African banks are accelerating investment in artificial intelligence even as nearly one in three institutions cannot say whether the technology is generating value, a new report has found, highlighting a growing disconnect between spending and accountability as lenders race to modernise.

A survey of 277 senior banking executives across 37 African countries found that 83.2% of banks plan to increase AI investment over the next 12 months, according to the report by African Banker magazine in partnership with Backbase, a global leader in AI-powered banking platforms. Yet only 67.1% of institutions formally measure the return on those investments.

More strikingly, 82% of banks without any formal AI return-on-investment (ROI) framework still plan to expand spending, suggesting many lenders are committing more capital before proving existing projects are paying off. The findings point to a new phase in Africa’s AI adoption, where banks are shifting from experimentation to deployment under increasing pressure from boards and investors to justify technology spending.

“The question is no longer whether to invest in AI, but what the return on that investment is,” the report said, arguing that rising cloud costs, foreign exchange pressures and tighter data localisation rules are forcing banks to become more disciplined about digital investments.

Banks that do measure returns are largely being rewarded. Among institutions with formal ROI frameworks, 85.1% reported that AI projects either met or exceeded their original financial projections, while more than half said returns surpassed expectations altogether. Only about 15% said AI investments had failed to deliver anticipated value.

The report suggests that the problem is therefore not AI itself, but how banks govern and evaluate it. Institutions working with third-party AI vendors measure returns at more than twice the rate of those building entirely in-house, at 71.7% versus 31%, a gap the report calls the “partner premium”.

One of the more surprising findings is that senior executives responsible for approving technology spending are among the least likely to measure its success. Finance departments recorded the strongest accountability, with 82% tracking AI returns, followed by technology and innovation teams at 63.1%. Executive leadership measured ROI only 50% of the time, while risk and compliance teams performed even worse at 48.1%, despite being heavily involved in implementing AI systems.

Legacy architecture remains the sector’s single biggest constraint. Half of all respondents cited integration with existing systems as the primary internal obstacle. On average, 55.7 cents of every IT dollar spent by African banks goes toward maintaining legacy systems, even as nearly half of respondents rate those same systems as highly or fully capable of supporting AI, a gap the report identifies as a potential blind spot.

“African banks don’t have an AI problem; they have an architecture problem,” said Aymen Daoud, Regional Vice President for Africa at Backbase. “The institutions that treat integration as the plumbing to fix before scaling agents will spend less, comply more easily, and be the ones still standing when the current generation of models is inevitably replaced by the next”.

Fraud detection and transaction monitoring emerged as the most impactful AI use case, followed by credit scoring and alternative assessment for thin-file customers, an application the report identifies as a credible route to bringing more of Sub-Saharan Africa’s unbanked population into the formal financial system.

Despite the challenges, sentiment about AI’s role in African banking remains strongly positive, with 86.9% of respondents positive or very positive about its role over the next two years.

LemFi, the financial platform for people living and working across borders, has partnered with BVNK, an enterprise-grade stablecoin payments infrastructure company, to rebuild the rails beneath the diaspora economy. The partnership moves LemFi’s cross-border settlement onto BVNK’s regulated stablecoin payment infrastructure, delivering near-instant value transfers between markets at a fraction of the cost, without changing anything about how customers experience the app.

For the two million people who rely on LemFi to move money between the

In the UK, Europe, Australia, and North America, and their beneficiaries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the rails have always been the real problem. International payments still move through correspondent banking and SWIFT chains that can take days to settle and add cost at every hop. LemFi’s answer is to rebuild those rails on the fastest infrastructure available: with BVNK, settlement is routed over regulated stablecoin rails behind the scenes, then paid out in local currency at the destination.

The economics matter for the communities LemFi serves. According to the World Bank, the global average cost of sending remittances was 6.36% in the third quarter of 2025 — more than twice the United Nationsʼ Sustainable Development Goal target of 3% by 2030. Meeting the 3% target alone would return roughly US$20 billion a year to families worldwide. Faster, cheaper settlement is one of the most direct levers to close that gap, and it is exactly the layer that LemFi and BVNK are rebuilding.

