When MTN launched MoMo Payment Service Bank in Nigeria in 2022, the telecom giant had every reason to be confident. It had already built successful mobile money operations in Ghana and Uganda, where it had turned its vast subscriber base into a thriving fintech business. In Ghana, nearly two-thirds of MTN’s customers now have active mobile money wallets.

Nigeria was supposed to be the crown jewel. Instead, it has become the headache.

The company announced this week that it has appointed Bode Abifarin, the former chief operating officer of Flutterwave, as the new managing director and chief executive of MoMo PSB, effective September 1. It is the latest in a series of moves by MTN to fix a business that has consistently underperformed in its most important market.

Abifarin brings more than 23 years of experience across financial services, consulting and digital payments. She spent 15 years at KPMG, rising to associate director in management consulting, before joining Flutterwave in 2018. At the Nigerian fintech unicorn, she helped scale the business across multiple African markets, establishing operating models and strengthening regulatory engagement.

She inherits a business in distress. MTN Nigeria recorded a NGN 62.56 B (USD 46.7 M) impairment on its fintech investments in its 2025 financial statements, including MoMo PSB and Yello Digital Financial Services. An independent valuation by Deloitte placed the combined market value of the units at about NGN 40.39 B (~USD 30 M), far below their carrying value of roughly NGN 107.95 B. The company described the fintech units as loss-making.

The user numbers tell a similar story. MoMo PSB ended 2025 with about 3.7 million active wallets, a fraction of MTN’s long-term ambition of reaching 30 to 40 million users. Active wallets had declined 55.6% year-on-year to 2.1 million in the first quarter of 2025 before recovering.

While active wallets climbed to 5 million in the first half of 2026, an 88.8% increase from a year earlier, overall fintech revenue fell 7.2% to NGN 77.2 B (USD 57.6 M) during the period, weighed down by the temporary suspension of its airtime lending service, which makes up much of MTN’s fintech revenue in Nigeria. The airtime lending freeze dragged fintech revenue down 72.4% year-on-year to NGN 12.99 B (USD 9.5 M) in the second quarter of 2026.

The gap between MTN’s performance in Nigeria and other markets is quite telling. In Ghana, the separation of mobile money into a standalone business has been relatively smooth. In Nigeria, telcos have struggled to sell mobile money as independent fintech firms including OPay and Moniepoint have moved faster and captured a dominant share of the market. MTN’s payment service bank licence, obtained from the central bank in 2022, restricts the company from offering loans and other services that competitors provide freely.

MTN is now restructuring its fintech operations on multiple fronts. In April, MTN Nigeria announced plans to sell a 60% stake in MoMo PSB and Yello Digital Financial Services to MTN Group for NGN 152.06 B. The company is also pursuing a structural separation of its Nigerian and Ugandan fintech operations to attract outside investment. In June, MTN Group Fintech announced a technology partnership with Ant International, the global arm of the Chinese fintech giant behind Alipay, to rebuild the MoMo platform into a super app, starting with Nigeria in the third quarter of 2026.

Serigne Dioum, chief executive of MTN Group Fintech, said Abifarin brings an “exceptional blend of strategic leadership, execution excellence and deep fintech expertise” to the role. Michael Ajukwu, chairman of the MoMo PSB board, said her experience in payments and digital transformation made her well positioned to lead the bank.

Abifarin described her appointment as an opportunity to expand access to digital financial services in Nigeria. “Financial inclusion remains one of the greatest opportunities to unlock economic empowerment and prosperity for millions of people,” she said.

Her task is to execute across multiple fronts simultaneously. Between integrating the Ant International partnership and navigating the restructuring that will transfer majority ownership to MTN Group, to competing against nimbler fintech rivals that have already built commanding market positions, Abifarin has her hands full.

At Flutterwave, she helped build one of Africa’s most valuable fintech companies from the ground up. At MoMo PSB, she inherits a business with a vast telecom subscriber base to draw on but a track record of failing to convert that advantage into meaningful market share.

Weeks after the head of the Nigeria Exchange Group (NGX) namechecked some of Nigeria’s biggest fintechs eyeing IPOs elsewhere while nudging them to also consider local listings, one of Nigeria’s largest fintech companies, OPay, is reportedly weighing listing its shares on the Nigerian Exchange, a move that could give local investors a stake in a business that generates nearly 90% of its revenue from the country.

The proposed local listing comes as OPay also prepares for a potential initial public offering in the United States that could value the SoftBank-backed company at about USD 4 B. It remains unclear whether the Nigerian listing would happen alongside the US IPO or later under a dual-listing structure. OPay has not disclosed the timing, size or valuation of the proposed share sale.

The development follows a push by Nigerian Exchange Group Chief Executive Officer Temi Popoola, who in early August urged President Bola Tinubu to support measures encouraging major companies generating substantial revenue in Nigeria to list locally. Popoola specifically cited OPay and PalmPay as fintech companies considering overseas listings and argued that Nigerian investors should have the opportunity to participate in the wealth being created by such businesses.

