Kenyan telco giant has announced that it will channel USD 50,000 towards sponsoring the inaugural Afro-Asia FinTech Festival this year, between July 15th & 16th at the Kenya school of Monetary studies.
The event has been dubbed ‘Fintech in the Savannah’. It will be co-hosted by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
The theme of the fintech festival is “Sustainable Finance; Inclusive and Green”. It is modeled after the Singapore fintech festival
Safaricom Chief Financial Services Officer, Sitoyo Lopokoiyot, said, “The festival is a great platform for us as it presents opportunities to showcase the progress that Safaricom has made over the years towards financial technology as well as interact with peers in fintech across the globe.”
The two day event will provide a platform for attendees to connect, collaborate and exchange ideas between Africa and Asia. It will also explore sustainable financial services innovations from emerging Afro-Asian Markets.
Sitoyo Lopokoiyot, said, “Two years ago, we opened up our Daraja API portal giving over 16,000 developers an opportunity to integrate their businesses with M-PESA seamlessly. This is in line with our strategy to deepen financial inclusion and give developers a chance to come up with new innovations.”
CBK governor, Patrick Njoroge, says, “We are indeed delighted to host such a unique event which shows where we are as an African country in the spectrum of Fintech, we are at the front. We are the pacesetters and we are not just excited about technology but the difference it is making for millions of people in Africa and billions around the world.”
The festival is expecting north of 5,000 participants, policy makers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers across the world.
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The major topics of discussion at the festival are AI, big data, cyber security, technology risks, social impacts (SME Financing, financial literacy and inclusion), Sustainable finance and spirit of innovation among other key areas in Fintech.
Kenya is one of a number of countries with a vibrant technology industry, with several successful fintech companies thriving in the country.
In 2018, Cellulant and Tala, both Kenyan-based fintechs, were listed among the Top 50 emerging Fintech companies in the world in the KPMG FinTech100 report.
