the real work isn’t installing the tool. It’s rewiring defaults.

It’s a good reminder that leverage only works once it becomes automatic. A shortcut you don’t use isn’t leverage. It’s just software sitting there.

Until voice dictation becomes an automatic response, reached without deliberation, it remains optional. And optional tools are easy to forget.

The friction paradox

The other thing I've noticed: For some forms of writing, the slower, tactile nature of typing feels more deliberate and satisfying than voice dictation.

Voice dictation excels at flow. It reduces friction and increases output. It’s raw and generative. Great for capturing the texture of thinking out loud, which is perfect for first drafts, reflections, brainstorming sessions.

But for certain tasks, especially critical thinking, structured reasoning, or careful argumentation, typing feels better.

Not faster. Better.

When I’m drafting something very critical, or working on something that needs precision, I find myself wanting that friction. Typing forces you to slow down. To consider each word. To refine as you go.

Cognitive science draws a consistent distinction between fluency oriented and control oriented cognitive modes.

Faster input methods (speech) favor fluency and idea generation. Slower input methods (typing, handwriting) favor monitoring, structure, and precision.34

Typing introduces what learning scientists call “desirable difficulty”, small constraints that increase engagement and cognitive control.5

Speech based input, while faster, often delays evaluation until after expression. Studies comparing speech recognition to keyboard input show that speech can increase cognitive load during complex or problem solving tasks, even when it increases speed. Users find it more difficult to think and speak at the same time compared to typing.6

This explains why satisfaction is not about speed, it’s about cognitive fit.

Typing feels satisfying when I need precision, when I'm evaluating or committing to an idea, when the structure matters as much as the content.

Voice feels satisfying when I’m exploring, when I want momentum, when I’m discovering rather than deciding.

Different interfaces support different modes of thought.

What I’m Learning

The mistake isn’t using voice dictation.

The mistake is assuming that faster is always better.

Research on human computer interaction emphasizes modality matching: aligning the interface with the cognitive demands of the task.7

What I’m learning instead is to switch intentionally:

• Voice for exploration

• Typing for evaluation

• Voice to expand

• Typing to decide

The goal isn’t more words.

It’s clearer thinking.

The lesson: productivity is not about eliminating friction everywhere. Sometimes, the right friction sharpens judgment. And leverage doesn’t arrive when a tool exists. It arrives when the tool becomes automatic and appropriate.

References :

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. About intensity and what it actually costs. About whether the relentless grind that everyone preaches is sustainable, or if it’s just survivor bias dressed up as wisdom.

Then I listened to Matt McInness, Chief Product Officer of Rippling, talk to Lenny Rachitsky on his podcast, and something clicked.

The physics of building something

McInness frames leadership through physics. Specifically, entropy. The second law of thermodynamics. Left alone, systems decay. Order dissolves into disorder. It’s not a bug; it’s the nature of things.

Organizations are systems. Codebases are systems. Teams are systems. And all of them, given enough time without energy input, will “optimize for local comfort over company outcomes.” That’s McInness’s phrase. Local comfort. It’s such a precise way to name the thing we all do. The small retreats from excellence that feel reasonable in the moment but compound into mediocrity.

The only antidote to entropy is energy. Relentless energy. Which means the leader’s job isn’t to buffer their team from intensity. It’s to transmit it. To be a conductor, not a resistor.

This lands differently when you’re actually building something. At Shega, I feel the pull of local comfort constantly. The temptation to ship something 80% right because the last 20% is exhausting. The impulse to delay a hard conversation because it’s easier to hope the problem resolves itself. Entropy dressed up as pragmatism.

The counterintuitive bits

What makes McInness interesting isn’t just the intensity of the gospel. Plenty of founders preach that. It’s the places where he breaks from the standard script.

Take the “never quit” mantra. Silicon Valley treats persistence as sacred. McInness calls it “complete absolute venture capital bullshit.” His reasoning: a VC’s capital is already sunk. Their only hope for a return is you trying forever, hoping for the pivot that changes everything. Good for their portfolio math. Not necessarily good for your life.

He spent nine years on a startup called Inkling before joining Rippling. Nine years without a clear product-market fit. Now, when he reads investor updates from struggling founders, he says he feels “heartbroken.” He recognizes the same delusion he once held.

Product-market fit, he argues, isn’t subtle. It’s not something you debate or hope for. It’s an “insane” force. “You absolutely know it when you see it, and therefore if you don’t absolutely know it, you don’t have it.”

That’s uncomfortable. But there’s freedom in it too. The freedom to run the experiment honestly, learn what you can, and reset if the binding receptors aren’t there.

Success as a teacher

Here’s another one that cuts against the grain: McInness thinks “learning from failure” is mostly a feel-good trope.

His analogy: Would you rather get on a plane maintained by a technician who has seen it done wrong 100 times but “learned from his mistakes,” or one who has seen it done right 100 times?

The implication for careers is direct. Join winning teams. Seek out companies in “crazy growth mode.” Success teaches patterns that failure can’t. You learn more from watching something work than from watching something break.

I’m not sure I fully agree with this. There’s something to be said for the texture of failure, the way it burns lessons into your nervous system. But I take his point. There’s a romanticism around failure in startup culture that can become its own trap. A way of making peace with mediocrity by calling it education.

The part that makes it sustainable

Here’s what I kept coming back to: After talking about exhaustion and intensity and relentlessness, McInness offers a paradox that reframes everything.

“You have to never forget that number one, none of this matters. And number two, it is an absolutely beautiful and amazing phenomenon that we get to be alive doing this right now.”

That tension (it matters intensely AND it doesn’t matter at all) isn’t a contradiction.

It’s the key.

If you only hold the first part (none of this matters), you drift into nihilism. Why push? Why care? If you only hold the second part (this is beautiful), you get attached to outcomes, crushed by setbacks, burned out by the weight of meaning you’ve placed on your work.

