Afrigather Written by Stephen Agwaibor
The sixth version of the Nigerian Fintech Week took off in fashion on the Landmark Centre in Lagos. The three-day occasion billed for October 24–26, 2023, is themed “Fintech: Resilience, Innovation and Diversification”.
The annual occasion, hosted by the Fintech Affiliation of Nigeria (FAN), commenced with a gap tackle by its president, Ade Bajomo. In his speech, Bajomo famous that the three pillars for long-term success in Nigeria’s fintech are resilience, innovation, and diversification within the face of “aggressive threats, rising applied sciences, and the necessity to meet the wants of consumers.”
Bajomo defined that resilience was crucial now, notably within the wake of rising cybersecurity threats in 2023. In his phrases, “Thirty-three % of computer systems are susceptible to cyberattacks, primarily based on current surveys.” He additionally careworn the necessity for regulatory compliance from fintech corporations during which modifications require “resilience to adapt, to face up to risky markets and financial downturns”.
Regardless of the present financial clime, Bajomo disclosed that as of Q2 2023, Nigeria attracted 42% of the share of fintech offers in Africa. He additionally mentioned that the nation boasts the best variety of unicorns on the continent, with over 250 fintechs and 6,000 startups. Nonetheless, he famous that there was nonetheless room for extra, highlighting the necessity for richer and deeper expertise swimming pools, as there have been lower than 100,000 builders in Nigeria. He additionally made the case for inclusion, revealing that 40 million folks stay underserved, with different areas of tech ripe for exploration, together with agritech and proptech. Bajomo referred to as for extra buildings and key verticals to be constructed to permit the tech ecosystem to turn into self-sustaining.
Digital divide shrinking in Africa
Presenting the keynote speech on behalf of the African Improvement Financial institution
(AfDB) president was Lamin Barrow, the director-general of the Nigeria Nation Division of the AfDB. Barrow famous that the convention’s theme resonated with the crucial of the instances by disclosing that Africa’s actual GDP development fee slowed to three.8% in 2022 from 4.8% in 2021.
Regardless of these, he highlighted wins for fintech in Africa during which he famous that 33% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa now have a cellular cash account—the most important of any area on this planet. He additionally mentioned that by quantity, 70% of cellular cash transactions come from Africa alone, which helped international locations with extra sturdy monetary techniques on the continent scale up transfers. Barrow says, “Whereas the digital divide is shrinking in Africa, it nonetheless exists.” He disclosed that the AfDB is working in the direction of growing a fintech hub, which 75% of African fintech members will profit from by 2025.
Different occasion highlights
The fireplace occasions included discussions with trade stakeholders like Olumide Soyombo of BlueChip Applied sciences; Ebehijie Momoh, nation supervisor and space enterprise head for Mastercard, West Africa; Tajudeen Mustapha, head of threat administration and compliance at Xpress Cost Options; Will Stevens, US consul normal; Akeem Lawal, Interswitch Purepay MD; regulatory stakeholders from the CBN, amongst others.
Discussions centred round threat and compliance, digital belief, expertise acquisition and retention, and customer-centric innovation.
The occasion additionally noticed the launch of a fintech whitepaper on Nigerian fintech’s cloud adoption. Huawei Applied sciences printed the paper at the side of FAN. The paper lined pillars of cloud computing, together with cloud plan, cloud run, and cloud governance, bringing to the fore points on safety and compliance, knowledge migration, and adoption roadmaps. To obtain the whitepaper, go to here.
