2026 program

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Half of fintechs feel regulation “acts as a constraint rather than a catalyst”, a Central Bank of Nigeria survey found this year as it plans to overhaul its engagement approach. Absent policy co-creation platforms, scarce fintech-central bank dialogue and sparse regulatory guidance top concerns. As do slow Slow approvals and policy blind spots, primarily in
cross-border payments and stablecoins, are also among the main concerns. Fintechs feel they are not engaged as seriously on the same basis as banks despite Africa hosting the rapid growth of fastest Africa’s fintech market globally which is projected to reach set to hit $65bn by 2030. Most central banks want to collaborate and champion fintech progress, but a flood of new digital actors - many with weak some with gaps in KYC, fraud prevention and AML controls - partly explains their guarded stance. A The roundtable brings together central banks and fintechs to reverse/bridge the innovator-rulemaker disconnect.

Key points:

• Policy co-creation: Building an open-door policy, an online central bank engagement hub and a regulator-endorsed body to aggregate fintech perspectives
• How can licensing gateways, sandboxes, shared compliance tools and Suptech shorten fintechs' time to market while reinforcing consumer safeguards?
• Which regulatory ambiguities and blind spots should be priorities for future fintech-central bank engagements?

Health aid to sub-Saharan Africa fell a record 25% in 2025, and is projected to fall further, leaving fewer resources to reach the three-quarters of households without health insurance. Most pay health costs out-of-pocket - unaware of the options, unconvinced of the value of insurance or priced out by high premiums. Around a quarter of African nations have made health insurance mandatory, many within the past two decades, and are modestly growing penetration. But overall uptake remains low– at 13% in Nigeria, for example. Kenya moved in August 2025 to draw private insurers into its public scheme as claims administrators and complementary carriers Elsewhere, however, high operating costs and hard-to-price informal-sector risk can limit private-sector participation. How can regulators reshape incentives, reduce market frictions, and crowd in private-sector capacity?

Key points:

• Where should the boundaries and incentives be set for private insurers to supplement public universal health schemes?

• Supporting and financing coverage for poor and vulnerable groups: What is needed to grow risk pools and build risk-equalisation or equity funds?

• How far can regulation address the main barrier- premiums that most cannot afford?

Africa’s biggest banks are building neobanks and its leading fintechs are turning into banks. Nigerian unicorns Paystack and Flutterwave both secured microfinance bank licences in their home markets this year. Wave established Wave Bank Africa in late 2025 in Côte d’Ivoire, while in Kenya Nigeria’s Moniepoint bought Sumac Microfinance Bank in March 2026, taking control of a licensed microfinance bank. Legacy banks are responding. Attijariwafa Bank this year launched “Simple.”, Morocco’s first neobank, ahead of Revolut’s expected entry. As Standard Bank Group’s CEO points to “intensifying competition” from fintechs, how will banks decide how much of their business to unbundle, which segments to defend, and whether to compete, partner with or acquire the fintechs eating at their margins?

Key points

• Neobanks vs incumbents: Can large African banking groups build agile digital brands without cannibalising their core businesses?
• Fintech as threat or partner: When does acquisition make more sense than internal innovation?
• How can banks achieve sustainable revenues in a mobile-first, low-fee competitive landscape?

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Climate shocks caused substantial damage to a third of Africa's overwhelmingly rain-fed farm plots between 2008 and 2019, deterring commercial banks from smallholder lending. Index insurance tied to rainfall or yield triggers could protect farmers from natural disasters, which cost Africa $3bn in 2025 alone, and reduce lending risk. However, uptake of first-generation products since the early 2000s remains “disappointingly low”, especially without government-subsidised premiums a July 2025 World Bank study found. NGOs have also highlighted "major defects" in payout triggers after Malawi's 2016 drought insurance failed to pay out immediately despite widespread crop failure. Insurers, bankers and agtechs examine how to scale affordable index insurance through truer-to-life triggers and smartphone delivery.

Key points

• How can commercial banks, fintechs and agtechs bundle index insurance into smartphone-based credit lines?
• What public-private mechanisms are required to subsidise premiums and scale reliable, satellite-based remote sensing data?
• How can insurers overcome basis risk to ensure payouts reflect real on-farm climate impacts accurately?

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African currencies have depreciated 65% against the dollar since 2007. For CFOs, this means higher procurement costs, tighter working capital and earnings volatility. Hedging instruments remain scarce and short-dated, rarely extending beyond 12 months, and are priced for deeper liquidity than most African markets can support. Cost is the primary barrier: 61% of African financial institutions find hedging products too expensive for the margins they protect. Where derivatives are unavailable, corporates rely on natural hedging, inter-company financing, faster settlement and local-currency invoicing. In 2013, Brazil's central bank used FX swaps to create a liquid derivative market where none had existed. Could African markets develop practical hedging solutions without adding fiscal or monetary risk?

Key points

• When derivatives are unavailable or unaffordable, what corporate FX management strategies actually work, and which exposures remain unhedgeable?
• Should central banks provide hedging instruments directly, or focus on building the liquidity conditions that let markets price risk?
• Hard currency allocation is a regulatory decision: what does productive engagement between CFOs and central banks look like?

