On the 17th of September 2025, Telecom Review Africa hosted a webinar titled ‘The Role of Fintech in Advancing Africa,’ to analyze Africa’s burgeoning, fluctuating, yet, optimistic, fintech sector.
To explore this in more depth, Edgard Tawk, CEO, Eurisko Mobility; Sylvain Morlière, Consulting Director Fintech, Inclusion and Governmental projects, Sofrecom; Lynda Bouzid, Senior Manager, New Opportunities & Strategic Partnership, Ooredoo Algeria; and Munya Chiura, Strategic Advisor Specializing in Emerging Markets, Fintech, and Expansion Across Africa, joined the session, which was moderated by Jessica Bayley, Assistant Content Director, Telecom Review Group.
For decades, Africa’s financial sector has been remolded numerous times, beginning with physical cash and moving toward digital currencies, blending finance with technology to form fintech. Today, projections indicate that fintech could contribute USD 47 billion to the African economy by 2028. While this is encouraging, fintech penetration currently sits at just 5–6% in Africa.
Expanding on this in his welcome note, Issam Eid, CMO, Telecom Review Group, detailed that “Fintech, as we all know, is not just about technology; it’s about empowerment, growth, and transformation,” adding that across Africa, fintech has opened new doors for millions of people who were previously excluded from formal financial systems.
The Current State of Financial Access in Africa
Tawk highlighted that Africa’s fintech sector rests on three pillars: inclusion, innovation, and regulation.
“The basic, important pillar is inclusion,” he explained, noting stark disparities where “you can see a very high inclusion in South Africa and another high inclusion in Kenya, however, a super low inclusion in countries like South Sudan.” He also pointed out gender gaps, with “a bigger percentage of inclusion of men versus women,” but emphasized that fintech is going to play a big role by enabling both SMEs and individuals to access digital financial services beyond bank accounts. He also identified that regulatory fragmentation is a challenge, arguing that “there should be a lot of integration and interoperability between countries.”
Morlière agreed that the challenges for African fintechs go beyond access, rather encompassing literacy, gender gaps, and ID ownership.
He noted that some mobile money users in Mali “were not literate but had learned (by heart) long USSD codes” to issue transfers, highlighting the cascading effect of poor user experience (UX) and consequent risks. Women also face “very specific challenges as they often lack the confidence to use digital tools” compared to men, underscoring the need for gender-inclusive solutions. Finally, for Morlière, the lack of formal identification remains a hurdle, with sometimes half of the adult population in some countries without IDs.
For Bouzid, the most critical opportunities for fintech development in Africa lie in three types of strategic partnerships with banks, telcos, and non-financial businesses, which are reshaping the financial ecosystem.
Firstly, collaboration with banks and insurance companies, for her, is “arguably the most critical partnership type,” as fintechs bring agility and innovation while banks provide “dedicated customer bases and the necessary license and regulatory infrastructure,” enabling scale without navigating complex regulations alone. Secondly, partnerships with telcos are essential, especially given Africa’s high mobile penetration, allowing fintechs to tap into “a vast network of mobile subscribers” and leverage telco data to deliver services like microloans, savings, and insurance. Finally, fintechs can expand their reach through non-financial businesses in sectors such as e-commerce, agriculture, and retail, “embedding the financial services where people are already doing business” and generating alternative credit scoring models from informal economy data.
Read More: Digital Transformation in Motion: The Growth of Fintech and Mobile Money in Africa
Driving Digital Economies
Addressing the role of fintech in driving Africa’s digital economy, Chiura explained that one of the most significant shifts shaping Africa’s future is improved internet access, with Starlink now active in more than 26 countries, which has “really changed the game for a lot of industries, especially the creative industries.” Valued at USD 47 billion, according to the IMF, this sector spans film, music, gaming, and digital content, with Nigeria’s Nollywood generating USD 1 billion annually and African fashion contributing USD 31 billion. The African Bank has even established a USD 2-billion fund to support this growth.
Chiura reiterated that “we have to create around 50 million jobs a year in Africa” to meet demographic needs, and the creator economy is a powerful avenue to do so, particularly through the rise of the influencer and gig economies.
In terms of the African countries pioneering mobile-first services to advance cross-border trade, the future of African fintech is undeniably mobile-first, with Chiura bluntly stating, “If you’re not mobile-first in Africa, go home.” The continent drives 66% of global mobile money transactions (worth USD 1.4 trillion, which is equivalent to the GDP of Turkey or Switzerland) through platforms like MTN, M-PESA, and Orange. Inspiringly, mobile wallets have become the first bank account for many, underscoring telcos’ role in financial inclusion. The Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) represents a USD 208-billion opportunity, but barriers to moving money across the 54 countries have long stifled SMEs. Initiatives like the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) are now reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar and Euro, making intra-African trade easier and more efficient.
Chiura emphasized the importance of interoperability, stating, “I’m big on APIs,” noting that without them, collaboration between banks and fintechs stalls. He argued that “APIs are the quickest and easiest way” to enable integration across Africa’s fragmented payment landscape, adding that open banking and API-driven systems could greatly improve cross-border payments, trade, and financial efficiency.
