By Lucky Masilela
The past 12 months of the lockdown due to Covid-19 and the developments of the last 30 days are proof that the world has not, in the words of Winston Churchill, “let a good crisis go to waste”.
When disaster strikes it gives us an opportunity to make the most of the lessons from it.
In the past month three developments stood out regarding the way the world learned to accelerate the growth of e-commerce and - of specific relevance to our work at ZA Central Registry (ZACR) - the increase in the share of payments that were channelled via mobile money accounts.
The State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money released by the Global Systems for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) recently revealed that for the first time ever over $1 billion was sent and received in the form of remittances globally every month via mobile money.
Even though the economy took a beating, jobs were lost, and incomes generally dropped, this report proves that people in the diaspora -lots of them Africans working in Europe, the US and Asia - continue to support family and friends back home. Which is why the aggregate value of these transactions went up 65% to $12.7 billion in 2020.
Mobile money is one of the most effective and affordable methods of sending money. It is of special importance to Africa – where one could almost say it originated. For instance, in September 2020,
MTN Mobile Money reported an acceleration of users by 4 million to 42 million across 16 markets and the many partnerships.
The same trend was reported by Vodacom (and Safaricom) on its M-Pesa, which registered 8.8 percent more customers in its four international operations – apart from Kenya – to 15.6 million.
This GSMA report is another affirmation of the persistent calls for the cost of data to fall, because it is evident that mobile money and mobile telephony in general are drivers of most of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were set out as a blueprint towards achieving a better and more sustainable future for all people of the world.
By providing cheaper and more reliable mobile connectivity through cheaper data and faster Internet solutions, Africa can leapfrog some of the developed regions by reducing the inequality gap.
This is the reason ZACR commends most of the networks in South Africa for sustaining the downward trend of their data prices in line with the directives of the Competition Commission. Both Vodacom and MTN announced a further reduction in its data packages in the past two weeks.
After the two-year investigation into data services by the Competition Commission found that the prices charged by these two operators, with control of 70 percent of the country’s wireless broadband market, were steeper than in other African markets, the directive was for them to work out means to lower the cost.
MTN, as an example, reduced its prepaid data cost of its 10GB to R149 while Vodacom cut its corresponding prices from R99 to R85 for 1GB of data. Whether these cuts are sufficient falls outside of the realm of our work, but overall they are a good sign that South Africa might be beginning to heed the call to make Internet connectivity, especially mobile Internet, accessible to the majority of South Africans, which can only advance the quality of life across the board.
One day we will all look back and marvel at the extent to which a catastrophe like Covid-19 turned out to be the detonator of major life-altering advancements, starting with the drop in the cost of mobile telephony and its related services.
Lucky Masilela is the CEO of ZA Central Registry.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Star or Independent Media.
The Star