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We're dropping one more episode of our new show, crypto@scale, on The Flip's feed today. In this episode, we interview our first guests on what might be Africa's killer crypto app, stablecoins. According to data from Coinmetrics, cumulative Stablecoin volumes are at a $9 trillion annualized run rate, exceeding the volumes of all major card networks, except for Visa. Across the African continent, stablecoins are finding meaningful uptake, particularly in markets with low USD liquidity, or countries experiencing currency devaluation.

In today's episode, we're going to explore stablecoins in two parts. First, a global perspective with Joao Reginatto, the VP of Product at Circle, which is the company behind the USDC stablecoin. Second, a local perspective with Ngozi Dozie, Co-Founder of the African digital bank, Carbon.
This episode of crypto@scale is sponsored by Ripple.

00:00 - Intro. Stablecoins are the best thing since sliced bread, according to Ngozi Dozie.02:23 - Introducing Joao Reginatto, VP, Product at Circle and product lead for USDC.02:48 - What is a stablecoins?04:21 - Why stablecoins?13:33 - Not all stablecoins are equal. USDC is pegged 1:1 to the Dollar.24:22 - What else is Circle focused on to broaden the adoption of USDC?28:30 - Regulation.32:10 - What's next for stablecoins?36:25 - Joao's recommendations.37:44 - Explooring stablecoins in the African context, with Carbon's Ngozi Dozie.40:48 - Use cases: access to foreign exchange, hedge against devaluation.44:05 - Carbon's FX and borrowing woes.48:22 - Stablecoins as a platform.52:27 - Challenges to stablecoin adoption.1:00:06 - Ngozi is scared of the risk of capital flight.1:03:46 - Ngozi's recommendations.
Follow us on twitter @cryptoatscale.

We interrupt this season on the future of work to drop a special episode today in The Flip’s feed. Introducing crypto@scale, a new show from The Flip, co-hosted by MFS Africa's Head of Crypto, Gwera Kiwana, and The Flip's Justin Norman.
crypto@scale is a pragmatic and hopefully hype-free exploration of the crypto ecosystem across the African continent.
If you enjoy this episode, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube by searching for crypto@scale. We'll be dropping one more episode later this week and new episodes every other week thereafter.
Today's episode is a conversation recorded live from Nairobi last month. In this conversation, we share our perspectives on the sector, the use cases we find the most intriguing, the challenges we find most pressing, why we're launching a crypto show in the middle of a bear market, and what you can expect from us and this show.
For more from crypto@scale, follow us on Twitter @cryptoatscale.
00:00 - Intro02:16 - Why are we launching this show3:51 - The African market conditions and context for crypto's adoption6:47 - Crypto use cases: stablecoins10:36 - Regulation, centralization, and CBDCs14:16 - DeFi and real-world assets17:36 - Interoperability19:26 - User experience and crypto education22:17 - The DeFi Mullet23:14 - Who's going to build and design for the future of African markets?26:57 - Why the name crypto@scale? And what does crypto at scale mean to us?29:15 - Prediction and wishlist

Where there is fragmentation, informality, and a dearth of infrastructure, there are questions about what the path to formality and standardization will look like. One intriguing answer to that question is conversion franchising, where existing stores are converted into a franchise.
In the future of work context, are microenterprises, their owners, and their employees better off as converted franchisees?
This episode is a case study, with mPharma's Gregory Rockson.
00:00 - We begin this episode's exploration with a question - are subsistence farmers better off as employees of a commercial farm? With Twiga Foods' Peter Njonjo.06:01 - What does the path to formalization and standardization look like across African markets and sectors? This episode is a case study of conversion franchising, with mPharma's Gregory Rockson.We define conversion franchising, with help from Next Billion.07:31 - mPharma started out as an asset-light platform.09:38 - How mPharma's pharmacy-in-a-box program, QualityRX, got started.15:38 - From converting franchises one-by-one to pursuing an M&A strategy to convert by the dozen.21:15 - Is conversion franchising the future of work? Exploring why the model has worked so well for mPharma and pharmacy retail.25:10- Gregory's theory of change.27:12 - A retrospective conversation with Sayo Folawiyo and Justin Norman.
This season of The Flip is sponsored by MFS Africa.