The IMF wants a "growth reset" for Africa built on private investment, but conditions have become less favourable. "Globalisation is no longer happening on easy mode," says NinetyOne, a major African asset manager, as the era of cheap commodities ends and support for economic integration fades. Africa drew $70bn in FDI in 2025, its third highest on record, yet only 14 countries have issued local-currency corporate debt since 2000. FX repatriation rules, fragmented clearing, uneven Basel III implementation, and slow settlement cycles raise foreign investors' costs and deter African institutional investors from regional markets. Amid the conflict in the Middle East, climbing oil prices and slower growth in China, how can the financial sector help make African assets a safe investor haven?

Key points

• Which capital-charge reforms and local-currency instruments would keep more African pension, insurance and commercial bank capital on the continent?
• What must Africa’s banks, insurers, stock exchanges and fintechs do differently to support a foreign investors’ asset allocation on the continent?
• Where should stakeholders begin to shorten settlement cycles and smooth currency convertibility?

Sub-Saharan Africa entered 2026 with its strongest start to the year for Eurobond issuance since 2013, raising $5.95bn in the first seven weeks. But borrowing rates vary sharply and can be expensive for governments facing a refinancing squeeze: Angola has committed to paying close to 10% on its latest issuance. Governments are therefore turning to alternatives. Nigeria’s planned $5bn total return swap, for example - and similar transactions in Angola and Senegal - use government securities as collateral. The IMF warns that costs are comparable to those of a Eurobond and that currency and interest-rate movements could create new fiscal risks. As governments explore swaps, buybacks and other structures, do these tools carry hidden risks or genuinely make debt cheaper and safer?

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Africa’s clean energy projects are typically financed by international capital in US dollars on short five-year loan tenors, at borrowing rates up to three times higher than in advanced economies. Solar plants meant to last 30+ years must refinance every five years at the prevailing rate, while repaying dollar debt from revenues earned in a weakening local currency. An African response is underway. Africa Finance Corporation this year disbursed €43 million under a dual-currency green bond, in euros and CFA francs, to finance what will become Côte d'Ivoire's largest solar plant. While capital for solar, hydro and wind projects is readily available, how can financing be better adapted to the projects it is meant to fund?

Key points

• Why is a solar project with two decades of contracted revenues still capped by its sovereign ceiling?
• How can DFI guarantees go further to cover risks such as late payment by state utilities and FX exposure?
• What would lower the risk enough for commercial lenders to extend tenors?

Premium outflows are rattling Africa's insurance industry. Around 70-90% of premiums for speciality risks are flowing to non-African reinsurers, Afreximbank said in July. Without well-capitalised, technically skilled local insurers and reinsurers, sectors needing large, specialised cover in oil & gas, aviation and mining default to international coverage - placed offshore directly or fronted locally but ceded to foreign reinsurers. This pushes data, expertise, and profits that could be reinvested in Africa overseas. Stronger reinsurance capacity, risk pooling such as the Africa Re-managed African Oil & Energy Pool, and higher capital minimums have been floated as ways to improve retention. How should this be coordinated to make African insurers the natural home for large-scale and specialty risks?

Key points:

• What will help African specialty risk pools grow big enough to keep oil & gas and mining premiums at home?

• Compulsory cession to African reinsurers: A smart way to retain premiums or a dangerous concentration of risk?

• How can insurers and reinsurers deepen capital bases - and should regulators go further to compel them?

Today, just 5% of AI projects launched by corporates globally succeed in generating a return on investment. At Africa-level, more than half of African banks report high implementation costs and struggles integrating AI into legacy systems. Despite early barriers, AfDB estimates AI use in the financial sector will uplift Africa’s economy $80bn by 2035 by improving customer journeys, detecting fraud and enhancing operational efficiency and credit and investment decisions. Leading financial institutions share the most lucrative AI plays the industry can implement now.

Sector perspectives

• Britam | AI in Insurance: Elevating claims processing & pricing decisions
• HPS | Leveraging AI in payments and neutralising AI-enhanced fraud
• Polytechs | How can AI analysis help regulators assess big data?

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Stablecoins are moving from crypto trading into African banking and payments. Businesses and households are using the dollar-backed cryptocurrencies for payroll, trade and to settle cross border payments at a flat 1.5% fee, versus 8% average. The Bank for International Settlements warns “widespread adoption could affect macroeconomic and financial stability”. Central Bankers are also hesitant. Governor of the South African Reserve Bank Lesetja Kganyago said in February “there is a lot of hype around stablecoins”, but that "it’s difficult to tell what the benefits will end up being". Meanwhile commercial banks – such as Credit Bank in Kenya – are integrating stablecoins into their cross-border payment services. This roundtable discusses how banks can leverage stablecoins and the fallout on financial systems for central banks.

Key points

• Which banking use cases can make stablecoins relevant beyond crypto and remittances
• How should regulators treat reserves, custody, convertibility and Anti-Money Laundering compliance?
• Should banks lead adoption, or leave the market to fintechs and offshore players?