The move rides a broader shift as stablecoins expand from the margins of crypto into mainstream payment infrastructure. Real-world stablecoin payment volumes reached US$7.4 trillion over the last 12 months, and analysts expect stablecoins to grow from around 3% of the cross-border payments market today to as much as 20% within a decade. For LemFi, the BVNK partnership operationalises the stablecoin settlement strategy it set out in May 2026, when Tether made a strategic investment in the company to power stablecoin-driven remittances across emerging markets.

Ridwan Olalere, co-founder and CEO of LemFi, said: ^“

^“The money that crosses borders still moves on rails built decades ago— slow, expensive, and quietly taxing the people who can least afford it.

We’re rebuilding those rails. Stablecoins let us settle near instantly and take out cost; BVNK gives us the infrastructure to do it safely and at scale.

Itʼs the start of something bigger that the financial system

and the diaspora economy should have had all along.^”

Crucially, the upgrade is invisible to the people who use it. Customers never touch a stablecoin, hold a crypto balance, or leave their local currency; the technology does its work in the background. By design, it is modern infrastructure under a familiar experience; this is what lets LemFi capture the efficiency of stablecoins while keeping the trust, simplicity and compliance its customers depend on. For LemFi, the partnership is as much about trust as it is about speed.

BVNK operates a compliance-first, enterprise-grade platform with 25+ licences and regulatory approvals across the UK, Europe, and the US as well as coverage in more than 130 countries. Its infrastructure already powers stablecoin payments for some of the worldʼs leading global enterprises.

Chris Harmse, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at BVNK, said

“Stablecoins are becoming the base layer for how the world moves money, and remittances are one of the clearest places that shift changes lives. LemFi has built deep trust with the communities it serves across Africa, Asia and beyond. Powering their settlement with our infrastructure means faster, cheaper transfers reach real families — exactly the kind of impact we built BVNK to deliver.”

The partnership is the latest step in LemFi’s evolution from a remittance specialist into a full-stack financial platform for globally mobile communities, spanning payments, credit, savings, and connectivity. It builds on a year of momentum that includes LemFi’s selection of London as its global headquarters, backed by a £100 million UK investment commitment, and a widening regulatory footprint across the UK, Europe, North America, Australia and key corridors in Africa and Asia.

Stablecoin settlement will roll out progressively across LemFi’s corridors and its broader product suite on a market-by-market basis, only where local central bank and regulatory frameworks support it.

Nigeria’s national grid collapsed at least four times in 2025, and another two times in the first two months of 2026. In January alone, it failed twice within a week. Power generation crashed from 3,825 megawatts to 39 megawatts in minutes, plunging a country of over 200 million people into darkness yet again.

By one count, the grid has collapsed more than 100 times over the past decade. The national grid, a patchwork of ageing infrastructure and insufficient generation, has failed so often that its collapses are barely newsworthy anymore.

But for a growing number of Nigerians, the grid’s fragility is no longer the crisis it once was, thanks to the emergence of battery rentals, a new kind of alternative that is being embraced in parts of the country.

MOPO, an Africa-focused battery rental company backed by Octopus Energy Group, just announced a USD 75 M agreement with Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency to expand its pay-per-use battery rental operations nationwide by 2030. The deal begins with a pilot program this year before scaling across the country over the next four years.

MOPO, which calls itself the largest battery rental provider on the continent, operates solar-powered charging hubs managed by local agents. Customers rent rechargeable batteries by the hour or day, use them to power phones, lights, televisions, fans and small appliances, then return them when depleted. In Lagos, residents rent power banks for just NGN 300.00 (USD 0.22) daily.

The model enables people to pay for electricity when they need it, for as long as they need it, without resorting to expensive solar panels and inverters, or generators guzzling petrol at well over NGN 1 K naira per litre these days.

Battery rental services are not a long-term solution to Nigeria’s energy crisis but a pragmatic response to an immediate problem. Some might say they are painkillers, not vitamins; treating a chronic condition rather than curing it.

