A Speech by Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola – Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave

Amole and Flutterwave Partnership launch event – opening remarks.

Good evening.

Thank you all for attending and giving up your time today. It is my pleasure to be here with you all, on behalf of Flutterwave, to celebrate the launch of our partnership with Amole and Dashen Bank.  

For us, Ethiopia represents enormous potential for both businesses and consumers, whether they are in the country, neighbouring regions, or indeed throughout the world. With a growing population of more than 112 million people, Ethiopia is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and Africa’s second-most populous nation, after Nigeria, which presents significant business growth and a source of untapped opportunities.

Remittance flows have become one of the largest sources of external finance to African countries after foreign direct investment and continue to attract increasing attention because of its rising volume and impact on the receiving countries. Yet, despite the ever-increasing attention on remittance as a potential development tool, sending money to Africa is more expensive than sending it to any other region in the world.

At Flutterwave, we strongly believe in regional integration and collaboration to achieve a shared goal of connecting the global market to Africa to enable greater market access for our merchants and businesses worldwide.

I am delighted that our agreement with Amole to facilitate money transfer into Ethiopia through its mobile platform will facilitate remittances for financial inclusion and ecommerce in  Ethiopia. 

As it currently stands, the remittance service in Ethiopia today is expensive, with manual paperwork and delays making it challenging and time-consuming for the diaspora. This partnership solves these problems by providing instant delivery of funds to the receiver at no fee, with more control of where and how to send money, including transparency from a regulatory standpoint.    

This is another significant milestone for Africa as we collaboratively work together to bridge the financial inclusion gap across the continent. Our partnership will also look to serve the Ethiopian economy by making diaspora remittances easier for over eight million members of the Ethiopian diaspora that remit more than USD 5 billion to Ethiopia every year.

Our collaboration will look to extend financial services to the unbanked communities which, according to the National Bank of Ethiopia, represent over 75% of Ethiopia’s population, as we expand business opportunities for SMEs in the country while providing access to secure and regulated channels for Ethiopian diasporas to send instant money transfers directly. This is our mission. 

I am delighted that we will be able to help boost financial inclusion within the country and also provide a valid source of foreign exchange in Ethiopia’s economy to strengthen the current payment landscape by offering new economic opportunities for Flutterwave merchants looking to transact and do business in Ethiopia and across Africa.  

When Flutterwave was founded in 2016, the payments landscape in Africa was highly fragmented so the goal was to build a pan-African platform that simplified payments for everyone, and we are very pleased that we are on track to achieve this and that we have an opportunity to do that with our partners. 

We believe that Africa needs more innovators and backers of innovation as they will fuel economic growth and prosperity and encourage the future generation of entrepreneurs to come forward with their ideas. 

As we look to the future, our focus remains the same which is to create endless possibilities for our growing customer base across Africa. We look forward to increasing our investments across the continent and deepening the impact our platform has on lives and livelihoods as we take more businesses in Africa to the world, and at the same time continue to bring more of the world to Africa.

Thank you