Alumnus picks up innovation award
An alumnus of London Business School has picked up a major award recognising his contribution to innovation.
Nick Hughes, managing director of Signal Point Partners, collected the Social and Economic award at the Economist Innovation Awards, held at the Science Museum in London. Mr Hughes, EMBA2001, was recognised for his part in creating the M-Pesa venture in Kenya, a mobile money-transfer initiative.
M-Pesa, which was first launched in 2005, allows people to transfer money, pay bills and save using a mobile phone, without a bank account. It is designed to work on the most basic handset, and is a quick, simple and secure way of carrying out transactions.
Since its launch, the service has continued to grow in Africa, and it is now widely used across Kenya, and has been introduced in Tanzania and South Africa. It has also been adopted in Afghanistan.
Commenting on the decision to give Mr Hughes the award, Tom Standage, Digital Editor at the Economist, said M-Pesa had changed the way money moves. He said: "Since its launch, M-Pesa has attracted over 12 million users, or nearly a third of the Kenyan population. M-Pesa has changed the way money moves around in Kenya and has made a big difference to many people’s lives, offering them a safe, secure and low-cost way of transferring money, paying bills, receiving wages and running small businesses. By contrast, there are only 750 banking outlets and fewer than five million bank accounts in the entire country."
He added that the judges were recognising Mr Hughes because the initiative had "great potential to increase financial inclusion and drive economic activity". Picking up the award Mr Hughes said the technology was a success because of the whole team that had worked on the project from the start. He added that the M-Pesa was a good example of the telecoms world taking on financial services, something that many people thought could never be done. Mr Hughes finished by saying that with emerging economies being the new market place, he expected entrepreneurs and organisations to drive innovation towards the developing world.