As the deadline for ensuring the remaining 400 million financially-excluded Africans get included by 2030, Chief Executive Officer of AfricaNenda Foundation, Dr. Robert Ochola has said that strategic partnerships and artificial intelligence will be critical to achieving that target.
He was speaking to journalists in an interview at the launch of the State of Inclusive Instant Payment System (SIIPS) Africa 2025 Report in Eswatini.
AfricaNenda’s own target is to cut the 400 million financially excluded Africans by 260 million in the next five years, riding on the back of a strategy to help countries which do not have instant payment systems (IPS) to build one, and those who have IPSs to deepen the level of inclusivity of those systems.
But beyond the 260 million people in AfricaNenda’ 2030 target, Dr. Ochola believes that with strategic partnerships, all 400 million people will be covered by close of that period.
The Journey to Maturity
He noted that about four to six years ago when this whole conversation about driving financial inclusion in Africa by building inclusive payment systems started, a lot the elements in the inclusivity spectrum looked theoretical, and most payments systems could only go from between unclassified to progressed level of inclusivity.
“People doubted if matured level inclusivity was possible in Africa,” even though such systems exist in places like Brazil (PIX) and India (UPI). Indeed, Ghana was the first to get to the progressed level in 2022, but till date Ghana has not yet moved on to the matured level.
But for the first time in the history of the SIIPS report, Nigeria’s payment system under the stewardship of the Nigeria InterBank Settlement System (NIBSS), has achieved matured inclusivity, which shows that mature inclusivity is not just a theory but a reality.
NIBSS has achieved expanded use cases, extreme affordability and also integrated an effective dispute resolution system into the architecture, which are critical features of matured inclusive instant payment system.
“This is big milestone for the continent because for the first time, we now have an exampler we can all relate to as Africa. Nigeria’s example serves as a guardrail that we can all work towards,” Dr. Ochola said. “Strategically it means we are moving in the right direction – and the movement and excitement about building matured inclusivity payments systems in real.”
Strategic Partnerships
He noted that Nigeria’s success puts them in a position as a strategic partner that AfricaNenda can leverage on as an example of best practice to help other countries reach matured inclusivity level faster than even Nigeria did.
“Now that NIBSS has reached maturity level we need to partner with them to use their learnings to help other countries deepen their inclusivity quickly without having to go through the same long journey NIBSS went through to get to a matured state,” he stated.
Indeed, following Nigeria’s feat, now the Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlement System (GhIPSS) and ET Switch from Ethiopia have both declared that they will leverage on Nigeria’s experience and get to the matured level by next year.
Mastercard
Mastercard is another long standing partner of AfricaNenda, and Dr. Ochola noted that Mastercard has over 50 years of experience in fraud management, so they provide AfricaNenda with the opportunity to take their real-time fraud monitoring experience and make that available to countries.
This is critical because a consumer research conducted in some countries as part of this year’s SIIPS Report, indicated that fraud is a major concern for consumers, so it is very important that African countries leverage on best practices to quickly integrate efficient fraud management system in the architecture.
World Bank
Dr. Ochola also mentioned World Bank as one of the key strategic partners, saying that World Bank has been doing payments for a long time and they have funding windows and rich expertise in that area. So AfricaNenda is helping African states to leverage that “instead of trying to create the knowledge base on our own.”
AI
In what came across as a refreshing addition, Dr. Ochola stated that AfricaNenda is also striking partnership deals with experts in artificial Intelligence (AI), to ensure that African states get the needed assistance to deploy AI to deepen inclusivity in their payment systems.
“You will see in the next six months some of the partners we are going to bring onboard – people who are getting involved in AI, building off the technology platforms that we are creating to drive financial inclusion even further, and we look forward to the media telling the stories about how those partnerships are transforming lives,” he said.
Dr. Ochola also urged the Africa media to continue to tell the stories about how AfricaNenda is creating the building blocks for Africa’s economic transformation, and help fintechs and innovators understand that with those building blocks “we can for instance creative innovations that serve farmers with bespoke solutions to increase yield among other things.”
Policymakers
He also had a clear and simple message for policymakers on the continent – they need to create the enabling environment that makes it easier for more cost effective infrastructure to be put in Africa cross the continent.
Dr. Ochola explained – “Today we cannot build Tier 4 data centres in any African country but we need tier 4 or at least tier data centres to drive instant payment effectively. So, there is a need for policy discussion how to leverage cloud infrastructure, open finance and others to drive sharing among countries instead of working in silos where on countries take three to four years to achieve one thing.”
He argued that even at the policy level there is need for collaboration and a mindset of one Africa to drive financial inclusion across the continent.
