Erika is Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer at Lucidity Insights. Having  spent 15 years advising Fortune 500 companies  and multinational conglomerates  from around the world on how to grow businesses in emerging markets, Erika found that data and knowledge underpinned and empowered strategic decision-making. The creation of Lucidity Insights was inspired by the idea that strategic C-suite level data and insights could empower startups and Venture Capitalists in the MENAPT region, elevating the entire regional entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

Data is not just for the Chief Executive, or the data analyst after-all. Democratizing access to quality data across the tech ecosystem will elevate every startup and every investors’ decision-making, and thus, benefit the economy, overall.

Erika has worked with data to develop comprehensive business success stories and strategies for her entire professional career. She is a thought leader in growth strategies in fast-moving emerging markets, with a focus on Middle Eastern and Asian Markets. She is an expert on the startup ecosystems in the Middle East, and a thought leader on entrepreneurship, disruptive technologies and sustainability. She has worked with both government and corporates clients, across over 30 different industry verticals and in over 40 countries. She is best described as a data-curious strategic thinker and advisor, who also happens to be an  enthusiastic storyteller and writer.

Erika graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business with an Executive MBA (MSx), and also holds degrees from McGill University (B.Sc Neuroscience) and the University of Cambridge (Sustainability in Business). She speaks English and Japanese, is conversational in French, and speaks survival Arabic. In her spare time, she is an avid globe trotter, having travelled to over 70 countries, and counts scuba-diving, free-diving and yoga among her favourite activities. She is a self-described wellness-junkie and adventure enthusiast. She is also a dog mum.

Co-Founder & Chief Content Officer

Erika Masako Welch

The Future of Fintech in Africa

Articles

India

Betting on Fintech in Africa: Why the Future of the Sector Lies on the Continent

Betting on Africa: Why the Future of Fintech Lies on the Continent

Fintech

Born and Brought up in Nigeria, I have always had a vision to create businesses that have a social impact on our community. Both the Nigerian youth and the firebrand women of our country are its discernible strengths, however they are the most underutilized superpowers today. I believe that we can transform the world and lift the next billion people out of extreme poverty by bringing both these segments of population into the fold of financial inclusion. 

My work as the CEO of NowNow digital systems is dedicated to providing the underbanked and unbanked population an access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way. NowNow’s digital wallet is a first step toward broader financial inclusion since a transaction account allows people to store money, and send and receive payments. With our continuous addition of new features on the platform, NowNow serves as a gateway to various other financial services!

To enhance the penetration of an all-inclusive digital and Financial ecosystem, I also founded AfriOne Ltd. Which specializes in the manufacturing of all kinds of mobile devices in Nigeria and now is expanding its footprint in Equitorial Guinea, Angola and other African nations. AfriOne has been instrumental in strengthening the technology, employment and manufacturing capabilities of several communities in Africa.

Co-Founder & CEO

Sahir Berry

Sahir Berry of NowNow: The Fintech Journey to Empower Africa's Underserved

The Fintech Journey to Empower Africa's Underserved

Staff Writer

Challenges & Barriers for Fintech Adoption in Africa

Africa as the Next Major Frontier: Challenges & Barriers for Fintech in Africa

The Drivers for Fintech Adoption in Africa

Africa as the Next Major Frontier: The Drivers for Fintech in Africa

Unveiling the Future of Fintech: Three Key Trends Shaping the Industry

Future Fintech Trends

Essential Graphs for the Fintech Market in Africa

6 Graphs That You Need to Know about the Fintech Market Landscape in Africa

What Are the 6 Fintechs Unicorn from Africa?

Meet the Fintechs Dominating Africa’s Unicorn List

10 Graphs That Will Explain the Fintech Opportunity and Challenge in Africa

Here Are the 10 Graphs That Will Help Explain the Fintech Opportunity and Challenge in Africa

The future of fintech may well be in Africa... Here's why

The future of fintech may well be in Africa.

We are a team of passionate Researchers, Data Junkies, and Story-Tellers that believe there is not enough quality business insights and compelling data analysis available in the marketplace, told in the formats users want. We want to give an insider's look into the industries, businesses and economies that are changing the world today, so our users can become inspired, empowered and equipped to run their businesses as best they can.

