A number of African startups have been honoured with awards of excellence in their fields at the seventh edition of the Africa Fintech Summit held in Washington D.C last week.
The Africa Fintech Summit is a global knowledge-sharing platform held twice a year to connect innovators, regulators and entrepreneurs looking to explore financial technology solutions that can improve African lives.
The Summit facilitates conversations and partnerships, helps mobilize investments and provides an environment to negotiate enabling policies and share growth strategies while celebrating the achievements of stakeholders involved in charting Africa’s development path with progressive fintech.
The timing of the event coincided with the 2022 Spring Meetings by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and thus gave African and global fintech stakeholders who were already in Washington the opportunity to attend.
In a keynote address that focused on growth and expansion trends in Africa’s fintech industry, the director for Africa at the White House Security Council, Deniece Laurent-Mantey said,
“We are in the midst of an unprecedented revolution in digital technology – one which is impacting every sector of the economy and social life, bringing people and nations closer together, and making the world a true global village.”
In 2021, the USA was found to be responsible for 62% of the top twenty investment deals in Africa so having the summit in D.C. gave the African entrepreneurs an opportunity to foster investor relationships right in the host country while showcasing their products.
The event featured multiple insights-driven sessions from over 60 speakers and panellists across the fintech value chain and focused on fintech hotspots like investment trends in the industry, web3 and cryptocurrency, diaspora banking and remittances, fintech regulatory best practices and the future of banking.
To cap off the spotlight of fintech in Africa, the Summit recognized major players who contributed to the continent’s technology industry and ecosystem through the Excellence in Fintech award ceremony.
Among the winners was Flutterwave in the category of fintech infrastructure while peer-to-peer fintech platform, Paxful emerged as the winner in the cryptocurrency category. The full list of award winners:
- Fintech-banking relationships: EcoBank
- Fintech investment: Future Africa
- Cryptocurrency: Paxful
- Blockchain technology: Appzone Group
- Ecosystem research: Briter Bridges
- Cross-border solutions: PAPSS
- Digital banking: TeamApt
- Savings and invest-tech: PiggyVest
- Payments: Paystack
- Insurtech: Turaco
- Fintech and lending: Payhippo
- Embedded fintech: Cellulant
- Fintech infrastructure: Flutterwave
- Tradetech: AFEX
Since it was started in 2018, the Summit has raised more than $20 million in capital for African start-ups and the next edition of the Africa Fintech Summit will be held this November in Cape Town, South Africa.