“While we encourage free and open markets, let’s make sure our locals can also benefit. As they list abroad, they should also list in our country,” Popoola was quoted as saying following the meeting with the president.

Despite launching a dedicated Technology Board in 2022 to attract high-growth tech companies, the NGX has not recorded a single tech IPO to date. A report by TLP Advisory found that more than half of surveyed startups lacked clarity on the listing process, while currency mismatches and concerns over market liquidity have deterred founders from going public locally.

OPay’s financial performance strengthens its case for a public listing. The company processed USD 358 B in gross transaction value in 2025, more than double the USD 166.2 B recorded a year earlier. Revenue surged 161% to USD 536.3 M, while operating income turned positive at USD 107.1 M, per Nairametrics, compared with a USD 35.1 M loss in 2024. Nigeria accounted for 88.1% of that revenue.

Nigeria has produced several large fintech companies with substantial transaction volumes and international backing, but most remain privately held. The absence of major fintech listings has left domestic investors with limited ways to gain direct exposure to the sector. An OPay listing could establish a pathway for other large Nigerian technology companies to tap local capital markets as they scale.

PalmPay, another fintech named by Popoola, is exploring a potential Hong Kong IPO that could value it at more than USD 1 B, Bloomberg reported. The company, backed by Transsion and MediaTek, is seeking about USD 200 M in funding ahead of the listing. Like OPay, PalmPay has built substantial operations in Nigeria but is looking abroad for public capital.

Analysts say a dual-listing framework could provide a compromise, allowing companies to access international capital while giving Nigerian investors a stake. But structural barriers remain. A significant share of Nigeria’s startups raise capital in dollars but earn revenue in naira, creating a currency mismatch that discourages local listings.

A Nigerian listing could provide OPay and others with access to the investors in the market where most of its business is generated, while maintaining its ambitions for international capital through a US offering. It could also test whether Nigeria’s stock market can finally attract the high-growth technology businesses that have long preferred deeper pools of capital overseas.

Feature Image Credits: Kora

Moniepoint’s rather swift decision to shutter MonieWorld after just 14 months shows it’s bravely come to terms with the humbling reality that a USD 250 B payments machine at home does not automatically translate into victory abroad.

The Nigerian fintech unicorn, backed by Google and Visa and valued at over USD 1 B, announced on Tuesday it was winding down its UK-to-Nigeria remittance service. MonieWorld stopped accepting transactions on August 15 and will shut completely on September 15. The move comes despite a reported 70% increase in monthly transaction volume among UK diaspora users.

The decision is being couched in capital discipline. Moniepoint’s core business in Nigeria processed NGN 412 T (USD 294 B) in transaction value across more than 14 billion transactions in 2025, powering eight out of every 10 in-person payments nationwide. It disbursed over NGN 1 T in loans to small businesses. The company is Nigeria’s largest merchant acquirer, a position built on volume, distribution and deep integration into the informal economy.

By contrast, MonieWorld entered one of the world’s most competitive consumer finance corridors. Nigeria received an estimated USD 23 B in diaspora remittances in 2025, with the UK corridor moving between USD 3.5 B and USD 4.5 B. But the route is crowded with established players including LemFi, which processes over USD 1 B in monthly transaction volume, NALA, Wise, WorldRemit and Flutterwave’s Send App.

Moniepoint’s UK entry was expensive. The company incorporated Moniepoint GB in February 2024 and spent about GBP 1.2 M on administrative expenses, technology and compliance staffing. It also committed a USD 2.5 M equity deposit to acquire Bancom Europe Ltd, an FCA-authorised electronic money institution. For the 2024 financial year, Moniepoint GB reported a USD 1.2 M loss.

“Having validated its cross-border infrastructure and delivered value to thousands of diaspora users, the Group is now redirecting this technical, capital, and operational architecture toward its primary African markets,” the company said in a statement.

The remittance business is defined by trust and habit. Customers who have sent money through the same app for years do not switch lightly. Acquiring new users is expensive; retaining them, once the product works, is relatively cheap, as one analysis pointed out. Early movers like LemFi and NALA have spent years building brand recognition and institutional backing.

Moniepoint’s retreat reflects a broader recalibration among African fintechs. After testing international diaspora channels, many are concentrating resources where distribution, infrastructure and unit economics are already proven. Meanwhile, established UK fintechs such as Revolut and Monzo are increasingly setting their compass towards African markets.

Moniepoint says it aims to deepen its position in Nigeria and Kenya, where it recently acquired a 78% stake in Sumac Microfinance Bank. Most employees working on MonieWorld will be redeployed within the group while the FCA licence and Bancom infrastructure are reportedly being marketed to potential buyers.

