Africa is one of those continents that I still haven’t visited. I hope the time comes soon that I can. I would love to travel by bus and train from South Africa to Kenya, for example. Furthermore, I wanted to go last year, but it didn’t happen. Too many unfortunate events kept me from going. But I would love to visit soon.
But how come Africa is on my horizon? Well, it started a year and a half ago with a new project that I was helping to build. For that financial website, we needed new authors, and we found them in Africa, in Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya. From one thing came another, and I delved into the world of sub-sahara Africa. One of the topics that I started getting into was money transfers.
I still remember very well the old days of international payments and money transfers. Sending money abroad used to be cumbersome, slow, and expensive. How different that is from today. It is generally fast, cheap, and reliable.
The authors and editors need to be sent money for the work they do. What really struck me is that sending money to Africa, in this case Kenya, is simply faster than sending money between my bank accounts. Within 10 minutes, the money arrives. Sending the money doesn’t even cost much, often only €3 to send, around €200. That’s the same as a price of a coffee here.
And even then, it can be faster and cheaper, so we discovered. For example, if people use the same digital wallet. It doesn’t even matter which currency you use, whether it’s Euros, Shilling, Dollars or new cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. You receive it at once, and you send it from anywhere. For this reason, I took the initiative to start a new Africa money transfer website.
So, who knows how much longer it will take for me to visit Africa. Hopefully, in the new year.