“We solve a lot of the problems that mini-grids and solar home systems struggle with,” MOPO Chief Operating Officer Luke Burras told Bloomberg. “We rent batteries to customers for hours. We’re not asking them to buy an asset in the case of solar home systems, and we’re not asking investors to place a huge bet on their future usage as with mini-grids”.

Solar home systems require a significant upfront investment, often beyond the reach of low-income households. Mini-grids demand long-term commitment and sustained demand. Battery rental requires neither. It offers immediate, flexible and affordable access to electricity, priced in units that match how people actually earn and spend.

***

MOPO has completed more than 32 million battery rentals across six countries, including Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company grew from 67 employees in 2022 to 126 by July 2026. It has attracted investment from Octopus Energy, Norway’s Norfund and the International Finance Corporation.

Other players are entering the market. In May, bPOWERd expanded into Lagos, launching battery rental hubs at Mobil fuel stations. Daily rates start from NGN 1.5 K (USD 1.10) for a 300Wh battery and NGN 3 K (USD 2.19) for a 1,000Wh battery, enough to power essential household appliances. The company claims its service is 70% cheaper than running a petrol generator.

Nigeria has the world’s largest electricity access deficit. Despite being one of Africa’s biggest economies, the country’s grid is unreliable and underfunded. Generators have become the default backup for millions, but fuel costs have risen sharply, making them increasingly unaffordable. Meanwhile, the adoption of home solar power systems remains hamstrung by huge upfront costs.

Battery rental sits in the gap between the grid and the generator. Providers say it offers reliability without ownership, flexibility without commitment, and clean energy without the emissions.

The market seems to agree. Climate tech has surpassed fintech as Africa’s top venture-funding sector, accounting for nearly 40% of annual investment in 2025. Battery rental is one of the clearest expressions of that shift. And while it’s hardly a cure for Nigeria’s energy crisis, it’s proving useful for millions of Nigerians who see it as a reliable source of power in a country where the grid fails as often as it works.

Airtel Africa is finally moving forward with the long-awaited listing of its mobile money unit, and banks are circling.

The company has revived plans to spin off Airtel Money in an initial public offering that could value the business at around USD 10 B and raise roughly USD 1.5 B. The listing is now expected in the second half of 2026, with London emerging as the preferred venue after the company abandoned plans for a Middle Eastern exchange.

The renewed push follows repeated delays. Airtel Africa had originally planned to list Airtel Money by 2025, then pushed the timeline to early 2026, and later postponed again, citing market uncertainties stemming from the Middle East conflict. The war-driven costs and volatile conditions made the first half of 2026 untenable.

But the geopolitical tensions that delayed the IPO also shaped its final destination. With the Middle East engulfed in conflict, London’s deep capital markets and broad international investor base became the clear choice. The company had been exploring exchanges in the UAE and elsewhere in Europe before settling on the UK capital.

Now, the momentum is building. Airtel Africa has been hiring more investment banks to join the syndicate managing the IPO, with Citi already leading the transaction. The additional appointments suggest preparations have entered a more advanced stage after months of uncertainty.

Airtel Money serves more than 54 million customers across Africa and generated USD 1.35 B in revenue in 2026. The business is highly profitable, with an EBITDA margin of 50.8%, exceeding the 49.3% margin of Airtel’s broader African operations. Mobile money penetration remains low at just 29% of Airtel Africa’s 184 million mobile subscribers, leaving significant room for growth, particularly in Nigeria, where only 2.7 million customers currently use the service.

If completed at the expected valuation, the IPO would be London’s largest new listing since Wise debuted in 2021 with a valuation of nearly GBP 9 B (~USD 11 B). Only a handful of companies have floated on the London Stock Exchange in the first half of 2026, making Airtel Money’s planned IPO a potentially landmark transaction.

Unlocking the value of Airtel Money through a separate listing could help investors better appreciate the strength of its fintech operations, which have often been overshadowed by its core telecommunications business. The company has been under pressure to list the unit, with a deadline approaching that could trigger a USD 515 M buyback if the IPO does not proceed.

