Send Me Your Location (Rebooted)

Hey, Sheriff here 👋 

This edition of Tech Safari is a special one.

We’re teaming up with Alts — the world’s biggest alternative investing newsletter — to revisit one of our most popular stories: Africa’s address problem.

Alts is going deep on this in their latest feature — and later this year, they’re hosting an investor trip to Kenya to explore the opportunities firsthand.

But first, let’s talk about the billion-dollar problem hiding in plain sight.

In most parts of the world, a home address is an afterthought.

In Africa, it’s a privilege.

Today, 440 million Africans — about 1 in 3 people living on the continent — don’t have a formal address. 

No house number, no street name, no postal code. Just signposts and landmarks.

“Next to the blue kiosk after the mango tree” isn’t an address. 

But if you’re an average person in Africa, it’s the closest thing you’ve got.

And without an address, you’re locked out of a lot:

• You can’t get a bank loan.

• You can’t receive deliveries.

• You can’t register your land.

• And in an emergency, help might never find you.

It’s a mess that affects so many people, so it’s worth asking how we got here.

The short answer…

Africa’s Cities Are Exploding

Urbanization is at full speed in Africa, with more people moving out of towns and villages to cities in search of opportunity.

In villages, streets aren’t planned. So not having an address is understandable.

But Africa’s addressing problem isn’t only tied to rural areas.

It’s hitting its biggest cities too, because they’re growing faster than the city planners can make room.

Take Lagos.

Every day, 5,000 people move there. That’s over a million new residents each year.

Most of them settle in informal housing, without addresses or public services.

In Nairobi, 60% of the population lives in informal settlements. In Kinshasa, it’s the same story.

As cities grow faster than governments can keep up, more people fall off the map. 

And as they drop off the grid, billions in value drops off the country’s economy.

💸 So, who Pays the Price?

Everyone. But some more than others.

→ Real Estate

High land registration costs discourage development.

In Kenya, it can cost more to register land than to buy it.

Part of the reason is that most lands are unaddressed, so their ownership can’t be reliably tied to a person.

The result of this is a $1.4 trillion housing deficit across Africa.

→ Agriculture

Most farmers don’t own the land they plough. And even when they do, it’s hard for them to prove it because they’re often unregistered. 

This makes it risky for investors to back farmers, causing them to get by on subsistence methods and have low output.

→ E-commerce

Delivery costs are 30 - 50% higher than the global average. 

Good luck getting next-day delivery in “Zone 3 behind the tall fence.”

→ Financial Services

Fintechs are bleeding cash trying to comply with KYC regulations.

In 2024 alone, Nigerian fintechs spent $1 million just to verify customer addresses.

But here’s the wild part: the very people fintechs want to serve — low-income, unbanked Africans — are also the ones least likely to have a verifiable address.

So every compliance roadblock means someone gets locked out of a loan, a savings account, or a shot at financial inclusion.

💡 The Business of Finding People

Where there’s pain, there’s opportunity.

And Africa’s lack of addresses has triggered a startup gold rush.

A few players leading the charge:

• OkHi → Assigns GPS coordinates, photos, and written directions to a person’s name and phone number.

• MPost → Converts phone numbers into postal addresses in Rwanda.

• YouVerify & Regfyl → Offer plug-and-play KYC tools for fintechs.

• What3Words → Breaks the world up into 3x3 meter squares, each with a unique three-word address.

These aren’t just neat apps — they’re infrastructure.
And they’re already unlocking access to healthcare, banking, and logistics for millions.

Imagine:

• mPharma verifying customers to deliver affordable medicine

• Twiga Foods reducing delivery costs for fresh produce

• Kuda Bank onboarding new users without burning cash

It’s beyond just KYC. It’s a key to unlocking Africa’s economy. 

And the biggest door to unlock?

🌍 A $29 Trillion Market in Plain Sight

Africa is building the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area), a $29 trillion free trade zone uniting 54 countries.

If it works, it could be the most powerful economic engine in the world – letting Africans trade with each other without border taxes.

But there’s a catch.

Trade is built on logistics. And without addresses, it’s hard to do logistics.

If Africa’s address problem sticks as the free trade area launches, we’re just scaling inefficiency across the continent.

The good news? With AI, smartphone penetration, and better data, scalable solutions are finally within reach.

Addressing homes would take years and billions in investments.

But with startups like OkHi and YouVerify, we can leapfrog old address systems and build new ones from scratch.

One that fits the reality of being on the ground in Africa.

The only thing missing is the coordination and capital for these companies to do it across the continent.

Curious to know how those two things can be worked out?

Come see for yourself

We’ve teamed up with Alts, the world’s biggest alternative investment newsletter, to dive deeper into this problem and the opportunities in there.

If you want a deeper dive into Africa’s address problem, you can read the full piece on Alts here.

But before you go, tell us – what do you think about Africa’s address problem?

Let us know here.

That’s it for this week. See you on Sunday for a breakdown on This Week in African Tech.

Cheers,

The Tech Safari Team

PS. refer five readers and you’ll get access to our private community. 👇🏾

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