The company’s core business, meanwhile, continues to print scale; processing the majority of Nigeria’s in-person payments, serving over 6 million businesses and banking more customers than many traditional lenders. For Moniepoint, there was rice at home all along. The UK buffet, it turns out, was not worth the fight.

Nigeria’s smartphone market is undergoing a sharp reversal as rising device prices push consumers back to basic feature phones, with industry data showing the country’s smartphone shipments fell 11% in the second quarter of 2026 while demand for cheaper handsets surged.

The decline marks a significant shift in Africa’s largest mobile market, where affordability has emerged as the single biggest barrier to internet access. According to GSMA, the global telecom industry body, 63% of Nigerians remain offline not because of a lack of network coverage but because they cannot afford smartphones.

Smartphone prices have been climbing steadily as rising memory and semiconductor costs, driven partly by surging demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure, squeeze manufacturers’ margins. The average selling price of smartphones in Africa increased by USD 41.00 year-on-year to USD 202.00 in the second quarter, reversing a trend of aggressive price reductions seen in 2025.

“We’re witnessing a forced upward shift in the African market,” said Manish Pravinkumar, principal analyst at Omdia. “Vendors can no longer profitably manufacture USD 75.00 smartphones, while consumers who need connectivity are increasingly having to stretch their budgets towards USD 200-plus devices”.

The impact has been most severe at the lower end of the market. Shipments of smartphones priced below USD 100.00 fell 34% year-on-year across Africa, representing a decline of nearly 3 million devices. In Nigeria, where more than four in five smartphones sold in 2025 were priced below USD 200.00, the shift has been particularly pronounced.

Retailers report a growing exodus from smartphones to basic feature phones, known locally as “palasa” or torchlight phones. Unlike smartphones, these devices rely strictly on traditional voice calls and text messages, protecting users from costly data consumption.

“I had to drop my Android phone in my drawer,” said Idris Abubakar, a 35-year-old auto mechanic in Lagos. “Every time I turn on my mobile data, the apps swallow NGN 1 K worth of data within hours on background updates. I cannot choose between feeding my family and feeding a smartphone”.

The price pressure shows no signs of easing. Analysts project smartphone prices in Nigeria could rise by another 15% to 30% through the remainder of 2026 as component costs remain elevated. Memory components account for 15% to 20% of the bill of materials for a mid-range device, and RAM prices have surged by as much as 250% recently.

The market leader Transsion, whose brands include TECNO, Infinix and itel, saw shipments fall 14% in the second quarter due to its heavy exposure to the sub-USD 100.00 segment. Samsung, by contrast, grew shipments 15% as the market shifted toward higher price bands.

Device financing has emerged as a critical lifeline. M-KOPA, a pan-African fintech company, has deployed more than NGN 231 B (USD 170 M) in credit to over one million Nigerians since entering the market in 2019, enabling 290,000 people to own a smartphone for the first time.

“Once you finance solar home solutions, you start to ask yourself what you missed,” said Babajide Duroshola, M-KOPA Nigeria’s general manager. “That is when you figure out that everybody needs to be in the digital economy, and access to a smartphone solves this”.

Other players are following suit. Vivo signed a financing agreement with Credit Direct in April, allowing customers to pay a 20% deposit and spread the balance over six months. The GSMA, in partnership with mobile operators, is also piloting USD 40.00 4G smartphones across six African markets, including Nigeria.

But financing spreads the cost over time rather than reducing the underlying price. For millions of Nigerians, the calculation is no cakewalk. A USD 100.00 smartphone currently costs about NGN 135 K, nearly two times the minimum wage of NGN 70 K (USD 52.00).

Omdia forecasts a 26% decline in Africa’s smartphone shipments for the full year of 2026, ending three years of consecutive growth, making things complicated for both manufacturers and consumers who have come to rely on smartphones as the gateway to banking, commerce and work.

Feature Image Credits Times Hugher Education

The image of a lone migrant worker wiring money home once a month is giving way to something more complex. A new report from Zepz, the payments group behind WorldRemit and Sendwave, shows that 70% of senders now support multiple recipients and more than one in eight send money to multiple countries, reflecting a fundamental shift in how cross-border payments are used across Africa.

The findings, based on five years of data from more than 5.5 million unique senders, challenge the traditional view of remittances as emergency support. Almost half of all transfers are under USD 50.00, and nearly three-quarters fall below USD 100.00. They are regular, recurring transfers that have become as routine as paying a utility bill.

Adults aged 25 to 34 now represent the largest sender group, accounting for 30% of all active users. Having grown up with mobile banking, this generation expects cross-border finance to match the speed and simplicity of the apps they use daily. Women have also reached near parity, accounting for 45.9% of transactions and representing 49.9% of senders aged 35 to 44. The gap between what men and women send per transfer has more than halved in five years.

