Africa is the new Asia ..?

Africa is the next Asia …!!
Have heard this comments from multiple stakeholders in the Fintech ecosystem ( investors , Tech developers , Financial services players etc. ) in the last few months .
The key hypothesis is that Africa is still at a nascent stage in Fintech growth and there could be many learning # / knowledge transfer from Asia to Africa to accelerate the growth.
While on the surface this hypothesis looks reasonable to explore but having observed both markets for a while now i feel the two markets are fundamentally very different .

a.) Approach to business model – Even in Asia there is no Asian Fintech model in particular .China model ( Wechat / Alipay success model ) is very different from SE Asian model ( Super apps like Grab/ Go-jek etc ) or even indian model ( PayTM story ) . Even in SE Asia ..a Vietnam success model is very different from what worked in Indonesia / other countries. So looking at Africa from a single lens will be again a similar challenge . Each country has its dynamics and use cases may be very different . So the models need to be tweaked or totally revamped in many cases

b.) The market structure /dynamics – In APAC most countries are/ have been relatively stable wrt political / security and regulatory condition ( Disclaimer : Myanmar / Sri Lanka are eye openers and things could change in many Asian countries soon in the next couple of months / years) . But more importantly , from a Fintech regulatory approach/ perspective things have been still much stable/predictable in most Asian countries. While in many African countries the regulators are just at an early stage of understanding and framing the policies esp when it comes to areas like Lending/ Insurance etc.

c.) Use cases / Profitability – Even though the African model is nascent from a penetration perspective,arguably the African Fintech has been far better performing from a Profitability perspective in countries it has imploded . So rather than replicating the successful ( Again ..definition of successful in many cases may be debatable but that’s a different point of analysis ) Asian models ..it may be better for players to approach it ground up ..and create unique models in specific African countries .

Definitely from a market opportunity perspective Africa is the next big potential to explore..and the next decade hopefully is African fintech story. But from a market structure / dynamics important for players to look at it given the local context .