Africa's Moment: Continent Takes Less Traveled Path to Disrupt Global Finance Architecture

Africa's payment systems are constrained by expensive remittances, fragmented cross-border transfers, and currencies—pain points fintech experts are fixing. Businesses, especially small- and medium-scale enterprises, are beginning to settle trade faster, and diaspora remittance platforms are testing stablecoin-based transfers to reduce delays and fees, while tokenization could open new channels for fundraising and wider market participation. This much-needed operational shift is positioning Africa not merely as a consumer of financial technology but as the primary architect of its global evolution.

To explore how digital assets and blockchain could expand financial access, reduce poverty, and help the continent shape the next financial order for sustainable economic development on its own terms, African Currents interviewed a Kenyan, Professor Fredrick Ogola, the CEO and founder of Digital Assets Africa and convener of the Africa Digital Asset Summit at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi.

"I can see Africa is a fertile ground for what I call digital assets. [...] So, Africa is not adopting digital assets because it's fashionable, no. They are adopting because it is because of the legacy financial structural gaps, which blockchain now can fulfill [...]. The global financial architecture was launched in 1946, when no African country was independent. Africans were not in the table [...] we must disrupt the world [...]. In economics, we have been told that the first form of economics was hunting and gathering [...] then the last one is called reindustrialization, where you use big data and use technology to create a new economy. So, the world is at this stage now [...]. Africa can build its own banking system without a physical banking infrastructure, and then we can compete with the world," Professor Ogola said.

Catch the full discussion on the African Currents podcast, presented by Sputnik Africa.

Listen to this episode on our website or Telegram.

► You can also stream the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, Pocket Casts, Afripods, Podcast Addict.

► Subscribe to and explore all the episodes of African Currents.