Hold both, and something shifts. The grind becomes a game. The exhaustion becomes a sport. You can push harder because you’re not pushing toward salvation. You’re pushing because the pushing itself is the gift.

The question underneath

I keep returning to a practical takeaway buried in all of this: McInness deliberately understaffs every project at Rippling. Not out of stinginess, but out of philosophy.

Overstaffing breeds politics, creates work on low-priority items, and generates “crust.” Understaffing forces focus.

It’s such a simple heuristic. When you don’t know if a project is over- or under-resourced, choose under. Let the pressure reveal what actually matters.

Building Shega in Addis, I feel the constraints constantly. Not enough hands, not enough hours, not enough of anything. For a long time I thought of this as a bug, something to solve once we hit certain milestones. Now I’m wondering if it’s a feature. If the scarcity is keeping us honest about what matters.

Maybe the question isn’t how to get more comfortable. Maybe it’s how to stay productively uncomfortable while remembering that the discomfort isn’t the point.

It’s just the price of being in the game.

And the game, despite everything, is beautiful.

What would change if you held both truths at once: that your work matters immensely, and that it doesn’t matter at all?

These debates about AI and jobs are everywhere. But here’s what makes them hard to engage with: they’re macro discussions about micro realities. The impact happens in aggregate, over time, across industries. It’s cognitively distant. Abstract. Easy to debate, hard to act on.

Meanwhile, something more immediate is happening. Quieter, but more relevant to how you’ll actually spend your working hours next year.

If you’re a knowledge worker, anyone whose output is thinking made tangible, operating in micro realities is where your energy should be spent.

AI has become capable, genuinely, not theoretically, at three foundational skills: code, writing, and design.

When I say capable, I don’t mean flawless. I mean good enough that ignoring it is now a choice with consequences. Good enough that the gap between “can’t do this” and “can do this adequately” has collapsed for anyone willing to learn.

Code, Writing, Design

What do knowledge workers actually produce?

Not “strategy” or “leadership” or “solutions.” Those are abstractions. The tangible outputs. The artifacts that leave your desk and enter the world.

Code, writing, and design. The three skills that cover the majority of what knowledge workers produce. For most, it’s some combination of three things:

Code: instructions for machines. Software, websites, automations, data queries, even the formulas in your spreadsheets.

Writing: words for humans. Reports, proposals, marketing copy, emails, documentation, scripts.

Design: visuals that communicate. Interfaces, presentations, graphics, diagrams, video, data visualizations.

This matters because AI has crossed a threshold in all three. Not “interesting demo” capability. Functional capability.

Yes, AI is disrupting other skill sets too: analysis, research, forecasting, customer service, administration. But generative skills are different. With analytical work, AI supports your decisions. With generative work, AI produces the artifact itself. The code that ships. The words that publish. The visuals that render. There’s no abstraction layer between the capability and the output.

That makes the change more direct. More measurable. And more personally relevant to anyone who builds things for a living.

Four Dynamics Worth Understanding

Most conversations about AI treat it as a single force. It either helps or it doesn’t. But that misses the texture. AI’s capability in these three skills creates four distinct dynamics, each with different implications depending on who you are and what you’re trying to do.

The first: Amplification.

If your core strength is code, writing, or design, AI becomes a multiplier. The ceiling rises.

A strong writer doesn’t just write faster. They take on more ambitious projects, explore more ideas, handle work they’d have turned down. A skilled developer doesn’t just ship quicker. They prototype five approaches instead of one, refactor code they’d never find time for, build things that previously stayed in their head. A good designer doesn’t just iterate more. They present more options, test more directions, push concepts they’d have abandoned for time.

This is genuine leverage. The expert who learns to work with AI doesn’t do the same work faster. They expand what’s possible to attempt.

The second: Democratization.

If code, writing, or design isn’t your strength, the barrier to competence has collapsed.

An engineer can now write a compelling proposal, a blog post, a project update. Not perfect, but functional. A writer can prototype a landing page, mock up an interface, visualize data. Not polished, but real enough to test. A designer can automate a workflow, build a simple tool, query a database. Not production-ready, but working.

The gap between adequate and excellent still exists, and may matter more than ever. But the gap between “can’t do it at all” and “can do it well enough to be useful” has collapsed. That’s the shift.

The effort to go from “I can’t” to “I can, adequately” used to take years or expensive hires. Now it takes hours of focused work. This changes who gets to build. The excuse “that’s not my skill set” becomes harder to defend.

The third: Compression.

AI is shrinking the distance from idea to output dramatically.

A project that once took two weeks now takes two days. A prototype that required a team now requires an afternoon. An experiment too expensive to justify becomes cheap enough to try.

I experienced this recently, and the specifics matter less than the pattern. An idea came to me for a potential new data vertical for Shega Insights. I wanted to test whether users actually wanted it before committing to build it.

In one focused session on a Saturday afternoon, I went from idea to having a live validation experiment: research, requirements, success metrics, analytics tracking, team alignment documents, design specifications, code generation, and deployment. Zero dependency on anyone else.

The traditional path would have taken weeks: research phase, stakeholder meetings, design sprints, developer scheduling, review cycles. This took three hours.

Speed is the obvious part. The less obvious part: it changes what’s worth trying. AI brought a massive inversion of constraints.

Before, you filtered ideas through feasibility: Do I have time? Do I have the skills? Can I afford the help? Most ideas died there. Now, more ideas survive that filter. The constraint moves upstream, to whether the idea is worth pursuing at all.

The fourth: Shift from execution to judgment.

If the constraint moves upstream, where does it land? Judgment.

The above three dynamics are making execution significantly cheaper. What becomes scarce is knowing what’s worth producing, and recognizing when it’s actually good. We are moving to a time when we might run out of judgment before we run out of capacity.