Lucidity Insights Research Team

Infobytes

Saudi Arabia

Growth of Mobile Money Accounts 2014 vs 2021

Mobile Money Account Growth in Africa, 2014 vs 2021

Volume and Value of Fintech Deals in the Top 3 Markets in Africa: Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa

Volume and Value of Fintech Deals in the Top 3 Markets in Africa

Ranking Movement Within 5 Top Fintech Markets, by Value Raised, Shows Nigeria has Consistently Held the Top Position

Ranking Movement Within 5 Top Fintech Markets, by Value Raised

Take a Look at These Top 4 African Markets by Overall Funding VS Fintech Funding Over the Past 5 Years

Top 4 African Markets by Overall Funding VS Fintech Funding Over the Past 5 Years

Top 10 Most Funded Nigerian Startups in 2022

Top 10 Most Funded Startups in Nigeria (2022)

The Global and African Mobile Money Growth in 2020

Sub-Saharan Africa Constitutes >64% Of Total Global Mobile Money

Smartphone Penetration Rates of the Top 20 Markets in Africa

Smartphone Penetration Rates in Africa

Global Fintech Funding, Q4 2022: Africa’s Fintech Ecosystem Is Small and Growing

Global Fintech Venture Capital Deal Flow, Q4 2022

Rapid Growth in Africa's Fintech Deal Sizes: 2018 to Q3 2022

World's Median Fintech Deal Sizes: from 2018 to Q3 2022

Breaking Down The Number of Fintech Scaleups Compared to Total Scaleups in Africa

Number of Scaleups in Africa vs Number of Fintech Scaleups

Internet Penetration Rates of the Top 20 Markets in Africa

Internet Penetration Rates in Africa

Literacy Rates Across Top 10 Countries in Africa

Literacy Rates in Africa

Language Diversity and Fintech Adoption in Africa: the Challenges and Opportunities Across Eleven Key Markets

Language Diversity Across 11 Key Markets in Africa

Exploring Africa's Market Makers: Which Nations Stand as the Continent's Richest?

Ranking Africa's Wealthiest Countries

Africa's Amazing Potential for Scalability: Africa Population by Country (2021)

Africa's Amazing Potential for Scalability

Anamika  is a change maker with 15+ years of management consulting, project management, event management and research experience. Having worked for Accenture for over a decade, she began her career overseeing change management and digital learning and development programs across Fortune 500 clients globally. 
Today, Anamika works with select clients on large-scale change programs, and writes whenever she can. As a life-long learner, and lover of writing, she found herself becoming an excellent interviewer, story-teller and speaker. She is passionate about giving voice to startups, projects and new technologies that are nearing break-through. She is curious about the intersection between technology, human behaviour and wellness, and is often most intrigued by startups that help people live better and happier lives.  
Anamika received her BA in Economics and Chinese Studies from the University of Nottingham. She is London born and bred, and splits her time between London and Dubai. She is a certified HIIT instructor, NLP coach and world traveler with a love of experimental cooking.

Researcher

Anamika Patel

Aby Sam Thomas

Ashok is a storyteller who uses numbers as his medium. He loves to crunch data, analyze it, and investigate deeper questions until the stories begin to emerge on their own. Ashok comes from a finance and consulting background, having worked in the strategy consulting and private equity fields across the Middle East and Emerging Asia for over 15 years, prior to becoming a business writer. When it comes to tech stories, Ashok has a penchant for startups in the fintech, B2B SaaS, AI and ML spaces. He loves writing about Venture Capital, M&A and the general investor landscape of startup ecosystems.
Ashok holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as a diploma in Finance. He speaks English and Hindi fluently.

Ashok Raman

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The Evolution of Saudi Arabia's Startup Ecosystem 2010-2022

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Primed for Growth: Cloud Kitchens in the GCC

<a href="https://lucidityinsights.com/topics/fintech">Fintech</a> has come a long way from its emergence, just 25 years ago. It was 1998 when PayPal was established as one of the first modern-day global payments companies. As of the end of 2022, there exists well over 26,000 fintech companies globally of which 312 are unicorns, each worth over US $1 billion. Whether you&rsquo;re moving money between accounts on your banking app, sending money to friends to split the dinner bill, trading stocks online, or paying for your coffee with one-tap of your phone &ndash; all of this and more, falls under the fintech, or financial technologies, umbrella.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The growth of <a href="https://lucidityinsights.com/topics/fintech">fintech</a> and its global adoption has been steadily gaining over the years, and there have been many drivers. A significant turning point was the 2008 global financial crisis, which dramatically shifted consumer trust, perception and behavior, and increased demand for alternatives to the traditional financial banking system &ndash; fueling fintech innovations, including blockchain technology and digital currencies.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The general acceleration of smartphone ownership and the digitization witnessed across industries, sectors and markets over the past decade has also significantly contributed to more demand for fintech. Large fortune 500 companies that were operating as traditional brick-and-mortar businesses a decade ago pushed for plug-and-play fintech and e-commerce solutions that would take their businesses online. This trend was only accelerated by the pandemic, forcing even smaller businesses that had never contemplated online sales to digitally transform overnight. As a result, fintech has exploded.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Kareem Aziz, Global Head of Digital Payments Investments at the <a href="https://www.ifc.org/">IFC</a> says, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re really at a pivotal point in history, where for the first-time in human history, financial services is morphing from a vertical sector, to becoming an omnipresent horizontally integrated solution that will become an underlying infrastructure across every sector imaginable.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Fintech funding hit its record high in 2021, when the sector attracted US $131.5 billion in funding, accounting for 21% of the total global VC funding pie. Despite an overall shrinking of VC funding in 2022, fintech was remains the most funded category claiming 18% of total funding dispersed (US $75.2 billion).&nbsp;&nbsp;

