Mthunzi
Money, markets and the machinery of African fintech — from someone who builds it.
Issue No. 4116 September 2026Written by Mthunzi Sabali
Mobile Money

The float is the product

I spent four years building on Kenya's mobile-money rails before I understood what I was actually building on: not a payments company, but something much closer to a narrow bank.

12 Sep 2026 · 11 min read
03692014201820222025KES 9.8trnAnnual value transacted, KES trn
Takeaway. Value transacted quadrupled in a decade while agent numbers barely doubled — the network got denser, not wider. Indicative figures — swap for sourced CBK series.
Crypto

Stablecoins are a treasury tool before they are a payment rail

The importers I know moving dollars on-chain are not avoiding banks. They are avoiding the queue for them.

4 Sep 2026 · 6 min
Economies

Malawi's kwacha problem is a logistics problem

Devaluation takes the headlines. The binding constraint is how long a tonne of fertiliser sits at Beira.

28 Aug 2026 · 9 min
Selected work
Cross-border settlement ledger

KES ↔ MWK settlement, T+2 to same-day. Experimental pilot.

Case study →
The Friday note

One chart and one argument about African money, most Fridays. No link roundups.

Mthunzi
mthunzi.xyz
Colophon. Set in Fraunces and Source Serif 4, with Inter for labels. Charts drawn by hand in SVG. Written and built by Mthunzi Sabali.