Africa Isn't Catching Up to the West in Fintech. It Left a While Ago

The West assumes Africa is catching up in fintech. It isn't. Countries like Ghana and Nigeria built payment infrastructure from scratch with no legacy systems to protect, and the results now outperform what the UK and US built over decades. Ghana processed GH₵518 billion in mobile money in a single month. Nigeria shipped open banking guidelines before the EU finished debating theirs. An engineer who built cross-border payment systems across both continents explains what happened, why constraints produce better software, and what Western institutions are still getting wrong about financial inclusion.