Empowa and World Mobile Partnership
Empowa is excited to share its partnership with World Mobile, which seeks to combat the existing housing crisis and bridge the digital divide in Mozambique.
They have been working together on their first collaborative project in Beira, Mozambique, which they look forward to sharing with everyone very soon! However, to provide some context around the journey they are embarking on, this blog will be focused on sharing some details of the various foundational challenges and RealFi opportunities which currently exist in Mozambique.
Unrealized Potential
The World Bank describes Mozambique as a country endowed with ample arable land, water, energy, mineral resources and newly discovered natural gas offshore. The country has three, deep seaports; and a relatively large potential pool of labour.
Despite the above natural advantages, Mozambique remains one of the poorest and most climate impacted countries in the world.
A major contributor to this poverty is the systemic failures of the financial sector, which Empowa is addressing, and a lack of connectivity, a problem World Mobile is solving.
The Mozambique Housing Crisis
Mozambique’s population is currently 31 million, but there are only 600 mortgages in the country. The cheapest available house in the formal market costs $55 000.
Home loan finance is almost impossible to secure, with interest rates ranging between 20 – 30%. This means that home ownership is only affordable for the top 1% of the population. To make things worse, Mozambique is also badly affected by climate change with cyclones being a nearly annual occurrence. A recent example of this is Cyclone Idai which was one of the worst tropical cyclones on record to affect Africa. The long-lived storm caused catastrophic damage, and a humanitarian crisis in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, leaving more than 1,300 people dead, even more missing and many losing their homes in the disaster.
Through utilising new technologies and thinking, Empowa will enable their local building partner to build environmentally friendly, cyclone-resistant starter homes for $10 000. More than this they enable the life-changing, lease-to-own financing option, reducing the interest rate to under 10%. This provides access to the financially excluded and makes the houses affordable.
Through this approach and at this price point, market research indicates that Empowa could grow the market for such home loans to 4.5 million households. The impact of such an opportunity is almost impossible to quantify.
Connectivity in Mozambique
As of January 2021 internet penetration in Mozambique stood at 21.2%. This is after the number of internet users in the country increased by 1.4 million (+25%) between 2020 and 2021.
When one considers those who have access to mobile connectivity. The numbers aren’t much better with 34.2% of the population having 3G coverage.
Beyond connectivity concerns, the cost of data within Mozambique is prohibitive with one gigabyte of data in Mozambique costing on average 2.79 U.S. dollars in 2021. This ranks Mozambique in the top 100 most expensive countries for data.
World Mobile’s offering is geared toward solving the challenges around the last mile of connectivity. Mozambique with its large geographic area and a high percentage of people living in rural areas present the perfect opportunity for World Mobile’s solution to make a real-world impact.
RealFi Collaboration, with Real World Impact
Given such real-world challenges and unrealized potential, even in a country such as Mozambique. This seemed like the perfect place to partner with World Mobile to explore and implement RealFi solutions in Mozambique. Through implementing RealFi solutions in Mozambique. Empowa and World Mobile will prove that it can be done anywhere in Africa, and beyond!
About World Mobile
World Mobile is a blockchain based solution to empower a sharing economy for telecommunications infrastructure.
About Empowa
Empowa enables the building of affordable and greener houses in Africa, by offering property developers access to affordable funding.
By leveraging Cardano’s blockchain technology and the power of decentralised finance. They are able to overcome the systemic issues that have plagued the African property industry. Unlocking the economic opportunity for all parties.
SOURCE: EMPOWA BLOG
