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What advice do you have for someone considering building a fintech or launching in Africa?

StartupsE-commerce

Drawn from Lutz Finger's Forbes column, LinkedIn writing, and Cornell teaching. Sources are cited inline so you can read the originals.

Hard lessons from exploring Africa and fintech opportunities

For Africa, most successful businesses are traditional, non-tech businesses like furniture or services. Building something successful requires being hands-on, spending 10 years in the country, and building local relationships. It’s really a lifestyle question. For fintech, the space has been extremely hot over the last four or five years. I think you either need to go very close to the rails, like payment rails and banking APIs, or do something very verticalized like payments for healthcare in Europe connecting insurance refunds. Otherwise it’s super difficult to create something that works in fintech.

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