Innocent Kawooya
Early this month, Ugandan fintech giants HiPipo entered a partnership with the Tanzanian government to offer technical support and direction in executing financial inclusion programmes under HiPipo’s Include Everyone initiative and the Level One project.
In this arrangement, supported by the Gates Foundation, the HiPipo Team will conduct activities aimed at promoting financial inclusion through fintech innovations; promoting instant, inclusive payment systems; empowerment for Women in FinTech and fostering ICT investment, among others.
Geofrey Serugo had a sit-down interview with INNOCENT KAWOOYA, the CEO of HiPipo, to understand the journey to this achievement.
When I arrive at the HiPipo offices on Kanjokya house in Kamwokya, the ambiance within depicts that you have indeed arrived in a futuristic environment. There is no receptionist to welcome you or a personal assistant to direct you. It is a free world. Everyone is on their computer or phone, busy finishing a task.
Kawooya, the CEO of the company recently named among the world’s top 20 companies accelerating innovation in digital financial services by The Global Business Leaders Magazine, welcomes me in person.
“Welcome to our world,” he says with a wide smile.
It is hard to convince someone that the TIG Network Afrika named Kawooya the CEO of the Year 2021-2022 or that he has been the co-chair of the International Open-Source Foundation Mojaloop Community Council for three years (2020-2023); Or that HiPipo is the reigning Best Financial Inclusion Organisation – East Africa according to Wealth & Finance International.
His humility is packaged in the fact that he doesn’t have his own office. He leads me to an office that also doubles as a studio, which he shares with his team including the company’s production crew.
“We are family. We are happy. We work together, we eat together,” Kawooya says, as he grabs a piece of chicken picked from a bucket he ordered online for his entire team a few moments before this interview.
Dressed in black jeans and a dark-blue polo T-shirt emblazoned with ‘Made of God’, Kawooya cuts a simple but futuristic figure.
“I am made of God,” he declares with a determined demeanor.
At age 35, Kawooya is one of the exclusive set of young Ugandans who are achieving beyond their age. And he attributes this to God’s mercy, given the bumpy ride he has had for the past 18 years.
SHAKY BEGINNINGS
For 18 years, he has deliberately built an organization on diversified fronts ready to compete and serve.
“Everyone’s dream is as big as they think it is. You will not achieve something big unless you believe and work towards achieving that dream,” he chips.
And Kawooya’s story is that of a big dreamer with a hands-on mentality. For years, Kawooya has deliberately built and fostered digital innovations, with more emphasis on promoting digital financial inclusion. Sometime in 2005, Kawooya and other like minds started a company called HiPipo, a multifaceted ever-evolving entity with interests in fields of entertainment, events management, restaurants, digital innovation, and ICT management.
He was named CEO, a position he still holds.
“Building and sustaining a company is not a simple task,” he says, thinking about the long journey he has had.
“You must be ready to suffer financially, emotionally, and socially. But you must keep believing in your God and your dream.”
HiPipo started by promoting local music using digital means and awards. Eventually, they started the HiPipo Music Awards in 2012 which further led to the growth of the Include Everyone program, under which the Digital Impact Awards Africa started running in the same year.
This helped birth programs focused more on low-income digital users, special interest groups such as women, PWDs, rural organizations, and small formal and informal businesses. By training, Kawooya is a Digital Innovation, Financial Technology, and Financial Inclusion specialist, but his responsibility requires him to be a jack of all trades.
“My own major passion is in the field of digital innovation, especially in regards to technology that enables the digitally excluded, unbanked, the vulnerable, low-income users, and the marginalised to acquire digital transactional accounts and start to enjoy the benefits of being part of the formal financial ecosystem,” he says.
This is indeed visible in the various projects he has been able to conceptualise and actualize to put Africa’s digital innovators on the pedestal they need so that they can go about solving our problems. The initiatives include the 40 Days 40 FinTechs & FinTech Landscape Exhibition; the Women-in-FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator; and one of the continent’s most distinguished gongs for digital innovation, the Digital Impact Awards Africa (DIAA).
Kawooya notes that these initiatives and their related activities, publications, and implementations, have seen HiPipo rightly judged as one of the most important conveners of the various players/stakeholders in the fintech and digital financial services space.
“This is why HiPipo’s major partner and supporter today is the Gates Foundation, and we are recognised proponents of The Level One Project,” he says.
That notwithstanding, Kawooya produced the first Ugandan film to be streamed on Amazon (Life of a Champion). His passion for digital economies also saw him join politics in 2021 when he stood for the mayoralty of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, with the slogan ‘Digitising Kampala’.
BREAKTHROUGH
The breakthrough came in 2019 when the Gates Foundation came on board to support the Include Everyone program which includes the 40 Days 40 FinTechs & FinTech Landscape Exhibition; the Women-in-FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator; and the Digital Impact Awards Africa (DIAA).
“We are grateful that they appreciated our concept and supported it. In Uganda, we have organised and executed four seasons of this initiative and now we have onboarded Tanzania this year,” he says.
Kawooya says that these initiatives are an easy pick to support because they advocate for a justifiable cause.
“We want to create a world where everyone is included in the digital financial services sector irrespective of their gender, religion, social status or geographical location,” he adds.
“It is possible and we will do it, with the support of our governments and other players.”
However, this achievement was a result of hard work, patience, and consistency.
“I have had my share of cold, sleepless nights as I wondered where the next coin is going to come from. And I advise any innovator to be ready for the same. So, even though HiPipo and I have enjoyed tremendous success, I am never blind to the fact that what others and I do in the space is many times just a month’s rent away from being abandoned,” he says.
WHO IS KAWOOYA?
“He is a boss and friend with a golden heart who knows how to draw a line between work and friendship,” says George Kasakya who has worked with Kawooya for more than a dozen years.
“When you look at the things Kawooya is doing at his age; for me, I call him professor. He is doing things that the government should even be doing,” noted Joyce Nabbosa Ssebuggwawo, the ICT state minister.
Kawooya, the middle child of three boys, attributes his personality to his parents, both retired teachers: they are prayerful, community leaders with an eye for entrepreneurship.
“I have learned so much from them in those aspects, and they remain the biggest influence in my life,” he says, avoiding the question about his early school life because the first primary school he went to is ‘now a bar’.
“All the same, I am an alumnus of Harvard University (Professional Leadership Certificate), University of Pennsylvania, Sikkim Manipal University, St Mark’s College Namagoma, and St Henry’s College Kitovu,” says the proud father of girls and boys, who believes that women are Africa’s giant, untapped development reserve.
“I cannot wait for the day when women have unfettered access to resources, especially digital ones, that will enable them fully unleash their innovative and entrepreneurial potential,” he says.
FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN AFRICA
Although Kawooya is optimistic about the state of financial inclusion in Africa, there is still a need to do away with silos and adopt interoperability.
“That is why HiPipo is championing the creation of instant and inclusive payment systems that enable an interoperable environment, bringing together every single innovator and player in the same space,” he says, as he prepares his team to fly out to Tanzania to start his financial inclusion gospel that side.
Source: The Observer
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