Though African fintech startups only account for 2% of global fintech funding today, there are a number of drivers pointing towards Africa becoming the next great frontier of fintech. One tell-tale sign is that one-third (&gt;34%) of all scaleups in Africa are fintechs. Another is that out of the 7 unicorns birthed out of Africa to date, 6 are fintechs. Interswitch, OPay, and Flutterwave from Nigeria, Fawry from Egypt, Wave from Senegal, and Chipper Cash have all shown that unicorns can be born out of addressing financial inclusion on the African continent. Egypt&rsquo;s Fawry has even blazed a trail for what a successful IPO might look like.&nbsp;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="africa fintech scale up" src="https://d1477w6a38me2o.cloudfront.net/uploads/fintech-africa/articles/launch/1.png" />&nbsp;One of the world&rsquo;s most valuable privately held companies is fintech unicorn <a href="https://stripe.com/">Stripe</a>, currently valued at over US $95 billion; Stripe&rsquo;s US $200 million acquisition of Nigeria&rsquo;s payments platform PayStack in 2020 has largely been credited for turning international investors&rsquo; attention towards fintechs in the African entrepreneurial ecosystem.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The <a href="https://lucidityinsights.com/reports/the-future-of-fintech-in-africa">special report</a> details how African fintechs not only have one of the largest total addressable markets in the world; but is also critical in achieving global financial inclusion and empowering previously unbanked populations. The potential for real-world impact of a successful fintech operating in Africa seems to be unmatched by anywhere else in the world. Olayinka David-West, Associate Dean of <a href="https://www.lbs.edu.ng/">Lagos Business School</a> and inclusive finance advocate says, &ldquo;Show me a fintech that will cater specifically to the rural farmer, or a merchant trader, or a bus driver, and I will show you a fintech that will not only do well, but truly do some good.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;

<a href="https://lucidityinsights.com/reports/the-future-of-fintech-in-africa/read"><img src="https://d1477w6a38me2o.cloudfront.net/uploads/fintech-africa/articles/launch/banner-2.png" /></a>&nbsp;Africa is home to 1.4 billion people, or nearly 1/5th of the world&rsquo;s population. 70% of Africa&rsquo;s economy or GDP is fueled by micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs) and entrepreneurs. In fact, 80% of jobs on the continent are created by this MSME segment. Despite the continent being built and fueled largely by micro-entrepreneurs, less than half of these business-owners have access to financial services such as bank loans to help them scale their businesses. Though significant strides have been made in the last decade towards onboarding millions of unbanked individuals through mobile banking and other fintech solutions &ndash; still 57% of the general African population remains unbanked.&nbsp;&nbsp;

But herein lies both the challenge and the opportunity. Of those that are &ldquo;unbanked&rdquo;, it seems fintechs are paving the way to reach them. The incumbent banks are doing little to stop them, and fintechs seem more agile and better equipped to innovate financial products designed around individual use cases. As Walter Akpani, Managing Director and CEO of <a href="https://www.providusbank.com/">Providus Bank</a> says, &ldquo;It is our view that Fintechs have come to stay as significant players in the financial services ecosystem. They solve real problems that incumbents are too slow to address, and they are quick at responding to customers&rsquo; changing preferences.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<img alt="mobile money account growth" src="https://d1477w6a38me2o.cloudfront.net/uploads/fintech-africa/articles/launch/2.png" />Today, 11 sub-Saharan African countries have more adults in possession of a mobile money accounts than a financial institution account. This trend is expected to continue according to Mark Elliott, Division President of Sub-Saharan Africa at <a href="https://www.mastercard.com/">Mastercard</a>. &ldquo;Development in infrastructure is important and the deployment of 5G in markets like South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Botswana &ndash; though still in its infancy &ndash; bodes well for the continent&rsquo;s future fintech progress.&rdquo; The hope is that further fintech expansion can occur when internet becomes more affordable and accessible to more segments of Africa&rsquo;s population.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<img alt="smartphone penetration rate in africa" src="https://d1477w6a38me2o.cloudfront.net/uploads/fintech-africa/articles/launch/3.png" />The <a href="https://lucidityinsights.com/reports/the-future-of-fintech-in-africa">special report</a> identifies Africa&rsquo;s three dominant fintech hubs: namely Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt; these three countries are home to 62% of all fintech scaleups in Africa &ndash; scaleups are startups that have raised US $1 million or more in funding. These three countries also command nearly half (over 46%) of the entire continent&rsquo;s GDP. Kenya and Ghana round out the continent&rsquo;s Top 5 fintech markets.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<img alt="fintech funding in africa" src="https://d1477w6a38me2o.cloudfront.net/uploads/fintech-africa/articles/launch/4.png" />In 2020, Africa&rsquo;s total financial services market revenue totaled US $150 billion. By 2025, that figure is expected to reach over US $230 billion. No matter how you cut it, that&rsquo;s no small pie. Building a fintech solution that can onboard even a fraction of the &gt;780 million unbanked or underbanked African population can make big business. Capturing just 1% of this market would garner you 8 million customers.&nbsp;&nbsp;

