From WeChat's Nigerian failure to embedded insurance success: lessons in local innovation

WHEN Johannesburg-based South African entrepreneur Prince Nwadeyi was researching his MPhil in Inclusive Innovation at the University of Cape Town, one interview proved transformational.

- ANDILE MASUKU

A young woman broke down describing the humiliation of borrowing money to bury her mother, only to face gossip at the funeral about the family's financial struggles.

That 2019 conversation shaped Nwadeyi's thesis on information asymmetry and life insurance uptake in township communities.

More importantly, it led him to question whether insurance could be embedded invisibly into everyday purchases, eliminating the paperwork, intermediaries, premiums, and waiting periods that keep vulnerable communities unprotected.

Last week, Nwadeyi took to Linkedin to share that his holding company, SAG Ventures, had paid out its first claim through a clever FMCG-embedded funeral cover product dubbed Purchase Pal, underwritten by the continent's largest insurer, Sanlam.

A grieving family received a much-needed funeral payout because they'd purchased participating products at one of South African supermarket and wholesaler Big Save's stores. No forms, no monthly deductions, just automatic protection triggered by routine shopping habits.

The innovation exemplifies a principle increasingly recognised as crucial for African product development: building with communities rather than for them.

Nwadeyi's approach emerged from deep ethnographic research and venture building experience (iterative product development and go-to-market) in partnership with leading blue-chip companies, not top-down, boardroom assumptions about what consumers need.

During a recent yet-to-be-published African Tech Roundup Podcast conversation, recorded shortly after his insurance product went live, Nwadeyi emphasised how understanding incentive structures across entire value chains from wholesalers to consumers to capital providers enabled breakthrough collaborative thinking. Rather than competing with traditional distribution channels, his team embedded coverage within existing retail margins.

Strategy meets reality