IFC challenges Africa to integrate its digital finance ecosystem
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has urged Africa to deepen its continental digital monetary integration to unlock productiveness, scale, and shared prosperity.
The Corporation famous that the continent’s digital finance ecosystem has reached a pivotal level the place the problem is now not increasing entry however attaining integration.
Nathalie Kouassi-Akon, IFC’s Divisional Director for West Africa within the Gulf of Guinea area, made the remarks throughout a curtain raiser speech on day two of the 2026 3i Africa Summit in Accra, on Thursday.
The session on “Harnessing Continental Digital Public Infrastructure for Economic Development” examined why Africa’s subsequent progress section requires shifting past fragmented options towards built-in monetary methods.
Speakers noticed that aligning capital, platforms, and markets may improve effectivity, assist companies at scale, and create significant employment.
Kouassi-Akon emphasised that digital public infrastructure has turn into as foundational to financial competitiveness as roads and vitality grids, urging collective motion to resolve fragmentation.
She stated, “When Ghana’s system connects seamlessly with those of its neighbors – when a young woman in Kumasi can use a digital identity to access credit and sell across borders and build systems and businesses that employ all members in their community – that is when transformation becomes generational.”
Highlighting statistical realities, Ms Kouassi-Akon famous that whereas over 191 million folks gained entry to digital funds between 2014 and 2025, greater than 60 per cent of these inside broadband attain stay unconnected.
Africans additionally pay up to 35 per cent extra for digital instruments than their counterparts elsewhere, a premium that successfully excludes the inhabitants digital finance goals to serve.
“It is worrying that the continent’s payment networks do not always communicate with each other, data cannot move safely across borders, while small businesses struggle to operate beyond a single country.
“If Africa does not address this fragmentation, we risk scaling growth, releasing innovation without productivity, and access without prosperity,” she warned, calling integration the important thing financial shift for a continent-wide progress engine.
Kouassi-Akon recognized shared digital identification methods, interoperable fee frameworks, trusted information alternate mechanisms, and broadband connectivity because the important infrastructure for cross-border commerce, regional worth chains, and the African Continental Free Trade Area.
She pressured the necessity for sturdy governance, information safety legal guidelines, cybersecurity requirements, and accountability mechanisms to construct belief amongst residents, companies, and traders.
Kouassi-Akon additionally urged the non-public sector to take part not merely as distributors however as co-investors and co-builders of Africa’s digital infrastructure, citing shared fashions resembling carrier-neutral broadband networks, impartial tower corporations, and shared information facilities as cost-effective options.
She revealed that the IFC has invested over US$9.6 billion in digital infrastructure over the previous decade, supporting cloud computing, digital finance, and synthetic intelligence throughout the area.
Kouassi-Akon cited funding in a pan-African information middle platform increasing tier-three licensed amenities in Ethiopia, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
Referring to Ghana’s cell cash revolution, she highlighted it for instance of success when innovation, regulation, and infrastructure align, advocating for its continent-wide replication.
“The question before Africa is not whether its digital economy will grow – it will – but who builds it, who owns it, and who ultimately benefits from it,” she requested, concluding that with integration, the reply may very well be “Africa’s own people, enterprises, and continent.”
