Fertiliser to fintech: Omnia feeds Africa, Optasia banks it

In this episode, Omnia Group CEO Seelan Gobalsamy discusses a record year driven by Africa’s growing food security imperative, with fertiliser demand rising across the continent and a strategy built around becoming the essential input supplier for African farmers. Optasia CEO Salvador Anglada unpacks how the group is making more than a billion credit decisions a month, facilitating $3.5 billion in distributed value in a single half-year, and growing revenue 58% while keeping default rates at 1.3%. Quietly, the fintech has become one of the most significant financial infrastructure companies that most South Africans have never heard of. Gary Booysen of Rand Swiss on what the Reserve Bank rate hold means for SA assets, where he is finding value in a market that has run hard, and why AI infrastructure remains his one constant theme.And News24 Business editor Helena Wasserman on the rand selling off after the rate hold, Woolworths’ new CEO making his first moves, and what a bumper week for financial services results tells us about the broader economy. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec. To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here. Editions drop on Thursdays at 17:00.