Airtel Money’s journey to the public markets has been long and uncertain. But after three years of delays, shifting geopolitical dynamics, and persistent investor interest, the listing now appears to be within reach.

A Kenyan borrower took a KES 177.72 K (USD 1.375 K) loan from African Capital Limited, a licensed digital lender. When additional charges were applied, the balance climbed to KES 500 K (USD 3.869 K). The Competition Authority of Kenya had to intervene to get the disputed charges waived.

In another case, a borrower said Mwananchi Credit repossessed his vehicle two months after issuing a loan, despite an unresolved contractual dispute.

These are not complaints about rogue, unregulated lenders. These are cases involving licensed digital credit providers operating under the supervision of the Central Bank of Kenya.

Kenya amended its laws in 2022 to bring digital lenders under formal supervision, following years of public outrage over excessive borrowing costs, misuse of personal data and aggressive debt collection. The central bank has since licensed 252 digital credit providers, with more than 500 applications still pending. Licensed providers have issued 8.3 million loans worth KES 150 B (USD 1.16 B).

The complaints have not stopped. Rather, they have surged. The Competition Authority of Kenya recorded 355 complaints against digital lenders in the year ending June 2025, up from 67 the previous year. That made digital lenders the largest source of consumer complaints in financial services, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all grievances in the sector.

The authority attributed the trend to misleading representations, undisclosed charges and unilateral changes to loan terms. “This sector has, over the years, continued to record a high number of cases,” the watchdog said.

The financial services sector accounted for 564 of the 915 consumer complaints received during the year, or 61.6% of all cases. Microfinance institutions accounted for 113 complaints, while Saccos and commercial banks recorded 68 and 28, respectively.

The data suggests a disconnect between regulatory intent and market reality. Kenya’s digital lending market is now one of Africa’s largest testing grounds for app-based credit, with millions of borrowers accessing loans through apps and USSD codes.

The speed and convenience are real, but so is the information asymmetry built into the business model. Apps are polished and fast. The actual terms of the loan — the true interest rate, the penalties, the fees — are often disclosed late or not at all.

The central bank has acknowledged the gap. It barred unregulated digital lenders from forwarding the names of loan defaulters to credit reference bureaus and stopped the blacklisting of borrowers owing less than KES 1 K. The withdrawal of approvals for unregulated credit-only lenders, the bank said, was “in response to numerous public complaints over misuse of the credit information system”.

Ir appears at the moment that the licensing regime is expanding oversight but has yet to eliminate disputes between lenders and borrowers. The question is whether more licences will translate into better conduct, or whether the industry will continue to grow faster than the rules meant to govern it.

Uber has agreed to acquire German food delivery group Delivery Hero for USD 14.8 B, a deal that would give the ride-hailing giant control of two of Africa’s largest delivery platforms and dramatically expand its footprint on the continent.

Under the terms of the all-cash offer, Uber will acquire Delivery Hero’s operations in 50 markets, including the Glovo and Talabat brands, which have established strong positions across multiple African countries. Glovo operates in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, while Talabat has a significant presence in Egypt and across North Africa.

The deal, which values Delivery Hero at EUR 41.50 per share, would create a combined platform spanning 99 markets with USD 236 B in gross bookings. Uber expects the transaction to close in the second half of 2027, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

For Africa, the acquisition could mark a turning point in the continent’s rapidly growing food and grocery delivery market. Uber currently operates ride-hailing services in several African cities but has a limited delivery footprint. By inheriting Glovo’s established merchant networks and last-mile logistics, the company would gain an immediate foothold in some of the continent’s fastest-growing digital economies.

“Through Glovo, Delivery Hero has established a strong presence across several African markets,” an analysis of the deal noted. “If the acquisition receives regulatory approval, Uber would inherit one of the continent’s largest food and grocery delivery platforms, significantly expanding its footprint beyond ride-hailing.”

The acquisition comes as Africa’s digital commerce sector accelerates, driven by rising smartphone adoption, expanding mobile payments and growing demand for on-demand services. The African food delivery market alone is projected to reach billions of dollars in the coming years, making the continent a strategic priority for global delivery companies.

