GITEX NIGERIA has announced the launch of MINT AFRICA by GITEX, a new future finance platform designed to accelerate the transformation of Africa’s financial economy through money, innovation, new technology and transparency.
The platform, which will debut in Lagos in preparation for GITEX NIGERIA Week 2027, which is expected to bring together governments, regulators, banks, institutional investors, fintech companies, technology firms and digital-asset innovators to shape the next phase of Africa’s financial ecosystem.
According to the organisers, the launch comes at a time when global finance is undergoing significant technological transformation, with programmable money, tokenised real-world assets, agentic artificial intelligence, stablecoins, digital assets, digital identity, cybersecurity and interoperable payment infrastructure reshaping the financial sector.
GITEX said Africa has an opportunity not only to adopt emerging financial technologies but also to play a defining role in shaping the next generation of finance, with Lagos emerging as a strategic location because of its market size, entrepreneurial ecosystem, capital and growing digital economy.
The Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Dr Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, said the decision to bring the platform to Lagos reflected the city’s growing commercial and technological importance.
“When GITEX came to Nigeria, Lagos became a commercial anchor. That was not a courtesy extended to us; it was a commercial judgement,” Hamzat said.
He added that Lagos was a consequential destination for Africa’s digital transformation and that the next chapter of African finance would be built through collaboration.
The Lagos State Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Technology, Tunbosun Alake, said the platform would help bridge the gap between financial innovation and actual investment.
“Africa doesn’t have a shortage of financial innovation. It has a shortage of the conversations that turn innovation into signed deals,” Alake said.
The organisers said Africa’s digital payments economy is projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, while reforms covering capital markets, domestic resource mobilisation and public-private partnerships could unlock significant financing opportunities for the continent.
In Nigeria, they noted that adult account ownership rose from 45.3 per cent in 2021 to 63.3 per cent in 2024, although only 9.1 per cent of adults borrowed through formal financial channels.
MINT AFRICA by GITEX will therefore focus on how emerging technologies and regulatory frameworks can expand access to capital, modernise financial infrastructure and enable consumers and businesses to participate more fully in the digital economy.
Its agenda will cover tokenisation and real-world assets, agentic AI and intelligent banking, stablecoins and digital currencies, next-generation payments, digital identity, cybersecurity, financial infrastructure, cross-border interoperability, regulatory innovation, capital markets and investment in Africa’s fintech sector.
The Technical Adviser to the President on Economic and Financial Inclusion, Dr Nurudeen Abubakar Zauro, said deepening the financial sector and expanding economic inclusion would be critical to Nigeria’s ambition of building a $1 trillion economy.
He said the country must bring more people into the formal financial system while ensuring that micro, small and medium enterprises have access to the financing required to expand.
Also speaking, the Special Adviser on Technology, Broadband and Innovation to the Lagos State Governor, Engr. Ganiyu Oseni, stressed that infrastructure and policy would determine the success of Africa’s digital economy.
“Infrastructure is policy. You cannot simply regulate an economy into existence,” Oseni said, identifying connectivity, power, digital identity and talent as critical infrastructure for the digital economy.
He urged international investors to establish operational presence in Lagos, arguing that Africa’s emerging financial economy would increasingly become tokenised, programmable and cross-border.
The CEO of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, Nigeria, Dr Armstrong Ume Takang, called for greater Nigerian participation in the emerging digital-asset ecosystem, particularly as technology makes it possible to tokenise assets and broaden investment opportunities.
He questioned whether Nigerians would continue to take a back seat while foreign investors capture the value created by the country’s emerging digital economy.
The Head of Oversight and Compliance, Virtual Assets Department, Bank of Ghana, Tahiru Al Hassan, meanwhile, stressed the need for stronger regulatory coordination across Africa to address the cross-border nature of digital assets.
He said greater coordination would help prevent regulatory fragmentation while building trusted and interoperable financial ecosystems across the continent.
The CEO of GITEX, Trixie LohMirmand, said Nigeria’s scale, talent and ambition made Lagos a natural location for MINT AFRICA by GITEX.
“Nigeria leads Africa’s fintech revolution. Its scale, talent and ambition make Lagos the deserving metropolis for MINT AFRICA by GITEX,” she said.
LohMirmand added that the initiative would go beyond fintech to address the convergence of artificial intelligence, tokenisation, programmable money and increasingly borderless financial markets.
She said GITEX’s international network of technology companies, investors, governments and innovators would be deployed to connect technology, regulation, infrastructure and global capital, with Lagos serving as the marketplace and Africa as the broader mandate.
The organisers said MINT AFRICA by GITEX 2027 would be embedded within GITEX NIGERIA Week because the future of finance is increasingly inseparable from technological development, investment, regulation and digital infrastructure.