Key points:

• How to design “industrialisation-focused” PE funds to lure a slice of Africa’s $775bn pension and insurance pool as anchor LP investors
• DFIs contributed 64% of fundraising in 2025. When does their capital enable private equity and when does it replace it?
• With IPOs at just 5% of exits, what pathways could make long-horizon industrial investments attractive to private investors?

Three years after launch, the African Exchanges Linkage Project (AELP) has generated just 21 transactions and 6,160 shares traded, worth $8,670 as of 1 January 2026 – a symbolic volume for a platform meant to connect a continent. Africa’s stock exchanges remain fragmented, with different listing rules, disclosure standards and settlement systems limiting cross‑border investment and regional liquidity. Most equity and bond trading still happens domestically. As Pan-African banks, telecoms and infrastructure groups are actively looking to raise capital domestically across jurisdictions, how can stock exchanges strip away multiple listing costs and regulatory complexity?

Key points:

• How far should exchanges go on mutual recognition of listings, prospectuses and corporate governance codes?
• What incentives would push major corporates and investors to treat African securities as a single integrated asset class?
• What technology and data standards are needed to link trading, clearing and central securities depositories across multiple African markets?

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Africa’s insurance industry holds around $441bn in assets, the global insurance industry $42 trillion. The long-duration liabilities of life insurers make them well suited to long-term horizon infrastructure projects. Insurers’ asset allocation to infrastructure globally however stands at around 1% and is estimated at “almost zero” in Africa (outside South Africa), as low-risk sovereign debt is the favoured asset class. Capital charges, threats to an insurer’s liquidity profile, an absence of appropriate instruments, and project failure risks keep insurers on the sidelines of infrastructure investing. A roundtable of insurers, regulators and infrastructure developers discuss how to create enabling investment conditions.

Key points:

• Insurers hold long-term liabilities that match infrastructure timelines. What instruments (guarantees, first-loss tranches, project bonds) would augment their risk-return profile?
• Blended finance with first-loss concessional capital unlocked $80m in naira-denominated financing for Sun King in Nigeria (2025). Is the model replicable elsewhere?
• What reforms would allow African insurers to allocate more to infrastructure within prudential limits?

Around 5% of financial credit reaches African agriculture, a sector central to GDP, employment and food security. Yet momentum is building. This year alone Ecobank (€300m with Proparco), Coris (€80m via EBID) and KCB (two facilities worth ~$197m) each secured major DFI backing for agri-finance, while 16 financial institutions in May formed an Africa AgriTrade Coalition to scale up agri trade finance. Without DFI risk-sharing, agri finance can be uneconomic: studies suggest lending to the segment is eight times less profitable than banks’ average business lines with NPLs 40% higher. Farmer surveys indicate products are meanwhile often unaffordable and unsuited to crop cycles and cash flows. How can competing banks form consortia, together with agtechs, insurers, Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), cooperatives, DFIs and governments to help the smallholder-driven agri sector become commercially viable?

Key points:

• How can banks build profitable agri finance models through agtech, DFI and community partnerships, then scale to a point where risk-sharing is no longer needed?
• What are the winning components of profitable and affordable crop- and livestock-specific products aligned to harvest cashflows?
• How should banks treat agtech-led smallholder data on farm size, yield, fertiliser use, and crop photos to develop effective data-driven lending models?

Every public sector dollar raised for Africa should pull in ten private sector dollars, a goal championed by African development finance leaders. Two different capital pools stand between ambition and reality. International institutional investors remain wary of African exposure despite thirty years of Global Emerging Markets data putting Sub-Saharan Africa's private lending default rate at 6.05% and recovery rates at 78% - among the strongest of any region. African institutional investors, meanwhile, are not risk-averse so much as rationally parked: sovereign debt's high yields outcompete the continent's still-thin private credit and equity markets. Kenya's KEPFIC pooling model and Côte d'Ivoire's CNPS - now co-investing in real estate, banking and cross-border assets - show what happens when domestic capital is given the structures to move. What would it take to unlock both pools at once?

Key points

• International capital still prices African risk above the data. What mix of guarantees, rating reform and disclosure would close that gap?
• African pension and insurance capital defaults to sovereign debt paying double digits. What pooling models, early technical assistance or DFI-anchored structures could shift that calculus?
• Over half the capital raised for Africa-focused private credit funds since 2021 sits unallocated - against under one-third globally. Is this a confidence problem, an instrument problem, or both - and how replicable are the fixes across jurisdictions and sectors?

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Women hold 33% of investment committee seats across Africa's private capital ecosystem, nearly three times the global average of 12%. Yet African female founders secured just 0.9% of the $3.2 billion in startup funding deployed across the continent in 2025, the lowest share in four years, despite evidence that firms with majority-female investment committees allocate almost half their portfolios to women-led businesses. Africa has made significant progress in diversifying who allocates capital, but funding outcomes remain deeply unequal. If women are increasingly shaping investment decisions, what is preventing that progress from translating into capital for women-led businesses?