Salvador Anglada | Group CEO | Optasia | mail me |
For most of the past decade, African fintech was a land grab. Valuations rewarded user numbers. Interfaces became flashier. “Disruption” became the pitch that attracted capital investment. From the outside, it was clear that the model was running hotter than it could sustain. However, that era is over.
Today, in every boardroom conversation, from Johannesburg to Lagos, the question has moved beyond “how fast can you grow?” Instead, leaders are asking, “what happens when things go wrong?”
The correction came quickly. African startup funding fell by nearly a quarter in 2024. High-profile ventures collapsed and investors pulled back hard. However, what followed was not a retreat.
Notable shifts
In 2025, total investment rose by almost 50% to $1.64 billion. At the same time, the number of funded ventures fell, and selection criteria tightened sharply.
Africa was the only region globally where private capital deal volumes grew. Transactions rose by around 8%, while global deal activity declined. Investment returned, but on different terms. Consequently, funders now rely far more on debt and asset-backed facilities. Investors are paying for proven models, not promises of market dominance.
This shift in investor sentiment mirrors a deeper and more fundamental truth. You cannot build a financial system on hype. Instead, it must be grounded in trust.
Why trust is not a soft metric
On a continent with the fastest-growing population on Earth, fintech growth opportunities are abundant. Rapid digital adoption further strengthens this potential. However, end users must trust digital services before these opportunities can be realised. In this context, trust is infrastructure. It is earned in the smallest increments and lost in an instant. Every cleared transaction builds it. Each fairly resolved dispute strengthens it. Every instance of data handled with integrity reinforces it. However, when money goes missing, terms change without explanation or systems fail, that capital erodes immediately.
When people do not trust the system, their behaviour reflects it. In South Africa, the Reserve Bank estimates that nearly half of all banked adults withdraw all their money as soon as it clears in their accounts. A small but telling percentage say they do so because they do not trust the bank with their money. Across many emerging markets, shocks occur frequently and safety nets remain thin. Therefore, this instinct is not paranoia. It is protection.
When an account is frozen or a payment does not clear, it can undo years of careful saving for a family or small business. As a result, building resilience in the financial system is a matter of survival for fintechs and their clients. As digital adoption grows, it also exposes how fragile many people’s finances are.
For professionals, system failures are an annoyance. For farmers or small traders, they can be devastating. The stakes could not be higher. According to the latest ADP Research’s People at Work 2025 report, around 70% of the workforce in the Middle East and Africa is one payday away from poverty. However, systemic resilience is not just about preventing technical failures. It is also about ensuring that system logic does not exclude the very people it was built to serve. This is where the industry’s approach to credit must evolve. If trust is infrastructure, then access and fairness must form part of that foundation.
What AI gets wrong in lending
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) debate in financial services often centres on speed and efficiency. However, what happens to the people on the wrong side of a model’s binary decision?
A basic credit model delivers a binary “yes” or “no”. As a result, it often excludes large portions of populations with thin or non-existent formal credit histories. Ironically, these are precisely the users fintech aims to serve. Traditional AI often defaults to rejection because it interprets a lack of formal data as the presence of risk. Consequently, this creates a blind spot. Millions of creditworthy individuals remain excluded by rigid algorithms.
The problem is that these models treat credit as a static status. You either qualify or you do not. They ignore the fluid reality of the informal economy. By analysing real-time behavioural data, such as mobile wallet transaction frequency or airtime top-up patterns, we can take a different approach. We can look beyond the “lacking” credit score. We can see a user’s seasonal cash flow and daily financial resilience.
This shift in perspective enables a more sophisticated model of dynamic affordability. Such a model does not simply ask whether someone qualifies. Instead, it determines exactly how much they can borrow at a specific moment. This distinction separates meaningful financial inclusion from the replication of traditional banking exclusions in a new format.
The partnership model replaces the platform wars
No single company can build this level of data-driven reliability alone. The era of the standalone platform is over. This “land-grab” model attempted to own everything from user acquisition to proprietary technology. However, it ties up too much capital. The funding correction of 2024–2025 has effectively priced that approach out of the market.
Instead, structural partnerships have become the new reality. The industry is moving away from territorial overlaps and towards comparative advantage. Telcos, banks and retailers already own customer proximity and distribution networks. Specialist infrastructure providers deliver the heavy lifting. They provide data science, underwriting and deep integration capabilities.
When these strengths come together, they do more than lower the cost of inclusion. They build a system that works. In practical terms, trust is infrastructure and partnerships help strengthen that infrastructure at scale.
The results across dozens of markets remain consistent. Shared risk creates more durable businesses than solo expansion.
Trust is everything
Giving people access is only the beginning. If users do not trust a tool to protect their money and data, they simply will not use it. Therefore, providers must ensure transparent pricing that allays fears. They must maintain reliable systems that keep money moving. In addition, credit infrastructure must remain ethical and explainable.
When the system is clear, users feel empowered. When people can move money easily and understand their obligations, they do more than transact. They build their lives on the system.
African fintech’s next chapter will not be written by the fastest movers. Instead, it will be written by operators whose systems do not fail the people who can least afford it. Code and capital get you into the market. However, trust keeps you there. Ultimately, trust is infrastructure, and it remains the foundation on which sustainable fintech growth depends.
