According to media reports, the company that recently pivoted from local to international money transfers currently has more than 250,000 users in the UK remitting money to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana.

NALA which was founded in 2019 after the startup secured a seven-figure pre-seed led by Acel was started to reduce the bottlenecks associated with cash transfers. According to the organization, 80% of the money sent to Africa is sent as physical cash with the remaining 20% done via digital channels but are subject to multiple layers of fees and paperwork. The platform was created to allow anyone to quickly send money in GBP or USD to all major African currencies at the lowest rates available.

While it was initially built as a mobile money service in East Africa, NALA started testing international money transfers in 2021 after some users expressed interest in moving money from the U.K. to East African countries (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), thus ushering the Tanzanian fintech into the remittance business.

With Africa being the most expensive region to send money to, with 10.6% in average transaction fees, digital senders like NALA pitch themselves to customers as platforms with the best rates and lowest prices.

Other players in the space facilitating transfer from the U.K. to select African countries include unicorn Chipper Cash, Lemonade Finance, Zazuu and Sendwave. Their collective bet is that their market will grow over time and eat into traditional incumbents’ share. Whether that’ll happen remains to be seen.

That said, NALA has achieved considerable growth since testing out the product last year. The platform allows payments from the U.K. to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana. And in the past six months, more than 8,000 customers have moved over eight figures in transaction volume to Africa, the company said.

“Our core customer base is the diaspora right now who live in the U.K. This is the customer we’re currently serving today as we speak,” founder and CEO Benjamin Fernandes told TechCrunch in an interview. “We also got our license approvals to go live in the U.S. and the E.U., which will be going live in a month and a half in at least one other E.U. country, probably France.”

The chief executive also said NALA, currently present in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana and South Africa, plans to be live in 12 African countries by the end of the year, including Nigeria.

Remittance is NALA’s low-hanging fruit. According to Fernandes, NALA has more offerings in its pipeline that can be likened to Revolut’s when it first launched in the U.K. The European fintech unicorn, now a financial super app of some sorts, started off providing multi-currency bank accounts, fee-free currency exchange, peer-to-peer payments and a feature for businesses.

Similarly, NALA, in addition to enabling cross-border payments from the U.K. (and the U.S. and the E.U.) to Africa, is privately beta testing multi-currency accounts that will allow the African diaspora to store local African currencies when abroad. It is also currently piloting NALA for Businesses enabling people who run businesses in the diaspora to make payments to Africa.

Away from Revolut’s playbook, Fernandes says the Tanzanian fintech will be building out infrastructure to enable money transfers from Africa to the U.S. and the U.K.

“We’re scaling that up, not just being in Tanzania and Kenya and Uganda as a consumer-facing product. But in the long run, we want to build infrastructure across the continent where we can do outbound from the continent and allow people to send money back. We’ve submitted our remittance license application in Kenya, as well as Uganda, for us to be able to do this the other way around,” said the founder.

The company has hired Subuola Abraham, ex-Citi U.K. MLRO and former group chief compliance officer at pan-African bank Guaranty Trust Bank, to lead its compliance efforts. It also struck a deal with Citi Bank Global to manage their F.X. and fast-track growth across multiple regions, one of the few African tech companies with this deal.

As part of its user acquisition and retention efforts, NALA will be launching a crowdfunding campaign this year where its first users will get access to own some shares in the company, said Fernandes. It’s a move similar companies facilitating money transfer in Africa, such as Eversend, have made in recent years.

NALA’s executive team includes Nicolas Esteves (CTO) and Nicolai Eddy (COO), who have experience at Monzo, Osper and Morningstar.

This new financing round includes lead investor Amplo, Accel and Bessemer Partners, including local investors like DFS Lab.

NALA also received funds from an impressive group of angel investors — Jonas Templestein, co-founder and CTO of Monzo; Vladimir Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO; Deel founder Alex Bouaziz; Laura Spiekerman, co-founder of Alloy; Peeyush Ranjan, the head of Google Payments and early employees at Revolut and TransferWise.

Sheel Tyle, the founder and general partner at Amplo, will join NALA’s board, the company said in a statement.

The investment will allow NALA to hire more talent and foster growth efforts in the U.K., U.S. and Europe, build payment rails in Africa and expand to new countries.

“We don’t want to be compared to a regular remittance company, and people will do that naturally. But we think remittance is just the starting point for what we’re going to build,” said Fernandes. “My take is that payments across the continent is 1% built, and there’s a lot of infrastructure and software that needs to be built deeply. That’s where we want to sit and this $10 million round is going to do a lot of that.”

Parts of this article were adapted from TechCrunch.

The post Tanzanian Startup NALA Acquires $10 Million Funding to Expand International Remittance Across Africa appeared first on Biz Post Daily.

On my recent trip to Johannesburg, South Africa I found out that impact of music in our struggles is sort of similar from the Harlem streets in New York to Soweto in South Africa.

With two colleagues from Tanzania, we had arranged for a little trip to Soweto during our free time on the sidelines of the Power Reporting Conference at Wits University. We met a Zimbabwean taxi guy who had offered to be our tour guide around Soweto for only R500.