That’s a different kind of problem that is changing what it means to be skilled itself . You move from “person who produces” to “person who directs and evaluates.

When AI handles the first draft, your job is no longer about generating. It’s curating. Recognizing what’s good. Knowing what’s missing. Seeing where the output fails in ways the tool can’t detect.

This is a different skill. A writer who spent years developing voice now spends time developing taste. A developer who mastered syntax now masters architecture and tradeoffs. A designer who refined technique now refines direction.

But the shift goes further. The real advantage isn’t directing AI in one domain. It’s integrating outputs across domains. A product launch needs strategy, copy, visuals, and a landing page. A report needs research, analysis, writing, and data visualization. The person who can orchestrate AI across all of these, seeing how the pieces connect, ensuring coherence, operates at a different level than someone running isolated prompts.

The core competency shifts from “can you make this?” to “do you know what to make, can you tell when it’s right, and can you bring the pieces together?”

The Bottom Line

This isn’t an argument about whether AI will take jobs. It’s an observation that it’s already taken something else: the excuse around : what's possible, who can do it, and what matters now.

The engineer who “can’t write” is now choosing not to. The writer who “can’t design” is now choosing not to. The specialist who won’t generalize is making a decision. Perhaps valid, but a decision nonetheless.

For those willing to adapt, the leverage is real. You can produce what previously required a team. You can move from idea to artifact without waiting. You can compound your core strength with adjacent capabilities you never had time to develop.

But this leverage doesn’t unlock automatically. What separates casual users from those capturing real value? Governance: of yourself, of your inputs, of your process, of your outputs.

What does that governance look like? How do you actually capture this leverage instead of just dabbling?

That’s Part 2. I’ll break down what you need to govern: yourself, your inputs, your process, your outputs.

Subscribe to get it when it drops.

Over the last few months, I’ve been consistently saying, we are living in one of the most interesting—if not the most interesting—times in history. The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) is at the heart of all of this.

The latest leap in AI is DeepSeek. I’ve been testing it for the past month, even before their latest model release. The results are incredible. With the launch of Model V3, which slashes training costs by over 90%, and R1, delivering top-tier performance at 1/40th the cost , DeepSeek has quickly gained mass awareness and is disrupting industries across the board.

In just weeks, DeepSeek became the #1 most-downloaded app on Apple’s US App Store. Meanwhile, as of Jan 27, NVIDIA lost $500 B market cap, and 2 trillion was wiped off the value of US stocks.

I hope somebody is buying. As Warren Buffett says, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

Anyhow, But I think the market—and Wall Street—is overreacting.

Here is my reflections:

1. The Economics of AI is Clearly Shifting

The economics of AI training, data centers, and energy demand are clearly evolving. However, I find it hard to believe DeepSeek’s training costs are as low as $5.5 million USD at face value. While certainly the US chip export restriction might have forced the chinse company to figure out efficient routes ( Check mate US btw ), the number thrown around needs more context.

2.  DeepSeek Isn’t a Random Startup

DeepSeek isn’t some random startup that came out of nowhere. It’s owned and funded by High-Flyer Quant, an $8 B Chinese hedge fund and one of China’s “BigFour” quantitative hedge. At its peak, High−Flyer managed over $100 billion in assets , giving DeepSeek significant financial and technical backing.

3.  The Hardware

There are claims that DeepSeek has access to 50,000 NVIDIA H100 chips, but they can’t openly discuss this due to US export controls.

4. The Demise of OpenAI and NVIDIA is Overstated

The demise of OpenAI and NVIDIA is greatly exaggerated. OpenAI remains a leader in AI research and deployment and NVIDIA still dominates the AI hardware space with its H100 GPUs and CUDA ecosystem.

The AI revolution is just starting. DeepSeek is just one chapter in this unfolding story. As the landscape continues to evolve, this are things I am looking forward post DeepSeek phenomena.

• Will the US Rethink Its Chip Export Control Strategy?
  DeepSeek’s rise—and its potential reliance on workarounds to US chip restrictions—could force the US to reconsider its export control policies. Will they double down, or will they rethink there approach ?

• How Will US Big Tech Firms Rethink Capital Allocation?

  How does Tech Giants like Open AI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta look to their AI Infrastructure investment strategies evolves ?

• How Will the Cost of AI Startups Evolve?
  With the cost of training continuing to reduce, it will lower the cost basis of AI startups. How will this democratization of AI impact the development of new solutions and their integration into our daily lives?

• How Will the Chinese Government’s Relationship with DeepSeek and Other AI Startups Evolve?
  I am keep to to see how Beijing take a more active role in supporting AI startups, or will it impose stricter controls to align with national interests?

If you are curious for more on this topic, here are some more nuanced readings :

Also before you go, just for fun, Jensen from Nividia updated his LinkedIn 😄 

Picture Credit : The Wire

The reason? We were attending a regional youth leadership conference. This trip marked my first visit to another African country, and my curiosity was piqued. Amidst the traffic congestion, a few things became evident.

The roads appeared much narrower than those I was accustomed to back home. Motorbikes, locally known as Boda Boda, swarmed the streets, outnumbering four-wheelers—an unusual sight for someone from Ethiopia.

Fast forward to August 2018, and I am in Nairobi, Kenya, walking down the road from my temporary apartment to Africa’s Talking Kenya office, a short five-minute journey. Tasked with helping Africa’s Talking, a communication and payment solution provider, launch and grow in Ethiopia, my mission in Nairobi was to understand how things operated at the company’s headquarters.

Much like my experience in Uganda, the roads in Nairobi felt narrower and predominantly one-way, with motorcycles being common in sight.

In contrast to Uganda and Kenya, Addis Ababa and much of Ethiopia rely less on motorcycles and narrow streets and more on wider roads and cars. This difference in transportation modes can be partly attributed to Ethiopia’s unique historical and socio-political context.