However, the deal is expected to face antitrust scrutiny in several jurisdictions because of the combined company’s market share. To ease regulatory concerns, Delivery Hero has agreed to divest operations in 14 overlapping markets to New York-based investment firm SSW Partners for approximately USD 1.6 B before the transaction closes. Glovo’s operations in Spain and Poland are among the businesses being sold.

Delivery Hero’s management board and supervisory board have unanimously supported the offer and intend to recommend that shareholders tender their shares. Prosus, which holds the second-largest position in Delivery Hero, has agreed to participate by tendering its approximately 17% stake.

Uber has committed to keeping Delivery Hero’s Berlin headquarters open and leaving its German workforce unchanged through at least 2029. For consumers and businesses across Africa, no immediate changes have been announced. Glovo and Talabat will continue operating as usual until the transaction is completed.

But industry analysts expect Uber to eventually evaluate opportunities to integrate technology platforms, logistics operations and merchant services across its delivery businesses. The combined company would have the scale to invest more heavily in logistics technology, route optimisation and merchant partnerships, potentially reshaping Africa’s delivery landscape.

Douglas Kendyson has spent the last decade building Selar into Africa’s largest creator platform, a bootstrapped company that now hosts over 400,000 creators across Nigeria and 13 other African countries. In 2025 alone, Selar paid out roughly NGN 18 B (USD 12.86 M) to creators. The company, according to Kendyson, its founder and CEO, has never missed a tax obligation, fulfilling nearly nine-figure payments last year.

None of that appears to matter to the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service.

In an open letter posted on X Wednesday, Kendyson publicly accused the LIRS of hounding Selar over a backdated 5% royalty fee on all sales. He appealed to Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy, Hannatu Musa Musawa, to intervene.

“We are a software company,” he wrote. “There is no reason LIRS is hounding us for a backdated 5 percent royalty fee on all sales when we’ve clearly explained our line of business”.

Hi @jidesanwoolu, @hanneymusawa

I’m deeply disappointed in your @lirs_govng team hounding Selar in the name of claiming creator royalty taxes. I turn 30 in Oct and I’ve spent the last 10 years building Selar, so this is what the youth mean by policies being created to crush…

— Douglas Kendyson (@KendysonD) July 15, 2026

Selar operates as an e-commerce and software platform enabling creators to sell digital products such as e-books, online courses, event tickets and other content. The company charges a commission of around 4%, a significant portion of which is paid to payment providers.

After payment gateway charges, Selar’s net margin is 1% to 3%. Kendyson has argued that Selar’s business model is identical to Shopify or Teachable; software platforms that charge transaction fees, not royalty-collecting intermediaries.

The LIRS appears to see it differently. Under Nigeria’s new tax regime, which took effect in January 2026, personal income tax for creators is administered by state authorities and applies to income from digital products, royalties, commissions and sponsorships. Distinguishing between royalty payments and service or commission income is crucial, as royalties for the use of intellectual property often face specific treatment, including potential withholding tax obligations.

***

If the LIRS succeeds in reclassifying Selar’s transaction fees as royalties, the implications would be significant. Kendyson, not one to shy away from taking matters public having notably locked horns with a rival earlier this year, framed the demand as a tax on Selar’s entire creator base rather than on the company itself. A 5% royalty fee would force the platform to raise its pricing and pass the cost down to creators who already pay personal income tax on their earnings. “No creator company in the world charges as high as even 5%,” Kendyson wrote.

The dispute highlights a growing tension between Nigeria’s ambitions for its creator economy and the tax enforcement practices that threaten to undermine it. The federal government has targeted the creative sector to contribute significantly to GDP, with some projections aiming for USD 100 B by 2030. Yet Selar, the platform that has done more than any other to build that economy, is being treated as a revenue source as opposed to a partner in growth.

Kendyson noted that Selar’s Smart Hustle anti-fraud initiative, a corporate social responsibility contribution to consumer protection, should arguably qualify the company for tax rebates. Instead, he said time and money that should be spent investing in the business and contributing to GDP are being consumed by a “long back and forth”.

