Adaptation of Cambridge Fintech Regulatory and Innovation Online Programme for Africa (CFTRI Africa)

CCAF in collaboration with Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education delivers the Cambridge Fintech and Regulatory Innovation (CFTRI) global executive online programme. The CFTRI programme is designed to enable global executives, financial regulators, supervisors and policymakers to understand the mechanics and applications of key innovative technologies employed in fintech firms, evaluate fintech business models and respective regulatory and policy implications and responses, utilise analytical tools to assess fintech business models aligned with national objectives and capabilities and assess the viability and suitability of an array of regulatory innovation initiatives and responses.

FSD Africa partnered with CCAF to contextualise the CFTRI programme to Africa and help them launch it in February 2022, as well as to provide scholarships for participants in the first cohort.

Building Digital Finance Capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa

FSD Africa co-funded the incubation of DFI commencing in 2016 and leading to its establishment in 2018. This support, and our subsequent co-funding since 2018 (Phase II) has helped DFI to realise its 5-year plan to build a sustainable institute training 4000+ professionals and supporting their continual growth through an online community, knowledge resources and physical country-level presence. Through this work DFI have facilitated the establishment of 10 registered professional country digital finance associations in Africa as well as the formation of the Alliance for Digital Finance Associations (ADFA), an international platform for networking, partnerships, and collaboration between association members, local and international organisations working within the digital finance and financial inclusion space.

In 2021 we worked with them to design and deliver a new Inclusive Digital Economy Development course (iDED), which introduces digital finance professionals to the different facets of the digital economy and what they mean in terms of inclusive growth. We have extended our scholarship offering for DFI’s iDED, Certificate in Digital Money (CIDM) and (Certified Digital Finance Practitioner Programme (CDFP) in our priority countries.

Catalysing Climate Resilience (CCR)

The CCR programme encompasses three integrated core components:

1. TECA (Triggering Exponential Climate Action): A venture launcher for seeding and incubating bold new climate resilience solutions, developing ideas into viable businesses.
2. Catalyst Fund: Accelerating the growth of promising climate resilience solutions and creating the demonstration models to attract further capital
3. Ecosystem Development: Building the wider innovation ecosystem to achieve the leverage necessary for systemic acceleration of digital innovations for adaptation and resilience.

Uniting these three components is a shared set of underlying investment theses: products and services that help vulnerable households and businesses manage, adapt, and build resilience to climate change.

Digitisation of humanitarian and government social payments

Phase I of the project surveyed the landscape of delivery mechanisms used to disburse humanitarian cash payments and government social protection payments in Nigeria. It assessed the state of mobile financial services and digitally enabled payments. A report documenting the survey findings and recommendations was published and shared with stakeholders in May 2021. The report covered humanitarian and government cash transfer payment flows, findings covering the regulator, service providers & agents as well as humanitarian and government agencies. The report also provided a separate implementation roadmap with four overarching factors that can contribute to an ideal scenario where unrestricted cash transfers can be delivered to a digital wallet in an open-loop payment ecosystem. This roadmap formed the basis for phase II where working groups were formed bringing together interested stakeholders to develop concept notes that can be considered to drive the digitisation of cash transfer payments.

Phase II was concluded in December 2022 with the publication of 4 detailed concept notes developed in consultation with humanitarian and government payment stakeholders in Nigeria. The concept notes are now available to interested humanitarian actors, government agencies and donors for implementation.

Enhancing the digital payment ecosystem

Under the project, Strategic Impact Advisors (SIA) supported Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in reviewing the results of the GSMA Connectivity Needs and Usage Assessment (CoNUA) for White Nile and West Darfur in Sudan. SIA further undertook financial service provider mapping, analysed key barriers and opportunities for both supply and demand market actors, and provided revenue potential analysis. SIA made presentations of the results to stakeholders in a workshop in May 2022. These sessions led to a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities in providing digital financial products to displaced populations specifically in West Darfur and White Nile. The findings provide inputs to humanitarian and private sector actors on how they could drive digital payments to hard-to-reach communities in Sudan.

Financial Inclusion Using Agency Banking Project

Through this partnership, FSD Africa is supporting Equity BCDC to increase access to unbanked populations in rural and peri-urban areas of DRC by scaling up its agency banking model, providing savings and loan products and building capacity of farmers, MSMEs, women and youth. FSD Africa’s support includes building of institutional capacity at the bank and the establishment of agents. Through Equity Bank BCDC’s market leadership in DRC it seeks to demonstrate the business case for serving unserved and underserved customers.

Forcibly Displaced Persons (FDP) Programme

The programme promotes development and delivery of financial services for refugees and other Forcibly Displaced Persons (FDP) communities in Uganda, Rwanda, and DRC. The services developed are intended to link directly into survival and livelihood strategies of these communities and help shift the paradigm from humanitarian-based to market-based solutions. It also promotes the financial inclusion of host communities.