However, my most significant learning came from observing and interacting with professionals and residents in Nairobi. Many owned or had inherited land outside the city, maintaining ancestral connections or a rural base despite their urban lifestyles. This reflection of the deep-seated value of preserving familial and rural ties amidst urbanization struck me. It prompted me to consider if a similar sentiment exists among Addis Ababa’s urbanites, inviting contemplation on the cultural nuances shaping behaviors and choices in urban Ethiopia, including financial service.

This journey through the roads of Uganda and Kenya, along with my experiences in Ethiopia, underscores a critical point: no two countries are the same, even in Africa and East Africa.

The above two East African countries I visited in the past surely have similar things. First, they both made significant strides in financial inclusion over the past decade. Particularly, Kenya is viewed as a model for achieving financial inclusion through mobile technology, showcasing a leapfrogging success story.

In contrast, Ethiopia embarked on this path somewhat later. But the country is now full of action, with numerous activities supporting and enhancing the financial ecosystem.

These efforts, driven by both service providers and facilitators, signal a growing recognition of the critical role of financial inclusion in countries’ journeys of transformation. As Ethiopia treads this path, it draws inspiration from its neighbors’ successes.

However, these efforts often seem to operate without full recognition of the distinct paths countries go through, tending towards a strategy of imitation from models like Kenya’s rather than tailoring unique solutions that reflect Ethiopia’s unique socio-economic landscape.

Drawing on this notion, we can set the stage for a deeper dive into the critical question of how we should look at and assess Ethiopia’s quest to bring financial services to the majority.

Context and State of Play

Before we delve into details, let’s first establish a foundation and conduct a reality check. Financial inclusion is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. It encompasses ensuring that all individuals and businesses, regardless of their standing, have access to basic and affordable financial services, such as payments, credit, savings, and insurance, which are fundamental to participating fully in the economy.

The concept of financial inclusion has emerged as a cornerstone for economic and social development. But there are also those who argue that economic development is a prerequisite for financial inclusion.

The academic world provides two theoretical frameworks to describe the relationship between financial development (including financial inclusion) and economic growth: the demand-driven hypothesis and the supply-leading hypothesis.

The supply-leading hypothesis posits that providing financial services spurs economic growth by equipping individuals and businesses with the resources needed for investment and expansion, effectively acting as a catalyst for economic activities. On the other hand, the demand-driven hypothesis suggests that economic growth creates a need for financial services, with the development of the financial sector being a response to increased economic activities and the rising financial needs of a growing economy.

A study by Tekilu Tadesse and Jemal Abafia, ‘The causality between Financial Development and Economic Growth in Ethiopia,’ using data from 1975–2016, supports the ‘supply-leading’ hypothesis, showing that financial development positively impacts Ethiopia’s economic growth both in the short and long term, highlighting the critical role of financial sector advancements in driving economic progress.

Many initiatives aimed at promoting financial inclusion in Ethiopia, whether spearheaded by governmental bodies or international development organizations, appear to be predicated on the principles of the supply-leading hypothesis.

In reality, the relationship between financial inclusion (and, more broadly, financial development) and economic growth is complex and can involve elements of both hypotheses. Effective strategy-making often seeks to leverage the interplay between supply and demand, recognizing that:

• Supply-leading actions can stimulate economic activity in areas with unmet financial needs, potentially kickstarting growth in sluggish economies or sectors.

• A demand-driven perspective becomes crucial for the continued development of the financial sector to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of the economy as it grows.

While acknowledging the interplay, let’s look at where we are. Ethiopia stands at a critical juncture in its journey towards comprehensive financial inclusion. Despite considerable strides in recent years, propelled by policy reforms and consolidated efforts, the Ethiopian financial ecosystem faces unique challenges and opportunities in its quest to provide universal access to financial services.

Recognizing the importance of having a consolidated approach towards financial inclusion, Ethiopia put forward the first National Financial Inclusion Strategy (2014–2020), followed by an updated strategy covering 2021–2025. The National Bank of Ethiopia is focused on achieving a significant milestone: ensuring that 70% of adults have bank accounts by 2025. One of the pillars of recently introduced Ethiopia’s National Bank New Strategic Plan 2023–2026 policy is also ensuring financial inclusion, deepening, and digitization.

Figure 1: The account ownership growth rate in Ethiopia is similar to the growth rate of other sub-Saharan African countries (%, 15+). Source: UNCDF

Ethiopia’s latest financial inclusion figures come from the Findex 2022 report. The expansion of account ownership in the country has been significant, nearly doubling from 22% in 2014 to 46% in 2022. Although the percentage of Ethiopian adults with a bank account has seen continuous growth since 2014, it still trails behind the Sub-Saharan Africa average of 55%.

For a comprehensive understanding of the financial landscape, it’s also crucial to consider the developments in 2022 and 2023. The continued growth of Ethio Telecom’s Telebirr and the introduction of Safaricom’s Mpesa to the Ethiopian market are noteworthy.

The self-reported numbers of Telebirr, Mpesa, and CBE Birr mobile money accounts are said to be nearing 55 million by the end of December 2023, illustrating a significant uptrend in digital financial inclusion in the country. However, while interpreting this data, it’s advisable to exercise caution.

Figure 2: Mobile money user numbers and other key data points. Source: Shega compilation from reports, direct interviews, and public sources

Looking deeper beyond numbers, a recent brief by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) that leveraged the World Bank’s 2022 Global Findex Database provides insightful summaries on the status quo of financial inclusion in Ethiopia. The analysis explores themes of access, usage, and financial health, helping us map Ethiopia’s progress and identify key priorities for the future.

