MINT AFRICA by GITEX: How Lagos is positioning West Africa for the next financial economy

By IT Edge News.Africa

For decades, Lagos has been West Africa’s commercial nerve centre. Now, as artificial intelligence, tokenised assets, programmable money and digital payments begin to redraw the architecture of global finance, the city is positioning itself for a much bigger role: becoming one of the places where Africa’s next financial economy is built.

RELATED: GITEX Nigeria unveils MINT AFRICA 2027 to drive Africa’s next generation of finance

That ambition is at the heart of MINT AFRICA by GITEX, a new future-finance platform unveiled by GITEX NIGERIA that will debut during GITEX NIGERIA Week 2027 in partnership with the Lagos State Government.

The platform will bring together governments, regulators, banks, institutional investors, fintech companies, technology firms and digital-asset innovators at a time when finance is undergoing one of its most profound technological transformations.

MINT AFRICA matters because Africa is no longer simply confronting the question of how to expand access to financial services. The bigger question is increasingly how the continent can participate in designing the infrastructure, markets and technologies that will define finance itself.

From Fintech Revolution to Financial Reinvention

Africa’s fintech story has largely been about solving immediate problems: moving money faster, reaching the unbanked, enabling digital payments and bringing informal businesses into formal financial systems.

The next chapter is potentially much bigger.

Money is becoming programmable. Real-world assets are being tokenised. Agentic AI is beginning to change how financial services are delivered and how decisions are made. Stablecoins and digital assets are challenging conventional payment rails, while digital identity, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and interoperable payment systems are becoming fundamental components of economic infrastructure.

For Africa, these technologies could provide an opportunity to leapfrog parts of the traditional financial architecture.

But leapfrogging will require more than startups.

It will require capital, regulation, trusted infrastructure, digital identity, cybersecurity, interoperable payment systems and markets capable of supporting innovation at scale.

That is the space MINT AFRICA is designed to occupy.

Why Lagos, Why West Africa?

Nigeria already has Africa’s largest fintech ecosystem, while Lagos has become home to some of the continent’s most influential financial technology companies.

The city brings together something increasingly valuable in the digital economy: market scale, entrepreneurial talent, capital, infrastructure and regulatory experience.

Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Dr Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, described the selection of Lagos as more than a symbolic recognition.

“When GITEX came to Nigeria, Lagos became a commercial anchor. That was not a courtesy extended to us; it was a commercial judgement.”

His argument is straightforward: global exhibitions follow markets, while markets follow scale, capital and momentum.

For Lagos, MINT AFRICA represents an opportunity to convert those advantages into a platform for continental financial leadership.

“The next chapter of African finance will not simply arrive; it will be built here, together,” Hamzat said.

That proposition has implications well beyond Lagos.

If the city can attract the capital, technology companies, investors and policymakers shaping the next financial cycle, West Africa could increasingly become a laboratory—and eventually a major marketplace—for emerging financial technologies.

GITEX Creates the Global Bridge

MINT AFRICA is being embedded within GITEX NIGERIA Week for a reason.

The future of finance can no longer be separated from the future of technology.

The GITEX platform brings together technology companies, governments, investors and innovators from different markets. MINT AFRICA seeks to apply that network specifically to the financial economy.

Following the strong response to GITEX NIGERIA 2026, the new platform effectively expands the event’s mandate from showcasing technology to creating deeper connections between technology, capital, policy and financial infrastructure.

This distinction is important.

Africa does not necessarily suffer from a shortage of financial innovation. It often suffers from a shortage of mechanisms capable of converting promising innovation into investment, commercial partnerships and scalable infrastructure.

As Lagos Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Technology Tunbosun Alake put it:

“Africa doesn’t have a shortage of financial innovation. It has a shortage of the conversations that turn innovation into signed deals.”

MINT AFRICA, he said, is intended to close that gap.

A $1.5 Trillion Digital Payments Opportunity

The economic opportunity is substantial.

Africa’s digital payments economy is projected to reach US$1.5 trillion by 2030, while the African Development Bank estimates that reforms around deeper capital markets, domestic resource mobilisation and public-private partnerships could unlock as much as US$1.43 trillion in financing annually.

Yet the continent continues to face significant financial inclusion and capital-access gaps.

In Nigeria, adult account ownership rose from 45.3 per cent in 2021 to 63.3 per cent in 2024, but only 9.1 per cent of adults borrowed through formal financial channels.

The implication is that opening bank accounts and enabling payments is only the beginning.

The next challenge is creating financial systems through which individuals, entrepreneurs and businesses can access credit, investment, insurance, capital markets and cross-border financial services at scale.

MINT AFRICA’s Bigger Agenda

The platform’s agenda will extend well beyond conventional fintech.

It will examine:

Tokenisation and real-world assets;
Agentic AI and intelligent banking;
Stablecoins and digital currencies;
Next-generation payment systems;
Digital identity;
Cybersecurity and digital trust;
Financial infrastructure;
Cross-border interoperability;
Regulatory innovation;
Capital markets; and
Investment in Africa’s fintech economy.