The LIRS has not publicly responded to Kendyson’s accusations. But the dispute lands at a sensitive moment for the agency, which has been publicly credited with helping push Lagos State’s internally generated revenue past NGN 1.3 T (~USD 942 M) in 2024.

The outcome of this dispute, for Selar’s 400,000 creators and the thousands more waiting to join the platform, will determine whether Nigeria’s creator economy can continue to grow, or whether it will be stifled by a tax regime that hardly considers how it works.

Bank of Ghana officials and police officers were seen at the headquarters of Ghanaian fintech, Zeepay, on Tuesday, a day after the central bank revoked the fintech firm’s electronic money licence in a dramatic escalation of one of the country’s most high-profile fintech collapses.

The Bank of Ghana announced on Tuesday that it had revoked Zeepay’s Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer (DEMI) licence with immediate effect, citing “multiple regulatory breaches” and the company’s “persistent failure to comply with regulatory directives”.

According to the central bank, Zeepay had issued electronic money without maintaining the required corresponding cash backing, creating a negative variance that exposed customers and the broader payment system to significant financial risk.

The company also failed to comply with directives to inject sufficient funds to fully back customer balances and to wind down its electronic money issuance business. The regulator said Zeepay’s continued operation under the licence constituted a threat to the stability of the national payment system.

The revocation is the culmination of a series of mounting legal and financial troubles for a company that had positioned itself as a leader in cross-border payments across more than 20 African markets. In April 2026, the Commercial Division of the High Court ordered Zeepay and its founder and CEO, Andrew Takyi-Appiah, to jointly pay over USD 11.6 M to a customer for failing to execute fund transfers.

The court held Takyi-Appiah personally liable after evidence showed a substantial portion of the disputed funds had been deposited directly into his personal mobile money wallet rather than solely in corporate accounts. Zeepay has publicly pushed back against media coverage, noting the matter is now before the Court of Appeal.

Founded in 2014, Zeepay grew into one of West Africa’s most recognised remittance brands, processing more than 10 million transactions worth over USD 3 B in 2023 alone and raising substantial funding, including last year’s USD 18 M debt facility while expanding across multiple markets. But behind the growth, governance failures were accumulating.

In February 2026, the company’s chief financial officer submitted a resignation letter so blistering that he copied it to the Economic and Organised Crime Office and the Bank of Ghana, citing “material weaknesses and abuse” in treasury operations. Auditors Ernst & Young withdrew from the 2024 audit, citing “serious concerns over the quality and reliability of information”.

Separately, creditor Obsidian Achernar Ltd has filed a winding-up petition against Zeepay over an alleged unpaid debt of USD 1.22 M. In Barbados, the central bank suspended the licence of Zeepay’s subsidiary, Zeemoney, and the subsidiary subsequently applied for voluntary liquidation. The Bank of Ghana had previously fined Zeepay and suspended its forex licence in 2023 over a separate breach.

The Bank of Ghana has advised affected Zeepay wallet holders, including agents and merchants, to contact its support team. Under the Payment Systems and Services Act, a payment service provider whose licence is revoked is required to arrange to pay customers all their electronic money held within ten days.

The Digital Chamber, an industry body representing licensed payment service providers, said the revocation relates to a single institution and should not be interpreted as a reflection of the overall strength of Ghana’s digital finance sector.

When a gang of Boko Haram fighters on motorcycles attacked a military base in northeastern Nigeria a couple of years ago, they were stopped cold by a defensive trench surrounding the complex. They regrouped and tried again. Before launching another assault, they turned to a chatbot.

“We saw in a movie how motorcycles can jump over bridges,” a former Boko Haram commander told Antonia Juelich, a terrorism researcher at Cambridge University. “We used AI to learn how to do this. We gave it information, like what motorcycles we use and the distance we need to jump and so on, and it gave us steps on what we have to do”.

