Digital Frontier Institute (DFI), in partnership with Emergence Growth, is embarking on a talent research assignment that is aimed at giving the fintech industry in Africa a better understanding of fintech talent outside of Silicon Valley.
According to the Rob Johnston, general manager: reward at Emergence Growth, it was discovered through research that not much data is available with regards to fintech talent. "It is a talent pool that is emergent and dynamic yet, not well understood. Pressure is immense, skills are scarce and the way talent is managed and developed is rapidly changing. Africa has taken a lead role in initiatives such as M-Pesa and in other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Smaller organisations such as Zoona and Makuru are playing huge roles in making inroads with cross-border remittances. The banks and payment companies have responded by setting up labs and accelerators in cities like Nigeria, Accra, Niarobi, Cape Town and Johannesburg. All of these organisations are powered by hugely talented individuals - local talent!"
The research aims to gain an understanding of the fintech talent landscape in 10 Anglo-phone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South-Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). It also aims to gain an understanding of fintech talent across different organisational maturity levels, and in a cross-sector of financial services, mobile network operators, development organisations as well as social enterprises.
"DFI prioritised the Anglo-African countries where most of their course participants currently come from. If the research is a success, we will be able to replicate the exercise for Francophone Africa. It is the intention to systematically map talent trends for the fintech industry across a large territory," explained Susan Fouch'e, head of human capital development at DFI.
Speaking on the talent shortage in the fintech sector, independent learning specialist and director of the Institute of IT Professionals SA, Moira de Roche says the skills shortage is similar to the much-touted skills shortage in IT. "The reality is that the shortages are in the middle of the career ladder (seven to 10 years in), not at entry-level. I think there is probably a lack of general understanding of this sector, where financial services knowledge must be coupled with IT skills.
"There are few companies playing in this space in South Africa, and of those that are, many partner with the big auditing and consulting firms - not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe makes it difficult to break into. It is interesting to note that of the top 10 companies in the space globally, five are from China - so it is not necessarily dominated by bigger countries."
De Roche recommends that tech start-ups should be encouraged to consider this space, rather than sticking to software and app development which seems to be most common, and hence over-traded as a solution.
"Perhaps more tertiary courses geared towards this sector would help (a B degree with majors in tech and financial business). Training and education for the job roles mentioned above could have more of a focus on the fintech sector, but opportunities must be evident," she adds.
In 2015, Barclays Africa opened the Digital Academy in downtown Johannesburg last year, aiming to train young developers in SA as part of a skills development internship programme which that will run for 12 months. Standard Bank launched two incubators in April 2015, with the aim to educate, create, empower and develop entrepreneurs. Nedbank, in 2013, opened its Innovation Lab to allow employees to experiment with new technologies while First National Bank last year also put together a number of think tanks to support budding entrepreneurs and merge IT and business to foment its fintech initiative.
The research initiative will be under the guidance and leadership of Johnston and Fouch'e, and will the data gathering will take place throughout March and early April 2017. "Results will be shared during the latter part of April," confirmed Fouch'e.
Share