The numbers are reshaping how African economies think about diaspora finance. Sub-Saharan Africa received USD 54 B in officially recorded remittances in 2023, according to the World Bank, surpassing foreign direct investment and official development assistance in many countries. Nigeria receives roughly USD 19-20 B annually, while Kenya and Ghana each receive about USD 4-5 B. In smaller economies like The Gambia and Lesotho, remittances exceed 20% of GDP.

But the infrastructure that moves this money is changing. Traditional remittance fees to Africa have historically ranged from 7% to 12% per transaction. Fintech platforms including Sendwave, LemFi and Grey have compressed costs to between 1% and 3%, delivering funds directly to mobile wallets used by millions of Africans without bank accounts. LemFi now handles more than USD 1 B in monthly payment volume.

Zepz, which transferred USD 17 B for customers in 2025, is pushing further into digital infrastructure. In October 2025, it launched the Sendwave Wallet, built on the Solana blockchain, allowing customers to hold and send USDC stablecoins across more than 100 countries. The wallet lets users store value in digital dollars rather than converting immediately to local currency, a feature that matters in regions facing currency volatility.

The company has partnered with Fireblocks to scale stablecoin settlement and with TRM Labs for blockchain intelligence to manage financial crime risk. In January 2026, Zepz acquired a credit product from Pomelo, extending into lending and cards.

Governments are taking notice. Nigeria’s Central Bank is targeting USD 1 B in monthly diaspora remittances by the end of 2026, up from more than USD 600 M currently. The bank has removed regulatory bottlenecks for international money transfer operators and adopted a “free entry and free exit” foreign exchange approach. Kenya’s central bank, meanwhile, has revised its 2026 remittance forecast down to USD 5.11 B, citing pressure from the Middle East conflict and a new 15% VAT on transfers in Saudi Arabia.

The shift is also generational. Older remitters, those aged 55 and over, send an average of 36.8 transfers a year, more than three per month. But it is the younger cohort entering the market that are shaping its future, bringing expectations of speed, transparency and integration with the digital financial tools they already use.

One commercial transporter who lives in Lagos says he hasn’t had to visit a mechanic for repairs since he took his commercial tricycle (locally known as keke) with persistent engine problems to a service centre run by a fledgling startup known as Swap that ripped out the old piece of junk and replaced the engine with an electric motor.

That’s according to a recent report by TechCabal, which revealed that Swap converted it for free. Now, twice a day, he rides to a battery swapping station in Magodo, swaps a dead battery for a charged one in under two minutes, and gets back to work.

He’s one of just over 300 keke drivers in Lagos who have made the switch, according to Swap, which also claims more than 100,000 tricycles are on a waitlist. That gap signals the state of Nigeria’s embryonic conversion landscape.

Across the country, a patchwork of startups is trying to do something that sounds simple on paper and turns out to be brutally complicated in practice. They are taking fossil fuel engines out of three-wheelers, motorcycles and minibuses and replacing them with electric motors; keeping the body and changing the heart, so to speak.

The economics make sense. Petrol prices in Nigeria have climbed from around NGN 185.00 (USD 0.13) per litre before the subsidy removal in mid-2023 to around NGN 1.3 K (almost a dollar) as of today.

For commercial tricycle riders who buy fuel every single day, the shock was immediate. Swap reports operating cost reductions of 30 to 45 percent for converted tricycles, driven by lower energy costs and the complete elimination of engine maintenance. A converted tricycle running on batteries can generate up to NGN 16 K (11.87) in profit after about 14 trips, with a battery swap costing roughly NGN 3 K (USD 2.23).

But the gap between 300 conversions and a 100,000-vehicle waitlist is where the real puzzle lies.

The conversion playbook

Ecowaka, founded in 2024 by Prince Ojeabulu, offers both brand-new electric tricycles from NGN 2.6 M and conversion solutions for existing petrol-powered kekes from NGN 2.3 M. In March 2025, the company partnered with SiAECOSYS, a global leader in rear axle and powertrain solutions, to advance electric retrofit systems for tricycles. The collaboration combines SiAECOSYS’s engineering expertise with Ecowaka’s local insights to create scalable solutions for high-usage urban transport.

In May 2025, Ecowaka and climate-finance firm Rivy unveiled a flexible financing model using Nigeria’s growing Buy Now, Pay Later market, projected to reach USD 2.61 B by 2030. The partnership began with a pilot deployment of five electric vehicles.

“We are thrilled to partner with Rivy to make electric mobility more accessible,” Ojeabulu said. “By working with Rivy, we are opening new opportunities for drivers, fleet owners, business operators and cooperatives to embrace electric vehicles without financial strain.”

Mataji Express has taken a different route. The company partnered with the National Automotive Design and Development Council to convert petrol-powered tricycles to electric. The converted tricycles operate using five 12-volt, 20-amp batteries generating 1.2 kilowatts of power. Charging costs approximately NGN 270.00 (USD 0.20) to NGN 275.00 under Nigeria’s Band A electricity tariff and provides a travel range of up to 90 kilometres.

