The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has warned that Africa risks expanding digital access without achieving real economic transformation, calling for urgent integration across the continent’s fragmented digital ecosystems.
Speaking on Day Two of the 3i Africa Summit 2026 in Accra, IFC official Nathalie Kouassi-Akon said the continent’s next phase of growth must prioritise integration, productivity and scale rather than connectivity alone.
She pointed to a stark internal contradiction in Africa’s digital story. More than 191 million additional Africans made or received digital payments between 2014 and 2021. Yet only about 22 percent of people actively use mobile internet, and over 60 percent live within broadband reach but remain unconnected.
Fragmentation, she argued, is the central obstacle. Payment platforms function in isolation. Data exists but cannot move easily or safely across systems. Without resolving these disconnects, she warned, Africa risks “scaling silos instead of scaling growth.”
Kouassi-Akon identified interoperable payments, digital identity systems, trusted data exchange frameworks and connectivity infrastructure as the foundational pillars needed to make cross border trade and regional value chains work in practice. She added that digital public infrastructure must also be backed by investment in electricity, skills development and strong institutions.
Trust, she noted, is equally critical. Citizens and investors will only engage with platforms anchored by sound governance, cybersecurity, accountability and data protection frameworks.
On financing, she was direct: governments cannot sustain the level of investment needed to scale digital infrastructure across Africa alone. She described digital public infrastructure as capital intensive and innovation driven, arguing that the private sector must serve as a co-architect and co-investor rather than a vendor.
She disclosed that IFC has committed more than 9.6 billion dollars to digital infrastructure over the past decade, including a 100 million dollar financing package for African data centre platform Raxio Group to expand facilities across the continent.
Kouassi-Akon praised Ghana’s mobile money growth and its emerging technology ecosystem, adding that real transformation would come when African digital systems connect seamlessly across borders, enabling young entrepreneurs and small businesses to access credit, trade regionally and create jobs locally.
