What does the future hold in this growing ecosystem?

For five years now, FinTech has been growing by leaps and bounds; such is the analysis and study done by Mastercard in 2021 which was published as a white paper at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) stating that FinTech startups in Africa have grown by 81% in 2021. This white paper titled "The Future of Fintech" with a fixation on rapid growth attracts smart capital. The study unsurprisingly lists South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya as the FinTech hubs on the continent. This makes sense, given that most of Africa's most successful startups, as well as investments, are coming from there.

By growing from 311 to 564 FinTech startups in Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa has been able to put its name in the annals of this still-new sector on the continent with a growth of nearly 894% per year and $1.56 billion in fundraising. Can we say that it has had a triggering effect on this growth in sub-Saharan Africa?

Between services digitalization challenges and financial inclusion, the white paper attributes this innovation boom in the field of financial technologies to the need to solve multiple structural problems. The low rate of banking on the continent and the massive adoption of mobile money over the past decade have created an environment conducive to FinTech solutions.

Africans have been able to create and develop an ecosystem around that as it can be seen with Flutterwave, Chipper Cash, Kuda, Jumo, Intouch and Wave which are some of the best-known and most successful companies in the African FinTech. The rise of Fintech is well and truly visible in Africa.

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