Ignatius has been living in South Africa since the late 70s. He first lived in Soweto with his relatives before moving closer to Johannesburg when he got a job in Sandton – one of the Suburbs around Johannesburg.

When I got into the taxi the first thing I heard was a very familiar sound – music from D. O Misiani and Shirati Jazz Band was oozing off his stereo.

The late D.O Misiani was a musician from Shirati area of Tanzania but lived in Kenya and sang songs in Luo – one of the languages widely spoken in Western Kenya.

Most of his music had political connotations which made him very popular among Luo politicians and their followers. On this day “kisero pek chalo kidi” is what our friend was playing.

Ignatius tells us that he has a lot of East African music in his car and as we drive to and from Soweto we confirm as he shuffles from one popular East African artist to another.

Why East African music?

“During the struggle for liberalization of Zimbabwe, many of the guerilla fighters escaped to East Africa for training,” he explains.

“When they came back they brought with them a lot of records from East Africa and played them in the village to entertain themselves when they were not in the bush,” he adds.

Ignatius was born in 1966 but he had older brothers who were liberation fighters and he says they left him a lot of music each time they came to the village.

The music reminds them of their struggles because the colonial government had banned Zimbabwean music from the likes of Oliver Mutukudzi. To them the fact that East Africans could play their own music was motivation of some sort to continue with their struggle for independence.

Today he has collected more music than was handed over to him from his travels to Nairobi with the International Redcross Society where he at times volunteers. As we drive through the streets and music flips from one East African hit to another, Ignatius is on a journey of his own – a journey back in history to the days of Colonial Africa.

This journey has more meaning especially today as we drive to and from Soweto where the present day Johannesburg was born – from the struggles of black men and women who came here to work in the mines and industries in town and the rise of the liberation movement immortalized by Nelson Mandela who today we are visiting the house he lived in at 8115, Vilakzi Street, West Orlando in Soweto.

Music though did not just have this impact in Southern Africa. In Kenya for instance where most of the music Ignatius is playing on our little journey comes from, music played a key role in the second liberation of Kenya from President Moi’s dictatorship.

Unbowogable (a corrupted Luo word which is loosely translated as fearless) by Gidi Gidi Maji Maji united Kenyans around the idea that it was not impossible to dethrone Moi and his KANU government. Moi and by extension KANU had been in power for 24 years and the defeat of Uhuru Kenyatta who was then a KANU candidate was sort of a liberation for Kenya after years of institutionalized corruption and pillage of public resources.

Today across the border in Uganda, the country is in an election mode. Popular musician Jose Chameleon has just released a song Beene also known as Kabaka in which he openly praises President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni is one of the longest serving African Presidents having been in power for over 21 years.

In the song Chameleone is seen performing at events attended by Museveni and socializing with the first family.

The liberation movement led by Dr. Kiza Besigye is strife in Uganda but his supporters are not happy that the top musicians are not supporting their movement.

“Your talent becomes worthy the day the public invests it’s trust in you. The moment you abuse that public trust you will regret having discovered it (your talent) and revealed it to them,” says Shawn Mubiru, a politics activists from Uganda in a Facebook post.

Juliana Kanyomozi, another big musician from Uganda has also been criticized for her support for Museveni. Her critics hit hard at a time in which she was contesting in the #CokeStudioAfrica music competition sponsored by Coca-Cola by threatening to vote for her competition.

So bad is the backlash that it could stop Ugandans from voting for her in #CokeStudioAfrica. When she asked people to vote for her, this was the response from some of her followers.

“….tukoye..u even sang like an idiot in the tubonge song..tomanyi nakuyimba.. let sevo vote u,” read a comment from one Gifted John.

“Only a fool will vote for you Juliana Kanyomozi-for some you have smeared a bitter taste -as goof as your music -I wish all Ugandans boycott it,” said another.

“Sevo will vote for you.”

“I want to know the people you are competing with, I want to vote for them…,” 

“Ask m7 to vote you twesonyiwe,” said yet another one

“I wish there was a negative vote that will negate another positive vote. I would go for negative vote,. You dont acre about your country Uganda. I wonder why you sang “Oh Uganda…” song.”

Of course there were those who thought they are just expressing a democratic right.

 “Most of the comments on the issue of tubonga nawe show how we ugandans really think.So because JK is an artist that stops her from being a Ugandan with a right to support whoever she wants?Y’all need to take a chill pill and vote whoever you want on that day.If you dont want to vote for her Mash up still its ur right temutukooya.Wamma lets vote for the princess of Ugandan music,” says Lubega Michael.

“Guys this is not politics…. Those who wants to vote her vote….those who can not find plz..reserve yo votes to some one else… U can even give it to Besigye or Amama mbabazi…. She did not ask u to vote m7,” says Regina Mbabazi.

One thing is clear though, the role that music is playing in the political arena and the political stands musicians take cannot be overlooked.

The post Regional perspectives: Music and the liberation movement in Africa #ManAroundJoburg appeared first on Biz Post Daily.