Dan Iliya, Mataji Express coordinator, said the motivation was simple. “We import and assemble for now, and we have been licensed by NADDC to import and assemble electric vehicles in Nigeria. We have signed an MOU with our foreign partners to do this with about 40% local content.”

The company has already converted 18 tricycles and is seeking NADDC’s evaluation. Conversion currently costs NGN 1.6 M (USD 1.186 K) per tricycle, but Iliya expects the price to drop as the company increases local production.

Qore, backed by Sterling Bank, is approaching the problem at scale. Launched with Nigeria’s first publicly available EV charging station in Lagos, Qore offers purchase and financing of electric vehicles, conversion of fossil-fuel-powered engines, battery-swapping services and more. Sterling Bank CEO Abubakar Suleiman called the launch “a significant milestone” in powering Nigeria’s transportation sector with renewable energy.

“Qore will revolutionise the very idea of how we power movement by providing clean, sustainable and cost-effective options,” Suleiman said.

The bus problem

For larger vehicles, the economics shift. Phoenix Renewables, founded by Mustapha Gajibo in Maiduguri, started by converting petrol-powered minibuses into solar-powered electric vehicles. Gajibo dropped out of university in his third year to run the company. His first project was converting internal-combustion engines of commonly used vehicles: seven-seat minibuses and motorised tricycles.

The company now maintains a fleet of a dozen electric minibuses that can cover 150 kilometres on a charge and cost about USD 1.50 to power to full capacity. Gajibo and his cofounder designed a 60-kilowatt-hour solar-powered charging station in Maiduguri. In 2021, they introduced a 12-seat bus built from locally sourced materials with a range of 212 kilometres, chargeable in 35 minutes via an integrated solar system. In a recent test run, the buses transported 35,000 passengers in Maiduguri in one month.

State and local governments are paying attention. In early 2022, the governor of Borno State awarded Gajibo NGN 20 M ( for research and development, plus 15,000 square metres of land for a factory. The federal government has expressed interest in USD 14.8 K) having his company build electric patrol vehicles for the police and armed forces.

But Gajibo’s ambition to roll out 500 units across eight Nigerian cities faces the same constraint that limits every conversion startup in the country.

The infrastructure trap

Electricity is a major constraint. At Swap’s station in Ikorodu, a fast-growing town on Lagos’s northeastern outskirts, the station had been without electricity since January 2026. To charge batteries, the station runs two diesel generators that barely stop. The station serves 150 drivers and charges between 90 and 100 batteries.

To keep batteries available, Swap buys diesel in bulk. At the current retail price of NGN 1.75 K naira per litre, that comes to roughly NGN 487.5 K a day just to keep the batteries charged. Over a 30-day month, that runs about NGN 14.6 M to 19.5 M, reports TechCabal.

It’s a bit of an irony that startups are converting petrol engines to electric motors, then burning diesel to charge the batteries that replace the petrol.

Nigeria’s grid is perennially unreliable. Band A electricity tariffs exist on paper, but in practice, power outages are routine. The startups know this. They are building battery-swapping networks precisely to sidestep the grid. Swap stations exchange a depleted battery for a charged one in under five minutes. VoltTrac Africa, which launched an electric mobility ecosystem in Kano in July 2026, is building solar-powered photovoltaic carport charging infrastructure. Ecowaka’s vehicles offer a five-minute battery swap and 45-minute station charging.

But solar requires sun, batteries require charging, and charging requires power. Until the grid stabilises, the conversion economy seems likely to run on diesel as much as it runs on electricity.

The numbers behind the shift

Nigeria has set ambitious targets. The Energy Transition Plan commits to electric vehicles constituting 60% of the total market by 2050 and 100% by 2060. The government aims to produce 30% of the electric vehicles used in the country locally. NADDC has unveiled national occupational standards for the conversion, calibration and maintenance of electric vehicles.

But the on-the-ground numbers tell a different story. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 electric vehicles are on Nigeria’s roads as of 2025. Swap has converted just over 300. Ecowaka launched with a pilot of five vehicles. Phoenix Renewables maintains a fleet of a dozen minibuses.

The gap between ambition and reality is a reflection of the scale of the problem. Nigeria has millions of fossil fuel vehicles on its roads. Converting them one by one is painstaking work; each conversion requires a kit, a technician, a battery, a charging point and a driver willing to trust a new technology.

The startups are not waiting for the government to solve the infrastructure problem but are building their own. Swap is positioning its swap stations to serve other EV operators, embedding itself as foundational infrastructure for Nigeria’s broader electrification effort. Ecowaka is building charging and battery-swap stations designed to minimise downtime. Phoenix Renewables is designing solar-powered charging stations.

The conversion economy looks more retrofit than revolution, happening vehicle by vehicle, station by station, driver by driver. It is slow, expensive and dependent on diesel generators in places where the grid has failed. But it is also the only game in town for commercial riders like the one from earlier who has not visited a mechanic since his keke went electric, and for whom it is already working.

