By Alvyn Ulrish Shad Savrimuthu
As part of its ongoing commitment to regional collaboration and digital innovation, the Mauritius Africa FinTech Hub (MAFH), in partnership with the Economic Development Board (EDB), hosted an exclusive Meet & Greet session with Dr Patrick Saidu Conteh, CEO of the Africa FinTech Network (AFN). The event brought together key stakeholders including regulators, ecosystem builders, and FinTech leaders to explore Mauritius’ role in Africa’s rapidly evolving financial technology landscape.
The session opened with a presentation by Aakash Mishra, Assistant Director – Fintech at the Financial Services Commission (FSC), who outlined the regulatory evolution shaping Mauritius’ FinTech landscape. He emphasised the country’s adaptive regulatory stance, noting that the FSC has been refining its framework to support the growth of digital financial services and promote the adoption of emerging technologies. Aakash Mishra described the FSC as an integrated regulator managing all non-banking financial activities, with a mandate that includes regulation, supervision, on-site inspections, and enforcement. Highlighting Mauritius’ progress, he reported that the country had climbed to the 75th position globally in the FinTech index, marking a significant step in its development as a competitive hub. He also cited the success of the VITORS Act and outlined new licensing categories such as payment intermediary services and peer-to-peer lending that reflect growing market demand.
In the keynote session moderated by MAFH CEO Benazeer Saïdoo, Dr Conteh provided personal reflections and strategic insight drawn from decades across commercial banking, policymaking, and regulation. He began by framing FinTech as an opportunity for Africans to drive their own development, asserting that digital finance offers the tools to create jobs, promote inclusion, and add value across economies. Reflecting on his early career, he recalled entering the banking industry when everything was still manual, vouchers were handwritten and manually ticked, and end-of-day processing was laborious. His pivot into policy and technology advocacy stemmed from a realisation that the future of finance would demand transformation, leading him to champion the convergence of operators, regulators, and policymakers in building a robust digital ecosystem. He noted that the financial landscape in Africa has fundamentally shifted over the last decade, moving from towering institutions to entrepreneurs operating digitally and independently. In this changing environment, regulators must find a delicate balance between safeguarding consumers and enabling innovation, as many are still catching up to the speed of technological change.
Dr Conteh then addressed one of the central challenges facing Africa’s FinTech ecosystem: fragmentation across regulatory frameworks. While countries like Mauritius have made significant strides, scaling innovation across borders remains difficult. He explained that FinTechs licensed in one jurisdiction, such as Mauritius, often have to repeat entire regulatory processes in others, including South Africa, Botswana, and Mozambique, due to differing maturity levels and policy environments. AFN’s mission, he clarified, is to support cooperation at local, regional, and global levels to enable interoperability and peer learning across Africa’s fragmented FinTech landscape. To support this, AFN facilitates collaborative engagement between startups, financial institutions, regulators, and investors, enabling stakeholders to collectively address common bottlenecks and build a more integrated market.
One of the key proposals presented by Dr Conteh was the development of a FinTech passporting framework to facilitate cross-border scalability. This initiative, being discussed at a central bank conference in Mauritius, would allow FinTechs licensed in one African country to operate across the continent without undergoing repetitive licensing procedures. Drawing inspiration from similar frameworks in the EU and Pacific Islands, Dr Conteh argued that passporting could be phased regionally, beginning with the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and focus initially on digital payments, which have the most mature regulatory environments. He pointed to recent progress, including a memorandum of understanding between the central banks of Rwanda and Ghana, as evidence that aligned thinking is emerging and a continent-wide framework is achievable in the long term.
The Q&A session that followed underscored the event’s practical value, giving attendees an opportunity to engage directly with Dr Conteh on emerging challenges and collaborative solutions. One of the first questions addressed the future of identity verification in Africa’s rapidly digitising ecosystem. Dr Conteh highlighted the need for adaptive approaches, stating that the way you verify the identity of someone living in an urban setting should be different from someone in a rural village, and stressed the importance of a tiered approach supported by electronic KYC and centralised systems. He added that several jurisdictions are already issuing guidance on eKYC models, tailored to the diverse realities across the continent.
Another question focused on building regulatory capacity in Africa. Dr Conteh offered a candid analogy, stating that the financial system is going digital, but the policeman overseeing the traffic remains analogue. He stressed the urgency of reskilling regulators to enable real-time supervision and ensure risk mitigation in fast-moving digital environments. Dr Conteh also addressed the importance of consumer awareness and cybersecurity, especially among vulnerable populations who rely on mobile payments without always understanding digital risks. His response positioned capacity building as a shared responsibility among governments, institutions, and civil society, emphasising the importance of coordinated literacy and training efforts across all levels of society.
The Meet & Greet concluded with renewed calls for deeper collaboration, shared regulatory frameworks, and continued innovation. Dr Conteh’s perspectives highlighted the enormous potential of FinTech to transform Africa’s economies, while also calling attention to the work still required to harmonise regulation, develop talent, and expand financial and economic inclusion. Mauritius, through initiatives like this and the leadership of bodies such as MAFH and the FSC, continues to position itself as a strategic hub for Pan-African FinTech advancement.