Figure 3: Ethiopia’s financial inclusion status quo. Source: UNCDF

Decision Tree

In light of Ethiopia’s unique socio-economic landscape and the complexities surrounding its financial inclusion journey, a structured analytical approach is paramount. Introducing the decision tree approach, a strategic framework developed by the Center for Global Development to dissect and overcome the barriers to financial inclusion.

The decision tree methodology, inspired by the famous Growth Diagnostic framework, offers a systematic way to identify the binding constraints to financial inclusion.

The approach employs a top-down analysis. The tree starts by defining constraints on supply (service provider-driven causes) and demand (user-driven causes). It then moves to high-level potential causes under each before going to a more detailed constraint.

Figure 4: The decision tree approach. Source: Center for Global Development

To accurately pinpoint the pressing constraints, the decision tree provides a framework for analysts to utilize a combination of observed data, shadow prices, quantities, and a comprehensive set of indicators.

When it was applied to the Ethiopian case in 2021, it revealed that supply-driven barriers, particularly institutional issues like the limited capacity of regulators and a reluctance to foster competition, are key constraints, creating a monopolistic environment that leads to high costs and limited availability of digital payment services.

However, since 2021, significant progress has been made in addressing some of these pain points, such as market structure (e.g., licensing for telecom and non-telecom mobile money services like Mpesa) and improving digital infrastructure (e.g., advancements in interoperability and telecommunications liberalization).

This progress opens avenues to explore demand-driven constraints (such as trust, socio-economic realities, and financial literacy) and other supply-side challenges (including understanding customer behavior, identifying needs, and enhancing the capacity of financial institutions).

Imitating Mpesa?

My observation of the urbanities in Nairobi becomes particularly relevant when considering the story of M-Pesa, a mobile money service that has significantly influenced financial inclusion across Kenya and beyond.

The inception of mobile money systems, starting with the Philippines in 2001 and notably M-Pesa in Kenya in 2007, marked a significant shift in how financial transactions are conducted.

M-Pesa, initially an experiment for microloan disbursements and payments via mobile phones, quickly became a tool for sending money among family and friends over large distances.

M-Pesa’s success was not merely a result of technological innovation but also of its alignment with the cultural practice of supporting dispersed family networks. This highlights the importance of cultural compatibility in financial technology adoption.

M-Pesa’s story is one of leapfrogging in the Global South, representing a rare full-circle success story in financial technology adoption that we can evaluate comprehensively. It prompts an exploration of all the factors contributing to M-Pesa’s success and whether these can be replicated or adapted in Ethiopia’s quest for financial inclusion.

Figure 5: A map of the contributing factors to Mpesa’s success. Source: Shega Analysis.

 Looking at the factors contributing to M-Pesa’s success, it’s clear that its triumph in Kenya was the result of a confluence of unique environmental, cultural, and regulatory conditions.

Kelsey Piper, writing for VoX about Mpesa, put it this way: “M-Pesa’s seemingly magical success wasn’t a product of M-Pesa alone. It was a combination of the right technology, at the right time, rolled out in the right way, with the right decisions from the Kenyan government to allow the system without applying onerous regulations or high government fees on every transaction. “

Reflecting on Ethiopia, one question then arises: Why do we seem so intent on imitating M-Pesa in Ethiopia? Our discussions and narratives often lean heavily on replicating models that have shown success in other countries, potentially overlooking the rich tapestry of Ethiopia’s own socio-economic and cultural context.

Ethiopia, with its diverse cultures, languages, and economic practices, offers a fertile ground for innovation that is deeply rooted in the needs and behaviors of its people.

In essence, while the allure of replicating a successful model like M-Pesa is understandable, it is crucial for Ethiopia to chart its own course in the realm of financial inclusion.

In this journey towards financial empowerment, Ethiopia doesn’t just need to replicate M-Pesa; we need to find our own ‘M-Pesa,’ a solution that mirrors our unique identity, challenges, and aspirations as Ethiopians.

This requires a balance between learning from global successes and innovating locally to address the specific needs and challenges of the Ethiopian population, guided by a framework that emphasizes innovative solutions to financial access.

This approach invites us to rethink financial inclusion beyond mere technological adoption, considering the broader cultural, economic, and infrastructural contexts that influence how financial services are developed, deployed, and adopted by the populace.

Achieving financial inclusion requires systematic and cultural change. Such changes can only occur with a nuanced understanding of various markets, systems, and cultural situations.

This article is originally published on Shega through AKOFADA (Advancing Knowledge on Financial Accessibility and DFS Adoption), a project that aims to improve financial inclusion through digital financial services by creating the same operating knowledge base for stakeholders in the sector, supporting the provision of relevant services to end users, and creating trust and confidence in the population about using digital financial services while also highlighting and assessing systemic issues.

Hunter S. Thompson is one of the most important American writers of the late 20th century. He published many books and is also known for inventing the writing technique called gonzo journalism.

Thompson’s early life was full of challenges. His father died when he was young and, as a teenager, Thompson spent a month in jail after assisting in a robbery, an event which left him unable to finish high school. However, he was a remarkably bright child and teenager, and he took an interest in sports and writing — interests that he would continue to pursue for the rest of his life.

Before Thompson became famous and when he was just 22 years old, he was asked by his friend for advice on life. A young and still unknown Hunter S. Thompson wrote a letter to Hume in response to his request.

A letter that was never intended to be published turns to be a thought-provoking writing that describes a profound way of pursuing life and the world for many after it was published in Letter of Note.

There is so much wisdom and enlightening perspectives in this letter. It provides an easy looking but a mind-blowing approach to one of the common question of many is us ask, What is the meaning of life?

April 22, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” (Shakespeare)

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?

The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.) There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try something called being nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and another little thing called Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre. These are merely suggestions. If you’re genuinely satisfied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleeping dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires — including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN — and here is the essence of all I’ve said — you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know — is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writing a book. I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of looking at things. I happen to think that it’s pretty generally applicable, but you may not. Each of us has to create our own credo — this merely happens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

It is the Digital Bank that makes your life easier and can free you from the usual inefficient, slow, and expensive traditional banks. Creating an account takes minutes and everything happens on your phone.

