By 
By IT Edge News.Africa
Lagos is positioning itself at the centre of Africa’s rapidly changing financial landscape as GITEX NIGERIA announces the launch of MINT AFRICA by GITEX, a new future-finance platform designed to bring together capital, technology, regulation and innovation to accelerate the continent’s financial transformation.
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The platform will debut during GITEX NIGERIA Week 2027 in partnership with the Lagos State Government, bringing governments, regulators, banks, institutional investors, fintech companies, technology providers and digital-asset innovators together around what organisers describe as a critical turning point for global finance.
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The initiative comes as technology begins to fundamentally alter how money is created, transferred, invested and managed, with artificial intelligence, tokenisation, stablecoins, digital identity and interoperable payment systems increasingly becoming part of the infrastructure of modern economies.
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For Africa, the transformation presents a strategic choice: whether to remain primarily a consumer of financial technologies developed elsewhere or become a participant in designing and owning the infrastructure of the next financial era.
MINT AFRICA is being positioned as a platform for pursuing the latter.
Finance Is Being Rewritten
The architecture of financial services is changing rapidly.
Money is becoming increasingly programmable. Real-world assets are being tokenised, allowing traditionally illiquid assets to be represented digitally and potentially accessed by a wider pool of investors.
At the same time, agentic artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape how financial institutions make decisions, serve customers and automate complex processes.
Stablecoins and digital assets are challenging conventional payment rails, while digital identity, cybersecurity and interoperable payment infrastructure are becoming increasingly important to economic participation.
These developments are converging to create a financial system that is more digital, interconnected and potentially borderless.
Africa has a particularly significant stake in this transition.
Why Lagos Is at the Centre of the Conversation
Nigeria has emerged as one of Africa’s strongest fintech markets, while Lagos has become home to some of the continent’s most influential financial technology companies.
The city combines a large consumer market with entrepreneurial talent, financial institutions, technology startups, investors and an increasingly ambitious digital-economy strategy.
For Lagos State officials, that combination makes the city a natural meeting point for the next generation of African finance.
Dr Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, Deputy Governor of Lagos State, said the city’s importance to the continental technology economy is driven by commercial realities rather than symbolism.
“Lagos is a consequential destination and what happens here helps shape Africa’s digital transformation trajectory. The next chapter of African finance will not simply arrive; it will be built here, together.”
His comments underline the state’s ambition to move Lagos beyond being simply a large financial market to becoming a location where new financial technologies, businesses and investment models are developed and scaled.
From Financial Inclusion to Financial Reinvention
The opportunity facing Africa extends beyond fintech adoption.
Africa’s digital payments economy is projected to reach US$1.5 trillion by 2030, while the African Development Bank estimates that reforms involving deeper capital markets, stronger domestic resource mobilisation and public-private partnerships could unlock as much as US$1.43 trillion in financing annually.
Yet access to formal finance remains uneven.
In Nigeria, adult account ownership rose from 45.3% in 2021 to 63.3% in 2024. However, only 9.1% of adults borrowed through formal financial channels, highlighting the gap between having access to an account and having meaningful access to credit and investment capital.
MINT AFRICA is designed to explore how emerging technologies and regulatory frameworks can help close that gap.
The platform will examine how digital finance can expand access to capital, modernise financial infrastructure and enable more African consumers and businesses—particularly smaller enterprises—to participate in the continent’s digital economy.
The Technologies Reshaping African Finance
The MINT AFRICA agenda will extend beyond conventional fintech.
Key areas will include tokenisation and real-world assets, agentic AI and intelligent banking, stablecoins and digital currencies, next-generation payments, digital identity, cybersecurity and digital trust, financial infrastructure, cross-border interoperability, regulatory innovation, capital markets and investment in Africa’s fintech economy.
The breadth of the agenda reflects a growing reality: the boundaries between technology, banking and capital markets are becoming increasingly difficult to separate.
Artificial intelligence is moving into financial decision-making. Blockchain-based systems are creating new approaches to ownership and settlement. Digital identity is becoming an enabler of financial access, while interoperable payment infrastructure is increasingly important to cross-border commerce.
Nigeria’s $1 Trillion Economy Ambition
The transformation also intersects with Nigeria’s ambition to build a US$1 trillion economy.
Dr Nurudeen Abubakar Zauro, Technical Adviser to the President on Economic and Financial Inclusion, said achieving that ambition would require deeper investment, greater financial-sector participation and the formalisation of significant parts of the informal economy.
