Be Seen and Be Heard

Executive Summary

Despite significant progress over the last decade substantial obstacles remain to realise Africa’s potential to use digital technology to build ‘leapfrog’ solutions to local challenges.

In January 2020, BFA Global’s Catalyst Fund and the Tech for Growth programme at the Department for International Trade, convened a meeting of 30 fintech startups from across emerging regions and the UK to ask what lessons fintech startups across the world can share to enable success.

This initiative builds on the early findings of the 2020 Report “Tech: Overcoming barriers to scale in emerging markets summarises the findings for startups across seven areas” to deepen understanding of the barriers to fintech success across 4 fast-growing African markets. By creating a regional heatmap and report backed by data, the initiative will produce a roadmap that can be used to benchmark progress for scaling Africa and UK-based technology firms to inform go-to-market and market-entry planning.