Countdown begins for Africa Fintech Summit in Cape Town

Fintech stakeholders from across Africa and the world will converge in Cape Town, South Africa, for the eight Africa Fintech Summit, from 2 to 4 November 2022. The prestigious conference, billed as Africa’s premier fintech event, will be hosted at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

This November’s Cape Town edition promises to deliver robust and carefully curated community-oriented experiences through plenary sessions, networking opportunities, keynote addresses, start-up demos and exhibitions, an ecosystem tour, and the 2022 AlphaExpo Micro Accelerator Pitch Competition.

Over the past five years and seven editions, the Africa Fintech Summit is a fintech ecosystem-building initiative by bringing the world’s attention to Africa’s rapidly growing fintech sector, fostering intra-African and continental partnerships, and providing a launch pad for innovative and impactful financial services solutions.

Voted the most engaging event of the World Bank Spring Series, the Africa Fintech Summit is hosted twice a year, each April in Washington D.C. during the spring meetings of the World Bank Group and each November in a different African city, with the most recent editions hosted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Lagos, Nigeria, and Cairo, Egypt.

The summits have featured over 100 high-impact plenary, closed-door, and networking sessions. With over 4000 in-person and virtual attendees, and more than 200 panellists representing over $4.5B in private equity and venture capital funding.

From facilitating policy creation to enabling knowledge sharing and the launch of strategic partnerships, the Africa Fintech Summit has consistently supported the minds building solutions to create a financially resilient and inclusive Africa. Start-ups have also found the summit to be the perfect spark to jumpstart their journeys through the Alpha Expo Micro Accelerator. Alumni of the program have raised over $200 million and include industry leaders such as Yellow Card, Market Force, PiggyVest, PayHippo, Asaak, and others.

Africa Fintech Summit Cape Town follows a successful 7th summit this past spring, hosted in Washington D.C. during the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings which brought together over 450 fintech stakeholders in person and online.

The Cape Town summit will look to replicate the results of past editions and continue the ecosystem-building conversations that kicked off in D.C. earlier this April under the year’s overarching thesis: “Africanisation of global fintech.”

The Africanisation of Global Fintech explores the growth of African fintechs and how their influence is extending beyond the continent onto the global scene, the increasing focus of global investors on the sector, and other emerging and defining trends putting Africa’s fintech space on the global map.

Conversations at the summit will revolve around fintech policy and regulation, cross-border payments and remittance, local tech talent, mobile money and interoperability, blockchain and cryptocurrency use cases, corporate venture capital, intra-Africa trade, and more.

Over 60 top fintech innovators, finance executives, investors, policymakers, and government officials are expected to lead these conversations.

Organisers expect panellists will include the likes of Tosin Eniolorunda of TeamApt, Shola Akinlade of  Paystack, Wiza Jalakasi of Chipper Cash, Omosalewa Adeyemi of Flutterwave, Djiba Diallo of Ecobank, Miranda Perumal at Visa, and Andres Perez and Lavina Ramkissoon of the Fintech Association of South Africa.

Beyond the panel sessions and workshops, delegates have the opportunity to register for a Cape Town Ecosystem Tour on November 4th, exposing delegates to South Africa’s thriving fintech and startup ecosystems. Per a report by Disrupt Africa, of the 490 operational tech start-ups in South Africa, fintech accounts for 30% (147), which is almost three times larger than the closest contender, e-commerce and retail tech (50 start-ups).

South Africa has also consistently attracted the most funding of the countries in Southern Africa, having raised about $1.7B since 2019, representing over 95% of the funding secured by start-ups in the region, according to Africa, the Big Deal.

Speaking on the summit coming to South Africa, Nomaindia Mfeketo, the country’s ambassador to the United States, said: “The Africa Fintech Summit, having financial inclusion at its core and enabling the underserved & underbanked population to enjoy affordable and convenient financial services via innovative technological services, is a very welcome initiative. I would like to welcome the global delegates of AFTS to beautiful South Africa and enjoy delightful conference tourism.”

“We are very pleased to bring AFTS to South Africa, a world leader in Banking & telecom services and one of the top African countries with the most advanced technological ecosystem hubs and sophisticated tech talent,” said Zekarias Amsalu Dubale, co-founder of AFTS, and the founder and managing director of Ibex Frontier.

“We look forward to welcoming our global delegates and ecosystem players to Cape Town this November, and so collaborative partnerships and initiatives are made towards Africanisation of global tech.”

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