Launched in Germany and Austria in January 2015, N26 began as a current account with a Mastercard.

N26 has now more than 2 million customers, oversees a total of 1.5 Billion in transaction every month and raised $212.8M in funding in 5 rounds — and mind you there is no single bank branch.

The main drive behind N26 is frustration in lack of transparency, digital innovation, and personalized service and offerings in the traditional banks. They believed in e-commerce and entertainment, the experience is mobile-friendly and easy to use but most banking products are really difficult for customers, and no one enjoys interacting with them.

Founders of N26 believe that people of all ages are ready for digitally enabled simplicity and seamlessness, especially in personal banking. (“Why can’t we ‘Spotify’ banking?” they ask.)

N26’s strategy is to combine all the complexity of an individual’s financial life — with accounts and cards from many companies — into a single, relatively simple financial-services platform, using cross-service partnerships and alliances to expand the services it offers.

N26 has been embraced particularly strongly by travelers and digital nomads for its wide variety of traveler-friendly features, which include fee-free currency conversion powered by TransferWise and free ATM withdrawals worldwide.

N26 brought personal banking into the modern world. They put all the features and services that a traditional bank offers into a single, simple, seamless mobile app experience. At its core, N26 is a bank account for your phone. But it’s also your Mastercard, your credit provider, your investment portfolio, your savings plan, your insurance broker and much more. Essentially you put the power of your bank inside your pocket.

Let’s look at if that is true.

N26 Basic current account (chequing account)

The basic current account is the main account where many customers use. It is free to use. Here are some key features/ offers of the N26 Basic Current account.

1. You get a standard Mastercard card

2.Smart Insights — Personalized updates, spending reports, customizable tags. Everything in the app.

2. There is a free foreign currency transfer via Transferwise

4. Over Draft — They do offer an overdraft feature and there is no-penalty fee for it.

It is possible to check your eligibility for an overdraft in 2 minutes without any paperwork and new customers receive up to €1.000 while existing customers are eligible for up to €5.000. You can set your own limit right in the app for easy control over your spending.

Your overdraft interest costs are updated daily in the app, so you always know what you owe and you can track costs directly in the app. — They partnered with WireBank to provide this service. With real-time notifications, we’ll let you know when your balance slips into the negative. Toggle to turn on and off.

In a case where Overdraft is not granted, they send an email in the future as soon as the customers fulfill the requirements.

5. Cash 26 (This feature is only available in Germany)

Whenever you’re buying something from one of N26’s 7,000+ retail partners across Germany (think grocery stores, drug stores, and other high-traffic places), you can select to either withdraw or deposit cash from the app.

The barcode that’s generated for you gets scanned by the cashier in the shop, and then they act as an ATM, either giving you cash or accepting it as a deposit into your account.

With CASH26 You can also put cash on your card up to 100 euro without fee and more with fee 1.5%.This feature similar to M-pesa feature.

6. Invest26

Innvest26 is also a paperless product where you can invest money into an investment fund directly in the N26 app.

When using N26 Invest, you can select one of 3 portfolios, each consisting of 5 funds. They work with there partner vaamo in this case.

You can withdraw money from your investment account at any time; the amount available is displayed directly in the N26 app.

There is a yearly 0,99% fee of your invested amount that will be directly charged from the N26 Invest section of the app and that covers all the expenses for the day-to-day management of your account, and the buying and selling of funds (trading fees, bid-ask spreads, rebalancing).

7. N26 Money Beam

Through a partnership with MoneyBeam, it is possible to send money to your phonebook contacts without knowing their bank account details. If they have N26 bank account, they will receive it immediately.

Payees who are not N26 customers will receive an offline MoneyBeam link, either by text message or email, in which the recipient’s bank account details can be entered. The money will be credited to the given bank account within a period of two banking days. If they don’t accept the MoneyBeam within 7 days, the transfer will be returned to sender account. And it is completely free to make this transaction.

8. N26 Credit

This is a consumer credit where you can get a loan in five minutes. The feature is only live in Germany and works for credit lines between €1,000 and €25,000 for up to five years — interest rates range between 2.99 percent to 8.00 percent p.a.

Behind the scene, N26 can either handle the credit line itself or find a third-party bank for this loan. You’ll tell how much money you need, if you’re single or married, if you’re a homeowner, etc.

They make an offer based on profile and credit history. At the end of the credit check, you’ll instantly get the effective annual rate and how much the credit line is actually going to cost.

You can also customize the length of your loan. You sign with Digital Signature and the money gets deposited directly into your N26 bank account. Customer pays their monthly loan repayment in the app as well.

9. N26 Savings

A savings account directly in the N26 app and earn up to 1.48% in interest. One-time deposit of a fixed sum, starting at €2.000 up to €100.000 for a minimum of 6 Months.

The app shows you the plan with the highest interest rate by default. You can compare plans between several European partner banks so you know you’re getting the best deal possible. (Interest rate)

You can always see the status of your savings plan in the savings section of the N26 app. You can easily access all the information you need like the amount of money you put into the plan, what interest you’ll earn when your plan ends and how much you’ll receive.

N26 Black account premium

This is N26 premium account where you have to pay € 5.90 monthly to access it. Besides everything, the N26 current account provides, N26 Black account provides the following features in addition.

1. Free ATM withdrawals worldwide (zero foreign currency fees).

2. Impressive insurance policy, which includes the following

A. Medical expenses up to an unlimited amount if you have a medical emergency while abroad (No deductible).

B. Expenses you incur due to a flight delay of 4 hours or longer, up to a maximum of €400 (No deductible).

C. Expenses you incur if your luggage arrives more than 6 hours late, up to a maximum of €400 (No deductible).

D. Reimbursement for a stolen mobile phone that was purchased with your N26 BLACK account, up to a maximum of €300 (€50 deductible).

