BoICT’17: Cellulant Wins ‘Best Payment Platform Solutions Provider’ Award

Cellulant, Africa’s leading company in the payments & transfers category, has yet been crowned the “Best Payment Platform Solutions Provider of the Year’ at this year’s Beacon of Information and Communication Technology (BoICT) lecture/awards series held recently at Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos.

BoICT Lecture/Awards, an annual event organized by Nigeria CommunicationsWeek is notable as leading ICT event in the country.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Ken Nwogbo, Publisher and Editor In-Chief of Nigeria CommunicationsWeek described Cellulant as an outstanding “high-level technology company, that believes  in creating business opportunities for organizations and providing solutions to everyday payment challenges across Africa; hence Nigerians voted massively for them in the category. It is a sure testament to how Africa and Africans have embraced Cellulant’s innovations, particularly in the Agro-Tech space”.

As a Payment Platform Infrastructure Service Provider (PPISP) regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and insured by Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Cellulant provides the platform that powers the internet of payments with dominant market position across 12 Sub-Saharan countries – Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Malawi.  Cellulant’s payment infrastructure and ecosystem gives governments, donors, corporate businesses, merchants, retailers, agents and consumers access to payment instruments (cards, bank accounts, wallets & premium rated short-codes), stores of value (banks, mobile money accounts & prepaid cards/tokens), and payment channels (agents, apps, web portals & payment APIs for shopping cart checkout).

Speaking to journalists immediately after receiving the award, Faith Pella, head of Delivery at Cellulant Nigeria Limited, said, “We are grateful and feel so proud about ourselves when we were told we won; we felt so privileged because last year we won an award at FinTech Awards in South Africa as best Payment and transfer companies in the west Africa region And this again is coming,we feel so privileged that Nigerians recognized our efforts and services as a company and voted for us. It shows that hard work pays and we would continue to make payments happen for Nigerians every day,  everywhere and all the time.

“As our CEO, Mr. Bolaji Akinboro would say “’We develop solutions thatdelivers impactful results which are evident for the world to see.’. An exemple of how we are using technology to really impact on people life can be shown through one of our products, Agrikore. Agrikore helps farmers to have access to farm inputs and practices, markets and finance.this platform provides end to end management of Agribusiness activities in a way that bring transparency and control in the agricultural sector. Cellulant products, both Tingg and Agrikore are an evidence of how technology has revolutionalized and impacted our communities, the way we live, the way we connect, the way we do business

Following BoICT Award…
“Really, we are a very strategic and innovative organization All our solutions, business operationsare in-built and developedto meet people and organizations needs. With this award we hope to gain more coverage as more people are beginning to know us and appreciate what we have been doing. Through our program with the Federal Government of Nigeria, we have been able to provide fertilizer subsides to 458,498farmers within 60 days. The performance report of how our agrikore has helped support is available on our corporate blog.

Operating Outside Nigeria
“We did a programe in Liberia called Liberia Agriculture Transformation Agenda (LATA). LATA is program funded by the African development bank. Winning the call for proposal against other European companies and deploying the platform in Liberia was the a proof that Africans can take charge and come up with innovative solutions to solve their problems in a systematic and transparent way. The program in Liberia was a sounding success. The Government of Liberia was expecting us to register 75,000 farmers in 90 days, but our #makepossible team were able to register over 320,000 farmers in 75 days. This success has helped us to take our technologies beyond Africa borders with non African countries and companies that want to leverage on a technology birthed in Africa, in Nigeria to grow the business. When 12 years ago, the founders built Cellulant, their vision was to build a company by Africans to Africans. But with their boldness, wisdom and the right mix-up of the talented workforce, they have take the vision one step further. Now the vision is to build a company by Africans to the world” because Cellulant is unrelenting and will soon deploy similar solutions in countries like Togo, Malawi, Afghanistan…just to name these few. “Imagine a solution being developed in Africa by Africans, tested and nurtured in Africa, solving the needs of the African markets and beyond. We are very proud of our hardwork. We are proud to be global citizens, solving global challenges”

Driving Youths’ Attention To Agriculture
“This programme will definitely help the youths have a rethink about agriculture. We are rallying stakeholders with a believe that the moment to push forward is now. In the next few weeks we are going to launch the Agriculture e-Wallet platform– Agrikore the technology powering the transformation of Agriculture to the world. You might need to stay tuned up for that. (smile)

“What we are doing with our technology and the various solutions we provide is to connect people to what matters the most to them, whether it is in the agriculture sector, financial sector, retail sector or any other sector. We are really going to build and formalize an ecosystem for the benefit of all stakeholders in Agric sector regardless of the type of business in which you are, regardless of your gender or age, your location, and most importantly whether you have a phone or not,” she added.