Kabirou Mbodje

Kabirou Mbodje was born in Lyon with a dual French-Senegalese citizenship. He holds a degree in Telecom Engineering from France and an MBA from the United States. He returned to Senegal in the 1990’s to launch an entrepreneurial venture and focus on new technologies. In 2003, he created NetPay (which later became CallMoney), a payment solution based on mobile subscription. Building on this experience, he launched Wari in 2008, a unique digital platform at the heart of the ‘uberisation’ of African economies and the continent’s financial inclusion. Payments of all sorts, buying airtime, transferring pensions, scholarships or wages…, Wari’s solutions address all the daily needs of most customers and at a lower cost. Wari counts 212 million users and manages 1 million transactions per day (i.e. more than 6 billion dollars of annual flow), through 500,000 points of sale and 152 partnering banks in more than 60 countries. Kabirou Mbodje said “Africa will create tomorrow’s economic and digital model. The continent can count on its economic vitality, its capacity to develop new services and the potential for organizational initiatives. Actually, Africa is leaping over all intermediary steps: we have seen it in the telecoms sector and we are now living it in the digital sector.” Mr Kabirou Mbodje is also a member of the United States Chamber of Commerce.