Together, these areas represent the infrastructure of a potentially different African financial system—one in which transactions are more programmable, assets more accessible, markets more interconnected and financial services increasingly intelligent.

The Infrastructure Question

Technology alone, however, will not determine which African markets win the next financial cycle.

Infrastructure will.

Ganiyu Oseni, Special Adviser on Technology, Broadband and Innovation to the Lagos State Governor, captured the point succinctly:

“Infrastructure is policy.”

For a digital economy, he argued, the equivalent of physical roads is connectivity, power, identity and talent.

Lagos, he said, has spent seven years building these foundations.

The challenge now is to convert them into economic advantage.

Oseni’s message to international investors was particularly direct: Lagos wants investment and, even more importantly, operational presence.

“Africa’s financial future will be tokenised, programmable and cross-border,” he said. “It will settle somewhere. It should settle in Lagos.”

That is an ambitious proposition—but one that captures the stakes of the MINT AFRICA project.

Who Will Own Africa’s Tokenised Economy?

The emerging financial economy also raises a fundamental question about ownership.

If African assets become increasingly digitised and tokenised, who will capture the economic value?

Dr Armstrong Ume Takang, Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria’s Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI), warned against allowing Nigerians to remain passive participants in the transformation.

His question goes to the heart of the opportunity: if digital tools make assets accessible to a wider pool of investors, African economies must ensure their citizens and institutions can participate in the resulting value creation.

The issue is therefore not merely whether Africa adopts tokenisation.

It is whether African investors, institutions and entrepreneurs own, build and profit from the infrastructure and assets being transformed.

Digital Assets Need African Regulatory Coordination

The cross-border nature of digital assets introduces another challenge: fragmented regulation.

Tahiru Al Hassan, Head of Oversight and Compliance, Virtual Assets Department, Bank of Ghana, said greater regulatory coordination across Africa would be necessary to prevent fragmentation and build trusted, interoperable digital-asset ecosystems.

This could become one of the most important policy questions for the continent.

Digital assets do not respect conventional borders, but regulation remains largely national.

Without greater interoperability between regulatory frameworks, African markets risk creating disconnected digital economies just as technology makes cross-border transactions easier.

For West Africa, the challenge is particularly relevant as countries seek to deepen regional trade and financial integration.

GITEX NIGERIA Has Already Shown the Scale of the Opportunity

The launch of MINT AFRICA builds on the momentum of GITEX NIGERIA 2026.

The 2026 edition brought more than 400 exhibiting companies and startups, 150-plus expert speakers and over 200 investors managing US$200 billion in assets under management, alongside thousands of visitors.

The event was designed around a broader ambition: positioning Nigeria and West Africa not merely as consumers of technology but as producers of talent, solutions and digital infrastructure.

That ambition was visible across the exhibition floor.

International technology companies including Space42, HCLSoftware and Mastercard showcased solutions spanning satellite connectivity, geospatial intelligence, cybersecurity, AI, digital payments, fraud prevention, digital identity and cross-border transactions.

The significance goes beyond the exhibition itself.

It demonstrates the increasingly blurred boundary between financial technology and the wider digital infrastructure economy.

Payments need connectivity. Digital finance needs identity. AI needs computing infrastructure. Tokenised assets need cybersecurity and trusted digital systems. Cross-border finance needs interoperability.

The financial economy is therefore becoming inseparable from the technology economy.

West Africa’s Next Decade Will Be Built on Digital Infrastructure

The GITEX NIGERIA Future Economy Conference further broadened the conversation around Africa’s digital sovereignty, AI-led enterprise transformation, cybersecurity, next-generation connectivity, smart cities, future mobility and investment in digital infrastructure.

That context gives MINT AFRICA a potentially important role.

The platform can become a meeting point where financial capital meets technological capability—and where policymakers, investors and entrepreneurs negotiate the rules and infrastructure of the next economic era.

For West Africa, that matters enormously.

The region has one of Africa’s largest concentrations of entrepreneurial energy and technology adoption. Yet its ability to turn innovation into durable economic value will depend on whether its markets can attract long-term capital, build interoperable infrastructure and create regulatory systems that encourage rather than constrain innovation.

From Fintech Capital to Financial Innovation Capital

GITEX CEO Trixie LohMirmand believes Nigeria is already at the centre of Africa’s fintech revolution.

But she sees the opportunity as extending far beyond fintech.

“AI is becoming agentic, assets are becoming tokenised, money programmable and financial markets increasingly borderless. Africa has an opportunity not merely to participate in this transition, but to shape it.”

That is ultimately the proposition behind MINT AFRICA.

Lagos is not simply seeking another international technology event.

It is seeking a seat at the table where the future architecture of African finance is being designed.

And for West Africa, the significance could be even greater.

If MINT AFRICA succeeds in connecting African innovators with global capital, regulators with technology companies, and emerging financial infrastructure with real markets, it could help move the region from being a fast-growing consumer of financial technology to becoming a builder and owner of the next generation of financial infrastructure.

The real opportunity is therefore not just to make Lagos Africa’s fintech capital.

It is to make Lagos—and, by extension, West Africa—a place where capital, technology and policy converge to build the financial economy of the future.