Feature Image Credit: DW

In East Africa, a logistics company had the money, having raised more capital than its direct competitor. Yet, it haemorrhaged clients. Not on price, as it turns out, but on reliability. The competitor, operating on thinner margins, simply routed its trucks better, managed working capital with tighter discipline, and hired more selectively.

“No amount of additional capital could fix a scheduling and last-mile execution problem,” says Nico Christoforou, General Partner at Lighthouse Capital, an operator-led private equity firm currently raising USD 50 M for its inaugural fund, as it pushes to combine growth capital with hands-on operational expertise to help businesses scale sustainably.

That moment changed how he views the African market. For two decades, Christoforou operated under “a naïve assumption that capital liquidity was as easily accessible in the rest of Africa as it was in his South African investment banking days.” He learned the hard way that it isn’t. Banks in the region prefer lending to large corporates and governments. The small and medium-sized businesses that actually drive employment are left to fend for themselves.

But Christoforou now operates under a somewhat counterintuitive philosophy based on the conviction that while funding is scarce, the deeper constraint is operational rot. “We mistakenly assumed our money alone would be the differentiator,” he admits. “It wasn’t.”

The old private equity playbook—load up on debt, slash costs, and flip the asset—is dying in Africa, he tells WT. Christoforou argues it is not just ineffective but also reckless. Currency volatility alone can erase leverage-driven returns. He points to the grim math of a 30% to 40% currency drop in a single year, which has sunk otherwise sound businesses that took on hard-currency debt against local-currency revenue. Beyond that, the infrastructure for exits, such as IPOs, strategic trade sales, or secondary buyouts at scale, simply does not exist in most African markets.

“Investors who still show up assuming they can financially engineer their way to a 3x return in five years, without contributing to the operational work, are increasingly the ones stuck holding underperforming assets they can’t exit,” he says.

What works now is boring, he says, suggesting route planning, cash conversion cycles, and governance upgrades.

***

Christoforou tells the story of a fintech founder processing millions of dollars in transactions with a team of just eight people and no institutional backing. When asked what kept him going, the founder did not talk about market size or total addressable revenue. He talked about his mother. About proving that the school fees she paid when she had nothing to spare had been worth it. For Christoforou, that personal stake is a more reliable indicator of success than a polished pitch deck.

He looks for founders who can explain their business model in five minutes to a stranger. He wants to see a leadership team that can politely disagree with the founder in a room. “A business that only functions when the founder is present is not an investable business; it’s a job with a boss,” he says.

The red flags are equally bare. He walks away from founders who attribute every past failure to external macro factors without acknowledging their own missteps. Evasiveness about numbers during due diligence is an immediate deal-breaker. “They will very likely be even more evasive after,” he notes.

One of the most persistent misconceptions Christoforou encounters is the idea that “Africa” is a single market. He still gets asked to comment on “African risk” as if a consumer goods company in Nairobi shares a regulatory environment with a digital services firm in South Africa. They do not.

Kenya’s capital markets look nothing like Nigeria’s, and both look nothing like the francophone West African monetary union. International investors who apply a flat “Africa risk premium” to every deal either overprice viable opportunities out of existence or underprice the real, country-specific hazards, he warns.

***

Christoforou’s advice to founders is brutally practical: build your governance infrastructure before you need it. The way he sees it, founders who wait until due diligence to formalise their books and board structures are negotiating from a position of weakness. “Every gap discovered during diligence becomes leverage for the investor to reprice or add protective terms,” he warns.

He advises founders to walk into a capital raise with audit-ready financials and a functioning board, even an informal advisory one, because institutional capital rewards businesses that look institutional-ready before the money arrives, not after.

As for the future, Christoforou is not chasing flashy consumer apps. He is looking at the “boring” middle layer of fintech—card processing, identity verification, and B2B payment rails for informal trade. He also sees structural tailwinds in healthcare distribution and climate-linked agribusiness, where development finance institutions and commercial equity are increasingly co-investing in the same deals. It is a blended capital stack where the return case and the development case genuinely overlap.

But his underlying message is lucid. He asserts that in a market where capital is expensive, exits are unpredictable, and regulations shift overnight, the investor who survives is not the one with the deepest pockets but the one who knows how to fix a broken supply chain.

“Investing is about people,” Christoforou says. “Their dreams, their ambitions, and their desire to build something that outlasts them. The investors who understand that tend to make better decisions than the ones treating Africa as an asset class to be modelled rather than a place to be understood.”

Africa’s fintech champions are preparing for a landmark moment. By the end of 2026, as many as four of the continent’s largest digital financial services companies could be publicly traded. Yet only one of them is listing at home.

