Monitize announced that they have been awarded a $ 1.5 million dollar grant by the African Enterprise Challenge Fund (read here). I know that I have written about this before (see here), but I really have difficulty in understanding how this mildly succesful UK company can make a difference in Africa. Not only is it unlikely that they will be able to re-use the UK functionality in Uganda (Java phones, ATM switches, etc.), but they are also late. Many Ugandan-based companies have already (or are in the process of) lanching their mobile banking services. (For instance MTN (read here), Map International (read here), Zain (read here), Uganda Telecom (read here) and Barclays (read here), to name a few).What really bugs me, is that the donor community fund a European company to bring unsuitable technology to Africa. Yet, it is totally impossible that an African company (with much more advanced technology) could be funded by the donor community to bring suitable solutions to Europe. Something is totally wrong somewhere.