HiPipo Money

In commemoration of the 2025 International Women’s Day, HiPipo has held a Digital and Financial Literacy workshop for women cross-border traders at the Elegu-Nimule one-stop border post, which connects Uganda and South Sudan.

Working in collaboration with MTN MoMo and MOVIT Products, the HiPipo team on Thursday 6^th March trained over 200 traders from the Elegu Women Cross-Border Traders Co-op Society on a number of financial inclusion aspects including savings, loans, personal finance and digital financial services. This training was hosted at Elegu Women Cross-Border Traders Co-op Society Warehouse and Grounds.

The HiPipo FinTech Events Manager, Charlotte Neeza, noted that this gesture is geared at empowering women traders with knowledge and skills that can catapult them from informal into formal business owners.

“This is part of our Include Everyone program which strives to level the ground for last-mile people. The focus on women cross-border traders at Elegu is strategic because both sides of the border have a history of political instability and it has been women that have kept the economy in this place going,” she said.

“Elegu has hundreds of Women Cross Border Traders. We want these traders to have the basic knowledge in book keeping, saving and personal financial management. They need to know when, where, how and why they should take loans. They need to know the safe and efficient Financial Technology solutions available for them. They need to be included and actively involved in the Digital Financial Services ecosystem.”

The Elegu border post is a growing trade hub between Uganda and Africa’s youngest nation – South Sudan. Being the main gateway into South Sudan from the port of Mombasa, this post is of strategic importance to the East African Community. All manner of merchandise right from food products to manufactured goods enter South Sudan through this post. Majority of the Women Cross Border Traders at Elegu deal in Food items such as Silver Fish, Vegetables, and Grains.

However, smaller cross-border traders, predominantly women, at this post are faced by a number of challenges including illiteracy, lack of tailored digital financial solution, lack of proper documentation, foreign exchange challenges, limited capital, and network challenges among others.

“I would like to thank HiPipo for this training as we celebrate International Women’s Day and Month. Our traders need a lot of capacity building especially in digital financial services. This is a good start point but more of such trainings are needed. I also thank MTN and MOVIT for joining us today,” noted Margaret Auma, the Chairperson of the Elegu Women Cross-Border Traders Co-op Society.

The area officer in charge of Elegu Police Station re-emphasised the need for women traders to obtain proper documentation and avoid dealing in contraband which may put them on the wrong side of the law.

On the other hand, the Amuru district commercial officer Albert Lada applauded HiPipo for the training in financial literacy, noting that while women traders contribute a lot in the micro-economics of the country, many struggle to break-even because of their bookkeeping frailties.

Women’s Day comes early.

The event was also attended by officials from MTN Uganda who showcased MTN MoMo’s digital financial services catalogue and specifically trained traders about cross-border transactions, savings and loans products. They also offered services like on-site SIM Card registration, in addition to giving participants free items such as Umbrellas, Shirts, and Caps.

MOVIT Products crowned the workshop as it rewarded all participants with gifts that included Soap, Vaseline, Body Lotions and Hand Sanitizers, among others.

Indeed, International Women’s Day came early for the Elegu Women Cross Border Traders.

Since time immemorial, many people have been investing in tangible assets mainly, land, houses, automotives, and animals. But with technology, investment options have expanded with Treasury Bills, Bonds, Equity and Shares among others added to a list of areas of investment.

Among the companies that are providing technology supported investment in Uganda is XENO.

“We are a licensed Fund Manager that is helping over 120,000 individuals, groups and institutions to plan, save and invest for future expenses. We are using technology to help anyone who has a future goal to start saving from as low as UGX 10,000. We have a mobile APP, available on web and available on the MTN MoMo USSD,” said Arthur Nakkaka, a Product Manager XENO Uganda.

He added: “We are at the intersection of Fund Management and Technology. As a Fund Manager, we are a run four regulated funds. Bond Fund, Money Market Fund and Two Equity Funds. On the other side, we are a technology company that is using technology to offer a service that was once only available to a niche audience. We are distributing this service at scale to anyone who is able to save.”

He noted that XENO supports its customers to come up with a saving plan, design a portfolio and execute it, with continuous tracking through a mobile APP and guidance.

“For any saver, we need to understand why they are saving. There are very many modes of investment but the one we believe is the most effective is the goal-based investment. We always ask our clients what goal they want to achieve, we then ask them, the period they want to achieve this. After aligning on this, a customer goes on the XENO APP or the MTN MoMo USSD and get started. We also need to understand your attitude towards risk as this will determine where we will invest your money. So, what you save per day or month plus the returns you get from the investment is what will enable you achieve your goal,” he said.

He highlighted that they welcome customers as individuals, partners, and groups which can be formal or informal groups. The other customers they serve are institutional customers. He revealed that the most popular goals on the XENO platform are building wealth, education, building a home, retirement and income drawdown.