OPay, the Nigerian payments platform backed by SoftBank, has hired Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase for a US initial public offering targeting a USD 4 B valuation. PalmPay, its Nigerian rival backed by Transsion and MediaTek, is preparing for a Hong Kong IPO that could raise about USD 200 M at a valuation above USD 1 B. Airtel Money, the mobile money arm of Airtel Africa, has chosen the London Stock Exchange for a listing expected to value the business at roughly USD 10 B. All three are targeting listings between September and November this year.

The outlier is MNT-Halan, the Egyptian fintech unicorn, which is planning an IPO on the Egyptian Exchange with an expected valuation of between USD 900 M and USD 1 B. It is working with Citigroup and EFG Hermes. That makes it the only one of the four choosing a local bourse.

The contrast raises a question that should worry policymakers across the continent. Why are Africa’s most successful fintech companies, built on African consumers and African transaction volumes, taking their equity stories to New York, London and Hong Kong instead of Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg?

The answer lies in a combination of structural barriers that African exchanges have yet to overcome. The Nigerian Exchange has recorded zero startup IPOs as high-growth firms founded on local innovation have other ideas. A survey found that 76.5% of Nigeria-funded startups hold dollar capital, making exchange rate instability a critical factor in listing decisions. Companies generating revenue in naira but seeking dollar-denominated exits face a currency mismatch that local markets cannot easily resolve.

Liquidity is another obstacle. African stock exchanges face low market depth and limited participation, which constrains their role in capital mobilisation. The NGX, for instance, does not have the liquidity to support a major fintech listing. Private valuations, meanwhile, are often disconnected from what public markets will pay. For a company like OPay targeting USD 4 B, the gap between what global investors might offer and what the NGX could support is substantial.

Governance requirements also play a role. The NGX requires cumulative pre-tax profits of NGN 600 M (~USD 440 K) over one to three fiscal years. For fintechs that have prioritised scale and market share over near-term profitability, this presents a significant hurdle.

Adesoji Solanke, head of fintech investment banking origination at Absa Securities UK, has noted that listing locally can offer advantages such as familiarity with local investors and less stringent listing requirements. But for companies with global ambitions and dollar-denominated capital structures, the pull of deeper pools of capital, higher valuations and more established regulatory frameworks for technology firms has proven stronger.

Other experts have argued that foreign listings often shift valuation and that major fintech listings on the NGX could attract new categories of investors. The argument is persuasive. But it has not been enough to keep OPay, PalmPay or Airtel Money at home.

The irony is that these companies are not abandoning Africa but rather doubling down across the continent. OPay serves more than 50 million users and processes over USD 12 B in monthly transactions. PalmPay has more than 35 million registered users and became profitable in 2025. Airtel Money serves more than 54 million customers across 14 African markets. Their growth has been driven by African demand. Their IPOs will be powered by foreign capital.

MNT-Halan’s decision to list in Cairo offers a potential template. If successful, it could demonstrate that local exchanges can host fintech unicorns. But one listing hardly solves the underlying problems of currency risk, liquidity constraints and governance frameworks.

The consequence is that African investors, including the millions of ordinary people who use these platforms every day, may not get the chance to own a piece of them as the wealth being created in Africa’s digital economy is increasingly realised on foreign exchanges.

Nigerian crypto startup, Busha, went live with Signal this month, a licensed prediction market platform where users can trade on outcomes across sports, crypto, politics, culture, and economics. Luno, a UK-headquartered crypto exchange with a significant African footprint, launched its own structured Crypto Prediction Market product in Nigeria and South Africa in March, allowing users to bet on whether Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Dogecoin and XRP will finish above or below a target price within 24 hours. Both moves come as the broader crypto industry grapples with the emerging reality that prediction markets are eating into the revenue that exchanges have long derived from spot trading.

It’s the latest sign that prediction markets, a type of trading once confined to specialist forums and political betting sites that allows people to stake on just about anything (from major real-world events to random niche interests), are gaining ground in the continent’s economic heavyweights, where native prediction markets upstarts like Bayse Markets (formerly Gowagr) have also taken root.

As evidence of this emerging picture, global research firm Bernstein cut its 2026 crypto trading revenue estimate for trading giant Robinhood by 49% in July, citing weaker-than-expected industry volumes in the first half of the year. At the same time, the firm projected that Robinhood would generate roughly USD 150 M in prediction market revenue in the second quarter, the first period in which that figure would surpass its crypto trading revenue. Robinhood later reported USD 156 M from event contracts against USD 100 M from crypto trading, which fell 38% year-over-year.

In keeping with the trend, Binance integrated prediction markets into its wallet in April via Predict.fun on BNB Smart Chain. Coinbase rolled out prediction markets to all U.S. customers in January through a partnership with Kalshi. Gemini and DraftKings have also moved into the space. Monthly trading volume across prediction platforms surged from under USD 100 M two years ago to more than USD 20 B. Kalshi alone generated over USD 148 B in trading volume during 2026, representing 85.5% of its lifetime volume. Polymarket’s monthly volume climbed from about USD 1.2 B in 2025 to more than USD 20 B in early 2026.