He also stressed the need to bring more Nigerians into the formal financial system while ensuring that micro, small and medium-sized enterprises have access to the financing required to scale.
This places financial technology within a much broader economic-development agenda.
For Nigeria, the objective is not simply to create more fintech applications. It is to build financial systems capable of mobilising capital, bringing more people into the formal economy and supporting businesses that can generate employment and economic value.
Infrastructure and Regulation Will Determine the Winners
Technology, however, will not be sufficient on its own.
The next generation of African finance will depend equally on connectivity, electricity, digital identity, cybersecurity, regulation and investor confidence.
Ganiyu Oseni, Special Adviser on Technology, Broadband and Innovation to the Governor of Lagos State, described infrastructure as an extension of economic policy.
“You cannot simply regulate an economy into existence. For a digital economy, the roads are connectivity, power, identity and talent.”
He said Lagos had spent seven years developing these foundational capabilities.
Oseni also issued an invitation to international investors to move beyond interest in the African market towards actual participation.
“We would rather have your capital than your admiration, and we would rather have your operational presence than your capital.”
His message reflects a growing demand across Africa for foreign investment that brings not only money but technology, expertise, jobs, infrastructure and long-term economic value.
Who Owns Africa’s Tokenised Assets?
As financial assets increasingly become digital, another question is emerging: who will own and benefit from the assets being tokenised?
Dr Armstrong Ume Takang, CEO of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI), Nigeria, said Africa must avoid repeating patterns in which valuable domestic assets are transformed into investment opportunities primarily for external investors.
The emergence of tokenisation, he argued, creates an opportunity for Nigerians to become active participants in the evolving digital-asset economy.
The issue is particularly important because tokenisation could eventually broaden access to investments in assets that have traditionally been difficult for ordinary investors to access.
But without appropriate ownership structures, regulation and domestic participation, the technology could also create new channels through which economic value flows outward.
Digital Assets Require Cross-Border Regulation
The increasingly borderless nature of digital finance also creates a regulatory challenge.
Digital assets can move across jurisdictions far more easily than traditional financial institutions and national regulatory systems can coordinate.
Tahiru Al Hassan, Head of Oversight and Compliance, Virtual Assets Department, Bank of Ghana, said stronger regulatory coordination across African countries would be essential.
He argued that harmonised approaches could help reduce regulatory fragmentation while creating trusted and interoperable digital financial ecosystems.
For a continent seeking deeper economic integration through AfCFTA, the issue is becoming increasingly urgent.
A genuinely integrated digital economy will require more than agreements between governments. It will require systems through which businesses and consumers can safely transact, authenticate identities, transfer value and access financial services across borders.
Why MINT AFRICA, Why Lagos, Why Now?
The decision to embed MINT AFRICA within GITEX NIGERIA Week reflects the growing convergence between financial services and technology.
AI is becoming part of financial infrastructure. Tokenisation is bringing technology closer to capital markets. Digital identity is connecting citizens to financial and public services. Regulation is increasingly being forced to evolve alongside innovation.
And ultimately, capital will determine which technologies and markets move beyond experimentation into large-scale deployment.
MINT AFRICA will use GITEX’s international network of technology companies, investors, governments and innovators to connect these forces, with Lagos as its marketplace and Africa as its mandate.
Trixie LohMirmand, CEO of GITEX, said Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem and Lagos’ combination of scale, talent and ambition made the city a natural home for the new platform.
“But the next chapter goes far beyond fintech. AI is becoming agentic, assets are becoming tokenised, money programmable and financial markets increasingly borderless.”
She said Africa now has an opportunity not merely to participate in the transformation of global finance, but to help shape it.
Building Africa’s Next Financial Economy
The launch of MINT AFRICA comes at a moment when the continent’s financial technology story is entering a more complex phase.
The first generation of African fintech was largely focused on solving access problems—making payments easier, enabling digital banking and bringing underserved consumers into formal financial systems.
The next generation could be more ambitious.
It could reshape how African assets are owned, how capital is raised, how businesses transact across borders, how governments manage financial infrastructure and how artificial intelligence participates in economic decision-making.
That future will require more than innovative startups.
It will require infrastructure, trusted digital identities, effective regulation, cybersecurity, interoperable payment systems, sophisticated capital markets and investors willing to commit long-term capital.
MINT AFRICA by GITEX is therefore arriving with a proposition that extends beyond another fintech conference.
It is an attempt to bring the different pieces of Africa’s emerging financial architecture into the same room—and to ensure that Lagos is not simply watching the future of finance unfold, but is helping build it.