African markets are largely informal. So while our examination of workforce and training programs in the fast few episodes focused on formal and salaried jobs, we know that most Africans aren't going to get these types of jobs. So, our exploration of the future of work needs to span much further than that. Where there are no formal jobs, what does it look like to help stimulate the development of the informal sector and microenterprises? And what role does technology play?

In this context, we hear a lot about platforms and their role in creating jobs or income-generating opportunities. But what are the platforms actually good for? And what is their actual impact across African markets? In this episode, we're going to dig into the vertical platforms digitizing microenterprises across the continent. 

3:46 - Defining jobtech platforms, with the Jobtech Alliance's Chris Maclay.
9:10 - What does it look like to build the infrastructure for microenterprises? With Kandua's Sayo Folawiyo. 
12:16 - Exploring what verticalization looks like, and why it is necessary, considering the specifities of the home services sector.
17:25 - Vertical platforms can do a particularly good job at helping small businesses grow. We focus on a particularly large sector, the restaurant industry, with Caantin's Njavwa Mutambo. 
21:20 - A retrospective conversation between Sayo Folawiyo and The Flip's Justin Norman. 
Season 4 of The Flip is sponsored by MFS Africa.
Follow The Flip on Twitter @theflipafrica and subscribe to our newsletter The Flip Notes at https://theflip.africa/newsletter.

Throughout this season, we've heard about this disconnect between supply and demand in the labor marketplace. It's often a skills and training issue. 
Even where there are jobs, there's still this disconnect between demand and supply. But what are we training people for when there are few jobs or income-generating opportunities? 
In the past few episodes of this season, we've explored the talent networks, the remote work platforms, the workforce enablement programs, and the multi-stakeholder initiatives to attract more global roles to the African continent. All of these interventions work to better connect supply and demand in the labor marketplace, and often there is a necessary training component to these interventions to equip African talent with the skills to do the jobs in question.
Edtech and tech-enabled skilling platforms have a role to play too, considering the size and scope of the challenge at hand. So in this episode, we're going to explore these programs working to tackle this problem at scale across the continent.
6:39 - We explore the disconnect between supply and demand in the labor marketplace, and the talent deficiency, with AltSchool Africa's Adewale Yusuf.9:19 - The business model question is important. The recruiting agency model is at odds with the scale of impact programs seek to achieve, explains Stack Shift's Chris Quintero.10:48 - Short-form programs need to get really good at developing curriculum that's in line with the demands of the market, especially if they're charging talent directly for their service. We hear from AltSchool Africa's Carlin Henikoff.14:18 - We explore this challenge with a focus on tertiary education, with Kibo School's Ope Bukola.
Season 4 of The Flip is sponsored by MFS Africa.
Follow The Flip on Twitter @theflipafrica and subscribe to our newsletter The Flip Notes at https://theflip.africa/newsletter.

How do we tie interventions - whether traditional education or boot camps or training programs - to job outcomes? As we'll explore in this episode, it requires a demand-led approach and starts with employers. 
In this episode, we're going to focus on the platforms doing the matching - those that are explicitly working to better connect supply and demand in the job marketplace, to achieve the employment outcomes we wish to see across the continent. 
4:03 - We start our exploration on matching with the traditional jobs marketplaces, with The African Talent Company's Hilda Kragha.6:26 - What kinds of roles are most in demand across the African content?8:15 - Taking a demand-led approach, with Generation's Dr. Mona Mourshed.14:05 - How do we get more employers to consider evolving their hiring practices, in the context of such an inefficient labor market?17:34 - A retrospective conversation with The Flip's b-mic Sayo Folawiyo, and its Founder, Justin Norman.
Season 4 of The Flip is sponsored by MFS Africa.
Follow The Flip on Twitter @theflipafrica and subscribe to our newsletter The Flip Notes at https://theflip.africa/newsletter.