E. Reimbursement for stolen cash if you get mugged up to 4 hours after withdrawing with your N26 BLACK card, up to a maximum of €500 (No deductible).

F. Extended warranty of up to one additional year on items purchased directly with your card and all payment methods associated with your card, such as a linked PayPal account, up to a maximum of €500 (€50 deductible).

G. Travel cancellation insurance on every trip before the trip commences, up to a maximum of €5,000 per trip (10–20% deductible).

A lot of people mention that the N26 Black account card is very good and pretty sleek. They say it feels nice in your hand too because the black upper part of the card is a smooth matte finish.

N26 METAL

This is an ultra-premium account where you get a dedicated customer support person assigned for every customer.

They have also a partner offering for special discounts with companies like WeWork, Hotels.com, IHG, Outfittery and more.

Besides, it is the First metal card in Europe that supports contactless payments. It is an NFC-enabled credit card, NFC meaning Near Field Communication, the kind of technology that allows you to hover your card over a terminal and pay without swiping. To accommodate this technology, the inner core of the card has been changed to tungsten, dramatically increasing the weight of the card. But the card is designed beautifully and to feel like a premium product.

All features of N26 black is included here of course.

Control, Transparency, Instant account management and security

N26 aims to make banking experience non-bs ( as they call it). Here are some interesting feature of the app that you might appreciate.

1. Real-time transaction notifications. Whenever money goes in or out of your account, whether it’s a transfer you’ve initiated or a pre-authorized payment, you’ll get a notification.

2. Transaction categories. Every transaction is assigned a category like “Bars & Restaurants” or “Travel & Holidays” to keep track of your spending that way. Just another benefit of having a banking tool built by coders, rather than a piece of technology built by bankers.

3. PIN resets. Resetting your PIN at any time is as simple as logging into the app and changing it. No calling N26, no trips to the ATM, etc etc. 30 seconds and it’s done.

4. Locking your card. Just like resetting your PIN, locking your card to make it unusable for a period of time is as simple as logging in and pressing the button. Unlocking it is just as easy.

5. Payments abroad, online payments and cash withdrawals. For your security, you can toggle these on and off at any time.

6. Spending and withdrawal limits. Another security feature that you can choose and change in the app at any time.

7. You can send money with your voice as well with iOS 10, you can activate N26 in your phone’s Siri settings and ask Siri to send money to one of your contacts. “Hey Siri, send €15 to Freddy for lunch using N26.”

8. N26 Bug Bounty Program — The N26 Bug Bounty Program offers cash rewards to encourage security researchers to inform us about bugs or vulnerabilities, so that we can fix them long before any damage

Social Proof

They have got pretty good reviews rating — 4.4 Rating on Play Store and 4.8 on App Store. I have noticed that they constantly try to respond for a question that is asked and bad comments. Many people seem to feel proud that they use the bank. The Fact that it is simple and easy is also what many customers appreciate. People who travel or work from country to country liked very much as well and constantly say it makes life easier.

Customer service is one of the main things people like. But still there is some disaffection on customer service. There are some bad reviews because of the fact that N26 doesn’t operate in Countries outside of EU.

Onboarding

So you liked it and want to sign up. It is not that hard at all.

To open an N26 account, you need to be at least 18 years of age, permanently resident in any of the supported countries ( Eurozone countries except Cyprus and Malta, for its basic current account and Debit Mastercard products) and own a compatible smartphone.

During registration, you will be asked to provide with your first and last name, e-mail address, address and mobile number, date of birth, nationality, and country of birth. You will also need to provide with a valid ID.

Once you register and your e-mail address is confirmed next will be to verify identity, following one of the following methods, depending on the country in which you are opening the account:

1. Start a video call with operators, directly from the N26 app

2. or start the photo verification process, taking a picture of your documents and one yourself from the N26 app (not valid for residents in Germany)

3. or go to the nearest post office where you will have to show your document (only in Germany).

When you finish registration and you will automatically receive a master card debit card in the address in 2–3 days.

How doe N26 Makes Money?

So you must be wondering how they make money especially if you realize that give many services for free. N26 doesn’t own any physical branch and that helps lower their operational cost significantly. Here are some of the ways they make money.

• Subscription fee from N26 Black and Metal account

• Withdrawing foreign currency (any currency but Euros) anywhere in the world: 1.7% fee for regular N26 users.

• Whenever customers use his card to pay for something, MasterCard gets a cut of the transaction as it manages the payment network. MasterCard then gives back a cut of this cut to the bank that issued the card. So Number26 makes some money from there.

• Overdraft interest.

• Interest share from investment, savings, credit and insurance features.

Thanks for reading!

This article was initially published on the online platform Medium on January 5, 2019. For those interested in reading the original piece, it may still be accessible on the Medium website.

You might know or not what blockchain means but let’s start with a simple and clear definition.

Blockchain technology is a digital, distributed transaction ledger with identical copies maintained on each of the network’s members’ computers. All parties can review previous entries and record new ones. Transactions are grouped in blocks, recorded one after the other in a chain of blocks (the ‘blockchain’).

The links between blocks and their content are protected by cryptography, so previous transactions cannot be destroyed or forged. This means that the ledger and the transaction network are trusted without a central authority.

Picture a spreadsheet that is duplicated thousands of times across a network of computers. Then imagine that this network is designed to regularly update this spreadsheet and you have a basic understanding of the blockchain.

It is no doubt the Internet transformed the world. You can send text, video or audio through different channels to someone or a group of people instantly without any approval of a central authority. The Internet enables information to move freely but not values like money.

We still need some central authority or middleman we trust to transfer values or assets from one person to another person. The role of central authority is to verify Identity and record this transaction independently.

