FinTech in Africa

What is it about?

Applications of digital technologies to retail money and finance have gathered pace across the globe over the last decade, constituting novel ‘FinTech’ economies. Bringing together scholars from multiple disciplines, our Editorial Introduction to this special issue asks what is different about the forms that FinTech is taking in Africa, and considers how foregrounding developments on the continent might reshape social science research agendas and political conversations around FinTech globally.The special issue features papers by authors from Anthropology, Development Studies, Economics, Geography, History, Political Science, and Sociology, and presents a range of empirical studies—from East, West, and Southern Africa. While mobile money, payments, and remittances provide an important focus for the special issue and for research into FinTech in Africa more broadly, the papers address also an array of other FinTech economies, including credit and lending, micro-insurance, applications of blockchain technologies, and the incorporation of digital technologies into informal monetary and financial relations.

Featured Image

Photo by Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

Photo by Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In order to attune research to the distinctive features of FinTech in Africa, the articles shift the focus for research (1) from global financial inclusion agendas to colonial histories and presents, (2) from economic formalization to multiple modes of economization, and, (3) from techno-economic ecosystems to statecraft and international security. Re-centering global social science research agendas and political debates on Africa, the special issue hopes to inspire further work and future political engagement with FinTech which doesn’t begin, by default, from developments and experiences in the Global West and East.