Similarly, for Tawk, Africa’s fintech future depends heavily on infrastructure. He warned that:
“The mindset of the infrastructure that we think about today is not the same infrastructure that we’re going to have tomorrow.”
He argued that current centralized systems are vulnerable, as “a supercomputer can hack a centralized system but a supercomputer cannot hack 10,000 nodes at the same time,” making blockchain and distributed ledgers essential. Looking ahead, he predicted “a world where crypto will be the main currency,” and emphasized that Africa has the opportunity to adopt these next-generation systems.
Related: Driving Africa’s Digital Economy with Global Connectivity and Tailored Services
Supporting MSMEs
Tawk emphasized that success in fintech “all revolves around the customer experience,” stressing the need for “a full digital journey that is seamless from A to Z, from onboarding, to opening an account, to applying for a loan.”
Beyond core services, he pointed to innovations that could transform African markets, such as apps that function as a form of financial education. He spotlighted some of Eurisko’s projects with Al Hilal Bank in Abu Dhabi and Alinma Bank in Saudi Arabia that gamified digital finance for children (with parental controls). Tawk added that empowering small merchants through “mobile-like POS devices” to accept digital payments could be a game changer.
Morlière identified that traditional banks have struggled to serve African MSMEs lacking credit history, collateral, or records, but fintechs are filling the gap with digital lending, automated credit scoring, and low-cost merchant payment solutions.
With an MSME credit gap above USD 300 billion and only 20% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa using digital merchant payments (versus 40% in Latin America and 70% in East Asia), credit and payments remain the biggest opportunities.
Bouzid then zeroed in on Algeria, where Ooredoo is tackling financial exclusion by leveraging its 5G network expansion to bring reliable connectivity to rural and remote areas.
Beyond connectivity, Ooredoo Group is investing directly in fintech through wallets and payment solutions, enabling mobile transactions, transfers, and airtime purchases. With apps such as My Ooredoo, the company is building a customer-centric digital ecosystem that goes beyond telecom, bridging the gap traditional banks have previously struggled to close alone.
Addressing Africa’s MSME credit gap is critical and innovative, data-driven lending is emerging as a solution. As Chiura noted, “traditional ways of lending are not working for the MSME sector.” To curb this, he mentioned that companies like Flutterwave and Nigeria’s Moniepoint are leveraging agency banking and point-of-sale data to assess creditworthiness.
Morlière echoed this sentiment, reiterating that payment collection remains a challenge for African MSMEs, often requiring entrepreneurs to visit clients in person. Addressing this, companies such as Fawry and CashCall in Egypt are enabling MSMEs to accept payments, invoices, and digital transfers efficiently. For Morlière, these innovations “really crack the challenge of collecting payments for MSMEs” and expand the options available for financial transactions across the continent.
More from Morlière: Unlocking Africa’s MSME Potential : The Transformative Power of Fintech Innovation
Future Innovations
Looking ahead, Tawk walked the panel through the upcoming full shift (four or five years from now) toward blockchain, advising that its role extends “not only [to] cryptocurrency, but also is a solution to tackle a lot of other areas,” especially as AI-driven cybersecurity threats rise.
In Bouzid’s opinion, the approach to technology adoption in Africa should be “both strategic and pragmatic,” focusing on the right technology for each country’s ecosystem rather than being the first to adopt a technology.
Connectivity is the foundation, with the 4G and fiber rollout being naturally prioritized to bridge the digital divide and enable mobile financial services. Once this base is established, Bouzid advised that technology should then address immediate, real-world problems rather than advanced solutions the African population cannot use. Fintech and mobile commerce are central to this strategy, having already demonstrated their ability to “proliferate banking services through mobile money” across the continent.
She emphasized that Africa should focus on unified platforms where e-commerce providers and service companies create an integrated ecosystem that is introduced in tiers, allowing customers to access all services from a single interface. Interestingly, advanced technologies like AR or 5G should enhance existing services rather than function as standalone products, according to Bouzid.
Chiura concluded that cash should no longer be seen as financial exclusion but as an “enabler” that can be recorded and transacted to drive inclusion, acknowledging that it will remain a payment method in many African markets. He identified three transformative technologies for the continent: AI, open banking, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
AI offers ecosystem opportunities, as seen with Ethiopian Airlines, which uses it for predictive maintenance and operations, which MSMEs can leverage. Open banking, particularly in Nigeria, provides access to data that enables fintechs to offer services like credit where traditional banks cannot. Finally, DeFi presents innovative use cases, from tokenizing land to facilitating exports and remittances, with blockchain-based solutions tailored to Africa’s unique challenges.
Africa’s fintech sector will thrive at the intersection of inclusion, innovation, and regulation. Beyond access, challenges such as digital literacy, gender gaps, and limited ID ownership are the biggest hindrances to success. The future, therefore, depends on strategic collaborations with banks, telcos, and non-financial businesses, and leveraging emerging opportunities in the creator, influencer, and gig economies. As evident in the past, infrastructure remains ever critical and addressing the credit gap for MSMEs will stand the continent in good stead.
