By Jean-Pierre A
Experts have projected that Africa’s fintech ecosystem will transition from actively chasing global investments to becoming a powerful hub that attracts international capital by 2026.
This growth, they say, will be driven largely by African founders, investors, and homegrown infrastructure. The projection was made by the African Fintech Summit (AFTS), a global initiative dedicated to advancing Africa’s Financial Technology (FinTech) ecosystem, in its 2026 outlook.
The Africa Fintech Summit was founded in 2017 with the mission of bringing together the key issues, emerging trends, innovators, and changemakers shaping Africa’s rapidly evolving financial technology ecosystem across the continent and beyond.
The Managing Director of AFTS, Zekarias Amsalu, who made the projection, was quoted by ThisDay, a Nigerian news website, as saying: “2026 will mark the transition from African fintech going global to becoming the globe itself.” Amsalu further added that African funders, capital, and digital infrastructure would increasingly power the growth of financial technology across the continent.
“The continent will no longer just be adopting global technologies and solutions, or seeking investments abroad, but will increasingly be exporting solutions that attract global investors,” the fintech leader further explained.
According to Amsalu, his prediction is based on 2025 being a pivotal year for Africa’s digital sector, during which fintech companies shifted their focus from rapid expansion to prioritising sustainable growth, efficiency, and profitability.
In last year’s Unipesa report—by a firm that provides financial infrastructure as a service for African fintechs—on trends to watch between 2025 and 2030, the company stated that fintech in Africa is entering a new and more sophisticated phase. This phase, it said, is defined by interoperability, embedded finance, data-driven lending models, and AI-powered personalisation.
“From Lagos to Nairobi, from Cairo to Cape Town, African fintech start-ups are not just catching up with global trends—they are actively shaping them,” the firm noted in its forward-looking prediction.
According to Unipesa, interoperability, embedded finance, artificial intelligence and data-driven credit, regulatory evolution, the rise of B2B and infrastructure fintechs, digital identity and blockchain integration, financial inclusion 2.0, as well as the green technology movement, are the major trends that will shape Africa’s fintech sector in the coming years.
The AFTS boss also revealed that regulators made bold and strategic moves in 2025 to support innovation, while local stock exchanges recorded five Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), including two from fintech companies.
“African start-ups raised over $3 billion in disclosed funding—a 33 per cent year-on-year increase, as detailed in the 2025 Prediction & Reality Check Report released last month,” Amsalu disclosed.
In developments that appear to support these projections, Flutterwave, a global fintech company of Nigerian origin, recently announced the acquisition of Mono, an African open banking and account-based payments provider.
Flutterwave explained that the acquisition is expected to strengthen its payments infrastructure and accelerate the growth of open banking in Africa, with a strong focus on interoperability, data-driven solutions, and locally relevant payment methods tailored to African markets.
Unipesa concluded its five-year prediction by stating that between 2025 and 2030, Africa’s fintech sector will evolve from a collection of isolated innovators into a fully connected ecosystem of integrated platforms. “The winners won’t just move money—they’ll move markets,” the firm asserted.
Adding further detail to his prediction, Amsalu was also quoted as saying: “From mobile money innovations to cloud computing, born in Africa and gifted to the world, Africa is increasingly powering the global economy from within.”
“Fintech platforms born out of necessity are now enabling cross-border trade, remittances, and digital finance far beyond the continent, while African engineers, founders, and creatives are building products that serve global users at scale,” Amsalu added.
Telecommunications companies, according to the fintech leader, will play a critical role in supporting the growth of fintech in 2026 and beyond. “Telcos are making bold moves into licensed banking operations. Telcos with millions of subscribers and mobile money users will be acquiring licenses in the regulated banking space and rebranding themselves as ‘banks’ from 2026 onward,” he said.
PayPal Could Expand Back Into Africa
In another major projection, Amsalu predicted that as African talent continues to expand globally, the growing demand for global payroll and compliance services will drive local start-ups to scale further. At the same time, global companies are entering Africa to capture a share of the remote workforce market, resulting in vertical and strategic acquisitions of home-grown payroll platforms.
“The next billion tech-savvy consumers will emerge from Africa, and the world’s largest fintech giants are making calculated moves accordingly. The revolution is shifting to Africa, and PayPal—which previously exited some African markets—has made it clear that it plans to return to Africa in 2026,” Amsalu concluded.