Mechanics modified the motorcycles for faster acceleration. The riders dug their own holes, filled them with broken glass and fire, and practised jumps until they cleared the trench. The attack succeeded.

That account is one of nearly 60 interviews Juelich conducted with 27 former members of Boko Haram and its rival faction, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), in northeastern Nigeria between 2025 and 2026. The study, titled “God has helped us, and so will AI: How the Terrorist Group Boko Haram Uses Frontier AI,” was first reported by The New York Times.

The findings represent the first field-based evidence of AI adoption by an active terrorist organisation. Previous research had focused on propaganda, but Juelich’s work shows Boko Haram has institutionalised AI across its operations. The group has established dedicated AI units staffed with bomb-makers and engineers who analyse chatbot outputs on everything from bomb-making to battlefield tactics.

In some cases, the training was deliberate. Foreign trainers, likely members of the Islamic State network, conducted workshops in northeastern Nigeria where dozens of Boko Haram members learned how to use AI chatbots on laptops pre-installed with VPNs and encryption software. “The terrorists are not waiting for us to make AI safe,” Juelich said..

The study documented use of chatbots, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Meta AI and Chinese company DeepSeek’s chatbot. Fighters asked for advice on repairing weapons, designing improvised explosive devices, improving operational security and even studying battlefield tactics to reduce casualties.

“We mostly used it in three ways: the first one is to learn how to assemble and use guns and how to manufacture bombs,” a former ISWAP commander said. “The second one is for surveillance, like how to improve our surveillance strategies to monitor what is happening in our camps and also to better understand our enemy. According to another former fighter, “There is nothing we haven’t received an answer on”.

Perhaps the most striking example of how quickly the group adapted came from bomb-making. “AI told us what chemicals to put in that made the explosion heavier,” a former commander said.

The study has limitations. The researcher acknowledged that claims could not be independently corroborated due to the secrecy surrounding Boko Haram. The report provides no forensic evidence, platform records or technical data linking the group directly to the AI systems identified.

Still, the findings have unsettled counterterrorism officials. “AI adoption by terrorist groups has been much faster, more extensive and more systematic than we thought,” Juelich told AFP. “But I’m worried about the trajectory, where terrorist groups embrace AI and the safeguards are not strong enough”.

The Boko Haram insurgency, now in its 17th year, has killed more than 35,000 people and displaced over two million. The addition of AI to its arsenal may not create new types of attacks, but it could make existing ones more efficient. “It has the potential to make them much more dangerous because it can make their tactics and their strategies more efficient and more effective,” said Graig Klein, a terrorism expert at Leiden University.

A particularly stressful episode involving some Nigerian car importers from a few years back was the encounter that radicalised Sheriff Adedokun, so to speak.

They had won the auction, beaten the competition, and secured the vehicle. The money was sitting in their naira accounts, and the supplier was waiting. The only thing standing between them and the deal was a payment that had to cross a border before a deadline.

“Watching businesses scramble to find alternative routes, rely on intermediaries or worry about whether a payment would arrive before the deadline made me realise how much unnecessary uncertainty had become part of international trade,” said Adedokun, founder and CEO of Clea, a Nigerian startup using stablecoins to help importers pay foreign suppliers. “It shouldn’t take that much effort for a legitimate business to pay a legitimate supplier.”

His frustration reflects a broader crisis. Cross-border payments into Sub-Saharan Africa cost an average of 8.78% for a USD 200.00 transfer in the first quarter of 2025, nearly three times the United Nations’ target of 3%.

In Nigeria, less than 50% of manufacturers could access foreign exchange from the official window in the third quarter of 2025, despite recent reforms. The manufacturing sector shed 18,935 jobs in the first half of 2025, up 74% from the second half of 2024. About 800 companies shut down last year.

Adedokun’s answer to this mess is Clea, a platform that lets Nigerian importers pay in naira and settle with international suppliers in US dollars within hours, using stablecoins as the settlement rail. Before Clea, Adedokun spent several years building businesses that served customers across different markets, so cross-border payments became part of the day-to-day experience.