African exchanges are sensing new opportunity amid a lull in their native offerings. Crypto trading volumes have softened across the board, and prediction markets offer a new revenue stream with lower regulatory friction than traditional derivatives. Luno’s product is structured as a peer-to-peer market where users bet against each other using USDC, with the exchange earning buy and sell fees ranging from 0.03% to 3%. Busha’s Signal is licensed by the Lagos State Lottery and Gaming Authority, a regulatory pathway that avoids the uncertainty surrounding crypto spot trading in Nigeria.

“Prediction Markets are a natural evolution of how our customers already engage with cryptocurrency,” Ayotunde Alabi, Luno Nigeria country manager, noted. “Many of our customers closely follow price movements, form views on where markets are headed, and look for structured ways to act on that knowledge”.

Busha CEO Michael Adeyeri framed Signal as an extension of how sports fans already engage with the game. “Millions of sports fans already make predictions every week, who wins the league, who scores first or which team gets knocked out,” he said. “Signal gives those predictions a place to evolve in real time, creating a picture of how fans collectively see the game unfolding”.

The broader implication is that prediction markets are no longer a niche curiosity. Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani argue that broker-dealers, incumbent exchanges and crypto platforms are competing for a fee pool worth more than USD 70 B across prediction markets, perpetual futures, tokenised equities and compute-linked contracts. The firm expects prediction market revenue to grow at a 64% compound annual rate through 2028, reaching USD 1.7 B.

The bet is that prediction markets can offset declining trading revenue for African crypto exchanges while keeping users within their ecosystems. Luno’s product is the first step in a broader derivatives strategy that includes perpetuals and futures later this year. Busha’s Signal reflects a similar ambition to expand “beyond digital asset trading into new forms of market participation,” according to the company.

Whether prediction markets will eventually overtake crypto trading as the dominant revenue driver for African exchanges remains an open question. But it is clear that as one category declines and another surges, exchanges are repositioning themselves not as crypto platforms but as broader financial marketplaces.

Feature Image Credit: Coin Bureau

Two years ago, the idea that South Africans would pay for just about anything with a flick of their finger seemed like something out of a fantasy novel. A ring that never needs charging, works with any tap-to-pay terminal, and lets one leave their wallet and phone at home was the kind of pitch that would have been politely dismissed at a fintech meetup.

That ring is now on thousands of fingers across the country, and VezoPay, the startup behind it, has gone on a charm offensive to get the banks to play ball, and while it’s had some luck with some, several hold out. The startup now faces a tricky test to change that.

VezoPay has gone live with Investec and Absa, taking its roster of banking partners to four in under a year. A fifth major retail bank is expected to follow before the end of 2026. FNB and RMB Private Bank came on board in October last year. The company, founded by Jake Pinkus and Lawrence Baker, launched its first rings in July 2024.

VezoPay claims a waiting list of about 35,000 people whose banks are not yet supported. A large chunk of them are customers of an unnamed major retail bank due to launch later this year. It is a clear sign of demand, but also a constraint the company cannot control.

The founders say the bottleneck is not manufacturing or technology but bank onboarding. Each institution runs its own internal governance and approval process, followed by a separate South African Reserve Bank sign-off. FNB’s approval took roughly nine months; Investec’s took about four. And the process has gotten harder, not easier.

Banks are now asking for penetration and stress testing and, in some cases, live international transactions to demonstrate that funds can be traced end to end.

Investec’s rollout offered the clearest sign of demand. The bank ran a discount campaign for private clients, and VezoPay recorded hundreds of sales in the first few days, skewed unusually towards the premium gold models. That suggests the early adopters are not just tech enthusiasts but people who see the ring as a status symbol.

The product line-up now includes three families: the X, a ceramic ring; the Classic, in stainless steel; and the gold Signature, which has been reworked from 21-carat to 18-carat after buyers complained it caught between their fingers. Prices range from ZAR 2,999 for the ceramic X-Ring Slim to ZAR 9,250 for the gold Signature.

Beyond South Africa

VezoPay’s shareholder register tells its own story. Naspers South Africa CEO Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa invested early through the Three Birds group. PayFast founder Jonathan Smit came in as investor and adviser in early 2025. The most recent round brought in two former managing directors of listed cybersecurity firm Mimecast. The Three Birds investment is now carried at a multiple of roughly 10 times its original value.

Beyond South Africa, two banks in Mauritius are testing the product, with beta programmes under way in three other African markets. VezoPay says its relationships with Visa and Mastercard have opened doors to issuers elsewhere on the continent.

The fundamental question is whether VezoPay can convert its 35,000-person waiting list into actual revenue before the next wave of wearable payment competitors arrives. Apple has already launched Tap to Pay on iPhone in South Africa. Samsung Pay, Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay already support Investec cards. The window for a standalone payment ring to establish itself as the default wearable payment method may not stay open indefinitely.