For this service we get, we often pay for Financial Institutions, big firms and Government and they are always vulnerable to attack or loss of data not to mention their bureaucracy and usually bad service.

Thanks to blockchain this is not going be the reality anymore. In the book named “Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Is Changing the World”, It says :

 Now for the first time ever we have a native digital medium for value, through which we can manage, store and transfer any asset — from money and music to votes Stradivarius violins — peer to peer in secure and private way. Trust has achieved not necessarily intermediaries but by cryptography, collaboration, and clever code.

Blockchain Joichi Ito the founder of MIT Media Lab puts it clearly :

The Blockchain is to trust as the Internet is to information

A hype in cryptocurrency especially Bitcoin might have introduced to you the concept of the blockchain. Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency that is built on and introduced us to blockchain technology. The blockchain is the platform which brings cryptocurrencies into play.

Hence it is important to know the applicability of blockchain is much more many than cryptocurrency (even though the Financial Industry is one of the main industries that will most likely to be disrupted highly with the like of bitcoins).

Have you heard people saying “blockchain is the future”? most likely. I said it too. But now when I think about it, blockchain is actually here and it is already revolutionizing many industries. Next, we will see how blockchain technology is already shifting paradigms in agriculture, government, and environment using few examples.

But one thing is clear, where ever the technology is applied — efficiency, speed, transparency, and immutability are the common characteristics.

Environment

Blockchain can be used to safeguard the environment and perhaps contribute to control climate change.

Social Plastic (aka Plastic Bank) is a project that is turning plastic into currency by setting up collection centers in developing countries like Haiti, where people can deposit used plastic in exchange for currency, services like phone charging, or items like cooking fuel. They aim to clean up the world from plastic waste while alleviating poverty. They are now working on a blockchain-powered app that will allow people to exchange plastic for cryptographic tokens.

The concept of decentralizing which is the core of blockchain technology can even be applicable selling and buying of energy. Today, electric energy is produced by some big companies or government who control the whole supply chain from production to selling. Well, that may not true anymore.

SunContract is a Blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading platform for solar and other renewables, who started operating in Slovenia. Using this platform homeowner have the power to select their energy producer and individuals will be able to engage in an exchange of electricity directly with their neighbors and the local community.

Simply, anyone can be able to produce electricity in their home or buy it directly from the people they know. In return, more power will be in the hands of individual buyers and sellers who also usually produce environmentally friendly energies like solar and biomass energy.

Agriculture

In Ethiopia, A coffee brand called Moyee Coffee introduced the first blockchain-traceable coffee to bring transparency and better profit to farmers. Coffee farmers are getting paid through blockChain, unique in the coffee industry. The company uses the tokenization technology of bext360 which is a traceability SaaS platform that focuses on the critical supply chains such as coffee. Every piece of data in the coffee chain, from harvest to payment, is stored digitally in the blockChain.

At the point of collection from the farmers, the platform instantaneously creates crypto tokens, which represents the value of the coffee. As the commodity flows through the entire supply chain, new tokens are automatically created. These tokens increase in value as the coffee beans move through the supply chain.

When a consumer finally buys a pack of coffee, the pack will be bundled with a digital token worth 50 cents which can be used to trace where the tokens go ensuring the farmers achieve profit. With this, a coffee drinker in Europe can pull up this data and verify exactly where their coffee was sourced from as well.

In case you don’t know, Coffee is Native to Ethiopia and it grows freely in plateaus where it was originally found.

Government

Many governments are already using this technology or are studying out how they can use it.

Although blockchain has only become a hot technology in recent years, Estonia has been testing the blockchain technology since 2008.

Since 2012, blockchain has been in production use in Estonia’s data registries, such as the national health, judicial, legislative, security and commercial code systems, with plans to extend its use to other spheres such as personalized medicine, cybersecurity, and data embassies.

It is important to know that this sensitive data is not stored in the blockchain rather blockchain works like a speed camera that detects who has violated the law, when and how.

Due to the fact that data, protected by blockchain technology, is covered with the “digital defense dust”, every change that will happen in the data can be detected because it leaves a trace in the pattern. This helps to protect corruption and misuse.

African Countries governments are as well trying to figure out how they use this technology. Kenyan Government created blockchain taskforces that will study the benefits and challenges associated with blockchain technologies. Last May, IOHK, the company behind the Cardano blockchain, signed a partnership with the government of Ethiopia, to explore how blockchain technology could benefit the country.

In Australia, Civic Ledger, a civic-focused blockchain company, developed water Ledger, based on the public blockchain Ethereum, to the Australian Government. The blockchain-enabled platform provides a means to verify all water trades and update state registries in real time to prove that a water trade has happened, as well as showing the location of the trade.

We are seeing blockchain applications all over the world. Health Care, Advertising, Social Media, Music, Gaming, Real estate, Taxation, and Land management are some of the few Industries that we might soon be disrupted.

But this by no means there are no challenges. This includes regulatory and scalability issues. We are still far away from mass adoption but it is here, it is impacting and the future more exciting.

Here, I’ll be sharing insights and reflections as I navigate life and my entrepreneurship journey of building Shega : an information, data, and intelligence venture in Africa. From Technology shaping the future to Enterprising ideas that push the boundaries of innovation, I aim to explore the intersection of these fields with Human Nature, History, and Philosophy.

I’ll also dive into the intriguing world of Psychology, looking at how our minds influence the way we live and make decisions. With a focus on Better Living, I want to spark thought on improving our lives holistically : be it through personal growth, mindset, or societal change.

Additionally, Markets are a central thread, exploring how they function, evolve, and affect our lives, both from a business and a human perspective.

This space is where I’ll reflect, question, and share insights on everything in between.

Join me for the ride as we explore ideas, reflect on the journey, and grow together!

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