“Over time, I realised that moving money internationally is never just about sending funds from one account to another. Every payment sits behind a commercial decision that someone is waiting on. It could be a supplier releasing goods, a business replenishing inventory or a customer expecting delivery,” he told WT.

Adedokun explained that working so closely to those transactions changed his thinking on cross-border payments. “I came to appreciate how much confidence businesses place in the financial system every time they agree to trade. When that confidence is shaken, the effects ripple through the entire business. That perspective has stayed with me and continues to shape how we think about building Clea.”

During its pilot phase, Clea processed over USD 4 M in cross-border transactions. The company is now expanding across all 36 Nigerian states, targeting importers trading with suppliers in the United States, China and the UAE.

***

Clea is one of dozens of African fintechs betting that stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to assets like the US dollar—can bypass a financial system that was never designed for Africa’s trade volumes.

The bet is not without evidence. Between July 2023 and June 2024, Nigeria processed nearly USD 22 B in stablecoin transactions, making it the continent’s largest market. Sub-Saharan Africa received USD 205 B in on-chain value between mid-2024 and mid-2025, a 52% increase from the prior year. Stablecoins now account for 43% of all crypto transaction volume in the region, while deposits in Nigeria have surged 9,000% between 2018 and 2025.

“What convinced me was that we were not looking at stablecoins as speculation. We were looking at them as settlement infrastructure,” Adedokun said. “A lot of the conversation around crypto has been about trading, hype, and price movement. That is not what interested me. What interested me was the ability to move value faster, more transparently, and across borders without waiting days for traditional rails to settle.”

The shift is being noticed at the highest levels. Nigeria’s Central Bank mentioned stablecoins at least 68 times in its newly released Payments System Vision 2028. In October 2025, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Olayemi Cardoso announced the creation of a working group to study how the country could adopt stablecoins. The bank has since reaffirmed its commitment to shaping global regulatory frameworks for digital assets.

This marks a remarkable turn for a regulator that, in February 2021, ordered banks to close accounts associated with crypto transactions and, not that long ago, detained two executives of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

But the path is not straightforward. Regulators remain cautious. South Africa’s central bank governor has warned that stablecoins could undermine monetary sovereignty by allowing users to effectively “manufacture” dollars outside traditional systems. In Central Africa, the regional bank has ruled out dollar-backed stablecoins entirely.

And then there are the banks. “The hardest ‘no’ usually comes from banking or infrastructure partners who see Africa, cross-border payments, and stablecoins in the same sentence and immediately assume the risk is too high,” Adedokun said. “Sometimes they do not even fully understand the use case at first. We are not trying to move anonymous funds. We are helping verified businesses pay verified suppliers, with documentation and audit trails.”

***

That tension between innovation and institutional caution defines the space Clea is trying to occupy. The African Development Bank estimates unmet demand for trade finance in Africa ranged from USD 74 B to USD 92 B in 2024. With African imports exceeding USD 1 T annually, the gap between what businesses need and what the financial system provides is vast.

Adedokun believes the answer lies in treating stablecoins not as a destination but as infrastructure, a step in the evolution of how money moves. “If you look at Africa over the last twenty years, we’ve consistently adopted technologies that make commerce easier,” he said. “Mobile money wasn’t successful because people wanted digital wallets. It succeeded because it solved a real problem. I think stablecoins should be viewed through the same lens.”

The real test, however, is whether this works for the businesses that matter most; the SMEs that cannot afford to wait days for a payment to clear.

“For an importer, sending money abroad is emotional. It is not just a button in an app. It may represent their entire working capital,” Adedokun said. “They need more than a good rate. They need to believe the money will get there, the supplier will recognise it, the documentation will be correct, and someone will support them if there is an issue.”

The tech entrepreneur contends that the importers who sparked his thinking were not looking for a revolution but simply a payment that would arrive on time. Whether stablecoins can deliver that reliably, and whether the regulators and banks will let them, remains the open question.

What is no longer in doubt is that African businesses are already voting with their wallets. Nearly USD 22 B worth of stablecoin transactions in a single year suggests the infrastructure gap is too big to ignore.