And there are many fintech success stories coming out of Africa, and some are even expanding globally beyond the continent. Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, co-founders of a mobility fintech startup called <a href="https://www.moove.io/">Moove</a> are just one example. &ldquo;Moove was born out of the urgent need to solve the problem of mobility entrepreneurs in Lagos who, despite working for years, still didn&rsquo;t own their cars (which they drove for Uber and other mobility platforms) due to a lack of access to credit,&rdquo; says Delano.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Odunsi adds, &ldquo;we subsequently discovered that this problem was faced by millions of other mobility entrepreneurs around the world, preventing them from moving up the socioeconomic pyramid.&rdquo; Moove&rsquo;s mission is to financially empower every mobility entrepreneur in the world by welcoming them into the global financial system using Moove&rsquo;s proprietary credit scoring products and fintech platform. &ldquo;We think Moove&rsquo;s success demonstrates that there is still tremendous potential for growth and investment on the continent,&rdquo; says Odunsi.&nbsp;

Sahir Berry and Mahesh Nair are co-founders of Nigerian fintech <a href="https://nownow.ng/">NowNow</a>, a digital bank focused on providing consumers and merchants with fintech solutions tailored to their needs.&nbsp; &ldquo;Meeting the needs of the SMEs is critical on a macroeconomic level,&rdquo; says Berry. &ldquo;SMEs and micro-businesses are enormous drivers of economic growth across Africa, but the majority lack access to the tools and financial services they need to thrive.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;

&ldquo;Managing working capital within small businesses are challenging. If we can offer MSME owners an opportunity to pay for their inventory in installments, it could be a game-changer,&rdquo; explains Nair.&nbsp;

Beyond the current opportunity that already exists today, is the incredible pace of growth presented by Africa. Nigeria alone is home to over 213 million people, and economists believe that Nigeria will become the second most populous country in the world by the turn of the century &ndash; reaching nearly 550 million by 2100; falling in line just behind India, and surpassing China&rsquo;s shrinking demographics. Today, Nigeria is already Africa&rsquo;s largest economy, and the 27th in the world in terms of purchasing power parity. Nigeria&rsquo;s economy is roughly the same size of that of Austria&rsquo;s, and is already the number one fintech market in Africa, attracting the most venture capital funding and producing the most fintech startups and unicorns on the continent.&nbsp;

Matthew Francis, Chief Strategy and Investment Officer at <a href="https://www.nownow.ng">NowNow</a> says, &ldquo;We see more and more investors getting excited about the fintech opportunity in Africa. Ultimately, we think the African fintech opportunity is too big to ignore.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<h3>To read more about the drivers, barriers and the opportunity of fintech in Africa, as well as strides made towards financial inclusion &ndash; read the full report <a href="https://lucidityinsights.com/reports/the-future-of-fintech-in-africa">here</a>.&nbsp;</h3>

&nbsp;

<a href="https://lucidityinsights.com/reports/the-future-of-fintech-in-africa/read"><img src="https://d1477w6a38me2o.cloudfront.net/uploads/fintech-africa/articles/launch/banner-3.png" /></a>

&nbsp;

Spotlights

Providus Bank, the Bank Supporting Fintechs in Nigeria

Providus Bank: The Bank Supporting Fintechs in Nigeria

Olayinka David-West, Associate Dean of the Lagos Business School: Achieving Financial Inclusion Will Require a New Kind of Customer-Obsessed Fintech

Olayinka David-West: Achieving Financial Inclusion Will Require a New Kind of Customer-Obsessed Fintech

Moove: Bringing Financial Inclusion to Mobility Entrepreneurs in Africa and the World

Moove.io: Financial Inclusion for Mobility Entrepreneurs

In Conversation with Mark Elliott, on Mastercard’s Role in Fostering Fintech in Africa

Mastercard’s Role in Fostering Fintech in Africa

IFC (International Finance Corporation) on Fostering Financial Inclusion via Fintech Investments in Africa