Marcus Swanepoel

Customer retention shouldn't be mistaken for customer loyalty. New research from @Temenos and Celent suggests that nearly three-quarters of banking customers are only moderately satisfied or less with their primary bank, creating a sizeable "switchable middle" that could …

🎮 Some investments deliver dividends. Others deliver decades of entertainment. And judging by this chart, a few of us have been rather loyal shareholders in the gaming industry. 😎 Personally, I've owned every PlayStation generation from the legendary PS2 right …

Johannesburg is apparently the second-least-safe major city in the world. Right behind Caracas. As someone who spends a fair amount of time travelling across Africa, I read that and thought: Well… at least we made the podium. 🥈😏 According to Numbeo’s 2026 …

I’m a space nerd. 🚀 There I have said it... And every now and then I see something that reminds me just how little we actually understand about the universe. Here’s the simplified version. Everything we can see — stars, planets, galaxies, you, me, Earth and …

Africa has a startup funding problem. But perhaps not the one we think. Look at the funding map for January–July 2026 and something interesting happens. Egypt: $307m Kenya: $217m South Africa: $201m Nigeria: $164m The usual suspects. And then… Benin: $327m. …

🌍 AFRICA IS SELLING TO THE WORLD. BUT MOVING THE GOODS is only half the story. South Africa leads this list at $116.4 billion in merchandise exports, with Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria following. Behind every shipment is another journey. The money has to come home. And …

There are two ways to look rich. And only one way to be wealthy. The New York version says: “I’ve arrived.” The Swiss version quietly asks: “Why would I need you to know?”😄 There’s a FinTech lesson hiding in there. For years, financial services sold …

For years, we called them telecom companies. That description is starting to feel rather outdated. Across Africa, companies like MTN, Vodacom and Safaricom increasingly sit at the intersection of connectivity, payments, mobile money, data and digital services. And that …

🌍 THE NEXT GREAT AFRICAN FINTECH STORY MAY NOT BE ABOUT ONE COMPANY. It may be about connection. Look across Africa and you see powerful banks, telcos, FinTechs and businesses already serving hundreds of millions of people. Now imagine the possibilities when the …

There’s a lot of noise around Agentic AI. Some are talking about it. Some are demonstrating it. Some are predicting which jobs it will replace. The interesting people are quietly asking a different question: “Where does this actually create value?” In banking and …

🌍 AFRICA ISN’T JUST GROWING. IT’S REWRITING THE SCALE OF THE OPPORTUNITY. Look at this map for a moment. Africa is home to around 1.4 billion people — spread across megacities, fast-growing urban centres and thousands of communities still underserved by …

You can learn a lot about the future by looking up. 🏙️ And right now, one country is doing considerably more looking up than everyone else. China. According to this data, China has more than 3,500 skyscrapers — dramatically ahead of the United States, India, the …

It’s Monday — which means another one of my own infographics. 🌍 Each week I’m taking a subject that matters to Africa, digging into the data, and trying to tell the story visually. This week: power. Literally. Some African leaders have been in office for 20, …

Here’s a slightly uncomfortable thought for your Tuesday morning. You are not the main character. Neither am I. In fact, in the enormous story of humanity, we’re barely a sentence. This visual puts it beautifully. Around 8 billion people are alive today. But …

Inflation is the tax nobody votes for. And it is remarkably efficient. That $100 you had in 2019? In the United States, its purchasing power is now roughly $77. In the UK? $76.50. And Türkiye? About $11. At that point inflation hasn't eaten your lunch. It has …

🌍 AI MAY LIVE IN THE CLOUD. BUT THE CLOUD STILL NEEDS A BUILDING. This graphic tells an important story about Africa’s digital future. South Africa leads the continent with 64 data centres, followed by Nigeria with 28 and Kenya with 19. But the bigger number caught …

🔐 AFRICA IS GOING DIGITAL. SO ARE THE PEOPLE TRYING TO BREAK INTO IT. This graphic caught my attention. South Africa accounts for 43.6% of the exposed systems detected in the dataset — although importantly, exposure does not mean those systems were successfully …