Says award-winning fintech prodigy, Salton Massally
Salton Massally is a key determine in Sierra Leone’s fintech business. He created the nation’s first job board, Careers.sl, and based Mikashboks, a digital social finance platform that simplifies and secures group saving and lending. His efforts earned him the Queen’s Younger Chief Award and a congratulatory word from U.S. President Joe Biden. He shared his tech journey with Nneji Godwin Amako.
Salton Massally Are you able to share your background?
I grew up in Freetown, Sierra Leone, excelling academically and pushed by curiosity. I constructed a helicopter prototype at age 9 and later pursued aerospace engineering at Buffalo College, United States. When my father fell in poor health, I returned dwelling. I taught myself programming and created Sierra Leone’s first job board, Careers.sl. This led to creating payroll methods, together with one for Ebola employees, and ultimately founding Mikashboks that minimize throughout Africa.
How did you develop the payroll concept?
Through the Ebola outbreak, I noticed issues with the cash-based payroll system for frontline employees, resulting in strikes. The federal government requested my firm, iDT Labs, to discover a answer. Utilizing my expertise with large-scale monetary methods, I proposed a digital cost system with cell wallets. We constructed it in 14 days, utilizing open-source software program like Odoo, Kannel, and Dedupe, and used OpenCV for facial recognition. Our answer diminished cost time from over a month to per week, stopping strikes and saving about US$10.7 million over 13 months.
What impressed you to create Mikashboks, an SMS-based financial savings scheme?
Mikashboks was impressed by my expertise creating the nationwide Ebola Response Staff Fee System, displaying how know-how may rework monetary processes. Personally, my mom’s struggles with communal Osusu financial savings circles highlighted a niche the place accountable contributors lacked entry to formal monetary instruments. Mikashboks bridges this hole by digitizing communal financing circles like Osusus, making financial savings extra handy and safe. The app builds verifiable monetary identities and connects customers to mainstream banking instruments, enabling monetary inclusion.
Inform us about a few of your awards and the way they’ve motivated you?
I used to be honoured to obtain the Queen’s Younger Chief Award in 2017 and to be among the many finalists for the 2022 Harvard Presidential Awards, for which I acquired a congratulatory word from President Joe Biden. These accolades affirm that our efforts are heading in the right direction and show the potential for enhancing monetary inclusion by means of know-how.
What key classes guided your journey from school dropout to profitable entrepreneur?
A number of key classes powered my journey. Dropping out of faculty revealed alternatives to uplift communities, displaying that perceived failures can open new doorways. Transitioning from engineering to coding taught me to evolve constantly. My improvements prioritize actual impression over recognition, impressed by my mom’s struggles with monetary entry. Mentors, companions, and groups have been essential in remodeling visions into sustainable ventures.
How do you see the way forward for fintech in Africa?
The way forward for African fintech is brilliant, with fast technological developments addressing persistent monetary entry obstacles. Improvements have to be hyper-localized, contemplating infrastructure limitations and person nuances. Supportive insurance policies and regulatory frameworks are essential for attracting funding and defending shoppers. Creating world-class expertise in person expertise, information science, engineering, and product improvement is crucial. Collaboration amongst regulators, conventional finance, and startups is critical to handle foundational gaps like digital IDs, credit standing methods, and interoperability.
How can know-how proceed to handle humanitarian crises in Africa, prefer it did in the course of the Ebola outbreak?
Whereas know-how is modernizing humanitarian support, gaps stay in adaptive methods that study from communities. Digital interventions are sometimes one-off efforts, discarded when headlines fade. Throughout COVID-19, governments scrambled to offer social help from scratch. I revamped my Ebola payroll system into openG2P, an open-source financial resilience spine for crises and routine use. Its modular infrastructure continues to guard marginalized communities throughout local weather disasters and conflicts.
What challenges did you face whereas creating and implementing Mikashboks, and the way did you overcome them?
A standout success story for Mikashboks is from a rural neighborhood in Portloko, Sierra Leone. We met a Village Financial savings and Lending group that used Mikashboks to digitize their financial savings operations. Beforehand, their financial savings have been recorded manually by the one literate member. With Mikashboks, they discovered it simpler to belief the easy textual content message confirmations, which made the method clear and reliable. This success mirrors our impression in Africa, the place 20,000 customers handle financial savings teams.
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What are your future targets for Mikashboks and your function in Sierra Leone’s fintech panorama?
Our objective is broader monetary inclusion for the 400 million counting on casual financing. We goal to evolve Mikashboks right into a full-stack social finance platform, integrating digital instruments with communal constructions to reshape entry. We envision a market for lending, asset financing, pensions, and insurance coverage tailor-made to money move patterns.
What message do you have got for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators throughout Africa?
Have a robust perception in your means to rework methods. Perceive that challenges are progress alternatives, not failures. Use native insights to handle real wants. Prioritize individuals over revenue. Encompass your self with supportive allies, and collectively we will drive social justice and innovation throughout the continent. We’re on the cusp of an African innovation revolution.
