Ethel Cofie's Blog – Technology,Leadership and Innovation

The Battle for Africa’s Mobile Money: Mastercard builds ON mobile money,Visa builds AROUND mobile money,Chinese players build AGAINST mobile money.

Posted on December 15, 2025December 15, 2025 by ethelcofie

The Battle for Africa’s Mobile Money: Mastercard builds ON mobile money,Visa builds AROUND mobile money,Chinese players build AGAINST mobile money.

Nigeria’s 2023 cash crisis revealed who was ready for Africa’s digital future. When banks crashed and ATMs ran dry, two Chinese-backed apps—OPay and PalmPay—kept working while Nigerian banks scrambled.
Meanwhile, Mastercard was closing a $200 million deal with MTN’s mobile money division. Visa was launching its Africa Fintech Accelerator. And in Shenzhen, Transsion Holdings watched its payments app capture millions of users.
Three wildly different bets on the same market: Africa’s mobile money ecosystem, which processed $1.1 trillion in 2024, where cash still dominates 90%+ of retail payments, and where 1.4 billion people are going digital.

The Real AfCFTA Gap Isn’t Trade. It’s Trust.

Posted on December 5, 2025December 5, 2025 by ethelcofie

AfCFTA Needs a Data Rail: Why African SMEs Need a Data Passport AfCFTA’s big promise is simple: an African business

The Quiet Strategy to turn M-Pesa from a Kenyan success story into a single, pan-African, cross-border payments rail

Posted on November 30, 2025November 30, 2025 by ethelcofie

Vodacom and Safaricom are quietly building a pan-African, telco-owned payments rail, using ownership (equity), infrastructure (JV) and product (cross-border M-Pesa) to move from “national telcos” to “regional financial infrastructure providers”.

There are 13 key Policy Shifts happening in the Ghana Tech Ecosystem – What you should know

Posted on October 22, 2025October 22, 2025 by ethelcofie

If you care about technology or are in the tech ecosystem, you have to care about the slew of changes

Why Africans Don’t Trust Fintech’s and Mobile Money (Yet)

Posted on October 21, 2025October 21, 2025 by ethelcofie

Let’s start with a simple truth: access isn’t the same as trust.
We’ve spent over a decade celebrating Africa’s financial inclusion boom — the millions of new mobile wallets, the rise of fintech titans from Lagos to Nairobi, the mammoth stats that make development economists beam. Yet, I keep coming back to one uncomfortable question: do Africans trust the financial systems we’ve created for them?
Because if they don’t, then all we’ve built are digital doors — not open ones.

Infrastructure Investments: Building Africa’s Digital Backbone for Growth

Posted on October 2, 2025October 2, 2025 by ethelcofie

Having sat on two investment committees—one in insurance, another in venture capital—as well as the board of Ghana’s GIFEC (which allocates universal access funds for ICT infrastructure), I’ve seen firsthand how capital allocation decisions shape long-term outcomes.

Insurance investments emphasize stability, risk management, and sustainable returns.

Venture capital emphasizes growth, agility, and the capacity to back bold bets.

GIFEC balances financial stewardship with national inclusion goals, investing in connectivity for underserved communities.

These three lenses—risk, growth, and inclusion—mirror the balance Africa must strike in digital infrastructure investments. Governance, therefore, is not a footnote. It is the multiplier that ensures that capital, once deployed, creates lasting resilience and inclusion.

Strong Pipes, Fragile Foundations: Rethinking Africa’s Wholesale Connectivity Strategy

Posted on September 23, 2025September 23, 2025 by ethelcofie

When African govermment talk about digital transformation, the headlines often focus on fintech, AI, or e-government portals. Yet beneath these ambitions lies a more basic truth: none of it works without robust, affordable, and resilient connectivity.

What Ghana’s AI Policy Could Learn from Rwanda, Senegal, and Egypt

Posted on July 28, 2025July 28, 2025 by ethelcofie

Ghana Cannot Afford to Delay: Lessons from Rwanda, Senegal, and Egypt for a National AI Policy
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant aspiration.
It is fast becoming the most critical driver of productivity, competitiveness, and governance transformation.
The African Union estimates that AI and other Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies could add $1.3 trillion to Africa’s GDP by 2030 (PwC, 2022).
Yet, as this opportunity emerges, African nations are not moving at the same speed.
Ghana has pockets of excellence—research groups, private sector pilots, and enthusiastic startups—but it has no comprehensive, resourced national AI strategy.
This is not just a gap. It is a risk.
As the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation, NITA, and other stakeholders begin conversations about a future AI policy, Ghana has an opportunity to learn from the deliberate and well-funded strategies of three African peers: Rwanda, Senegal, and Egypt.

Board-Ready Talent for Ghana’s Fintech Governance Era

Posted on July 8, 2025July 8, 2025 by ethelcofie

By December 2025, the Bank of Ghana expects all Payment Service Providers and Fintechs to have their governance structures

Positioning the Ghana Card as Foundational Digital Infrastructure: From Identity to Infrastructure

Posted on July 3, 2025July 3, 2025 by ethelcofie

Positioning the Ghana Card as Foundational Digital Infrastructure: From Identity to Infrastructure

The Ghana Card since its inception has been touted as the foundational digital identity for Ghana. Based on the maturity of use, I believe the Ghana Card is no longer just an identification document—it is being operationalized as core infrastructure for governance, automation, and service delivery. It reflects the state’s evolving position that identity is not merely bureaucratic—it is foundational to enabling an efficient, inclusive, and innovation-ready economy.