Murray Gardiner is director of Bluecode Africa.

Over the past decade, economic growth in the SADC region has been more sluggish than leaders have hoped for. In 2018, the region set a GDP growth target of 7%, but only achieved 3.1%. Given the region’s high youth unemployment rate, the need for the kind of growth that creates wealth and jobs is an urgent one. The SADC countries’ greatest asset are their people. So where can we make the biggest difference, quickly?

The solution could be in our hands – quite literally. The mobile phones that so many SADC region citizens use to connect with friends and family and to keep up with what’s happening in the world, could also be a tool to increase participation in the formal money economy. A region wide mobile payments scheme with pan-African and international interoperability owned and managed by local and regional financial institutions could be a game changer. The Bluecode platform offers just that.