In Uganda, XENO Investment Management Limited is licensed and regulated as a Fund Manager by Uganda’s Capital Markets Authority and by the Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority.

XENO has featured on Day 37 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Interaction between AgriTech and FinTech is key to ensuring that Farmers can benefit more from Agriculture. Well as AgriTech focuses mainly on introducing technology in to agriculture, integration with FinTech (financial technology) moves this a notch higher as it doesn’t only make farmers adopt technology for farming but also ensures that they are able to transact – make and receive payments from the comfort of their farms.

It is this interaction that Hamwe East Africa is spearheading. Started as an AgriTech in 2013, Hamwe has over the years transformed into an AgriTech – FinTech; all for the benefit of farmers.

“We work with underserved farmers in off the grid areas of Uganda and East Africa. Well as everybody else tried to work with Farmers in peri-urban areas and central region, for us, we decided to go to areas were farmers lack services such as internet access. These are the actual smallholder farmers that need support,” Stella N. Lugalambi, a co-founder and managing director of Hamwe East Africa noted.

She added: “We build a farmer management system that enables farmers get a farming system, digital identity and economic identity. We are giving smallholder farmers an identity that allows them to access finance because they will have a system with credible data to prove that they actually earn and can afford to manage this finance.”

Hamwe is active in Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi with plans to expand to the rest of East Africa in the near future.

“To date, we have over 400,000 farmers in Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. We are planning to go to Kenya and Tanzania and grow our numbers to one million farmers by 2025. The beginning was a bit difficult but now we onboard more farmers easily because we know what to do. Even farmers are also adapting easily.”

Lugalambi noted that they offer a complete agriculture support service. Hamwe East Africa’s bundled services to the over 400,000 farmers include farmers’ profiling, assessing farmers’ needs, identifying off takers, connecting farmers to inputs suppliers and ready markets, agronomy services, crop insurance, payments and access to credit.

“Majority of our members come from cooperatives. Our work is coordinated by digital community entrepreneurs that support between 100 to 300 farmers. The digital community entrepreneurs (DCE) talk to farmers at the last mile because we get them from the same community where the farmers come from so they can easily engage and support them. The DCEs report to Territory Executives at the district level,” she said. 

She revealed that in order to further support farmers, they added FinTech solutions to the platform which are enabling farmers to easily transact.

“To ensure that our farmers are served well, we signed up with mobile network operators – MTN and Airtel for a payment gateway. We are directly connected with the mobile money operators so our farmers get their payments directly to their phones. We have also signed up with banks and Flexipay. These payment alternatives ensure that our farmers don’t have to be embarrassed walking long distances to banks to access their money.”

She nonetheless called upon the government, telecom operators and development partners to invest more in network upgrade and data connectivity as this will enable more farmers benefit more from these services.

On their part, she noted that Hamwe has partnered with Mastercard Inc to deliver a community pass – an electronic card that stores farmers’ information.

“We have just rolled out this card and it is so far being used by about 20,000 farmers. This is our newest innovation. It is accessible offline. We plan to upgrade it to even support payments in the future,” she concluded. 

Hamwe has featured on Day 36 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gone are the days when people struggled to send and receive money. The days when people had to queued up in long lines, armed with all manners of identification documents just to transact.

Digital Financial Services have reduced most of these inconveniences as people are now able to send and receive money on their phones, in the comfort of their homes, offices or wherever the transaction finds them.

Among the platforms that are facilitating seamless transactions and payments is MoneySent; a financial technology company that focuses on supporting transactions.

“We leverage on technology to enable people send and receive money anywhere around the world. We also enable people make payments, digitize savings groups, support fundraising and are also in to real estate. MoneySent is accessible as a mobile Application. After downloading it, you register and submit your KYC after which you are able to transact. Before an account is verified, you can receive money but cannot withdraw it,” James Mukasa, Founder and CEO of MoneySent.

He added: “We have integrated our system with different payment gateways, so someone can deposit money on to MoneySent through mobile money, bank transfers and through our agents spread across the country. When someone sends you money, you can receive it directly through the Money Sent account if you have our account. If you don’t have our account, it can be sent directly from MoneySent to mobile money. You can also withdraw through a bank account or our agents.”

According to James Mukasa, Money Sent currently has close to 1000 agents spread across the country and has served more than 10,000 customers in the past 3 years. He nonetheless notes that their reach and impact would be even higher hadn’t been for cash constraints that have limited their service rollout.

In addition to facilitating transactions, Mukasa noted that MoneySent also supports payments including Water and Electricity bills, Pay TV, and Tax payments among others.

He revealed that as a start-up in the FinTech space; unfair regulations, high charges and cyber security threats are their biggest challenges. He noted that for now, MoneySent is still working under the Bank of Uganda sandbox but continues to work towards securing its license.

MoneySent has featured on Day 35 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s #IncludeEveryone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, #WomeninFinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; #LevelOneProject, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.