Africa’s fintech sector is a powerful engine for financial inclusion, providing essential financial services to millions who were previously unbanked or underbanked. The number of active fintech companies on the continent surged to 1,263 in 2024, a remarkable increase from just 450 in 2020. This explosive growth is heavily concentrated in key hubs like Nigeria and South Africa, which together host nearly half of these firms. The dominance of digital financial services, with payments and lending being the most common products, is actively democratizing financial access at a rate far exceeding the reach of traditional banking models. The rise of these digital platforms bypasses the need for costly physical branches and extensive paperwork, directly addressing a core constraint to traditional financial access for a vast, geographically dispersed population. This growth is also driven by the increasing number of Africans with internet access, with 51% of Sub-Saharan Africans owning smartphones in 2024, a figure projected to reach 88% by 2030.
As these services become more widespread, they create new opportunities for entrepreneurship and broader economic activity, laying the foundation for a more inclusive digital economy. For instance, the South African digital bank, TymeBank, has leveraged an innovative kiosk-based onboarding system to simplify account opening for millions of people, with a survey revealing that 73% of customers experienced an improvement in their financial well-being after joining. Similarly, the Nigerian fintech Moniepoint achieved unicorn status in 2024 by deploying a network of over one million agents with point-of-sale terminals, extending financial services to more than 33 million people in underserved rural and semi-urban areas. These examples illustrate how the sector is not just an isolated industry but the foundational infrastructure that enables broader economic empowerment, acting as a crucial enabler for entrepreneurship, business scaling, and value addition—core pillars of Africa’s economic transformation agenda.
