Five years ago, I didnʼt know anything about fintech. But in 2021, I co-published Chasing Outliers: Why Context Matters for Early-stage Investing with Osarumen Osamuyi and Tony Chen to reconcile the uncomfortable, recurring cognitive dissonance that emerged from situating Silicon Valley-style models in African contexts.

2021 is also the year I launched my podcast, The Trajectory Africa to further explore the ʼwhyʼ behind capital flows—what made certain opportunities value-creating and VC-backable.

Toward the middle of last year, I retired the podcast to distill and share what I learned from the generous and insight-filled guests. To make the process more manageable, I've shaped it into a three-part series.

Part 1, which I'm about to share, focuses on the “theory” behind why fintech is fundamentally valuable—why digitalizing African economies is an opportunity with limitations, the role of fintech rails (and the velocity of money) in powering these economies, what a digitally-enabled financial system should deliver, and the characteristics define fintech markets.

Part 2, which drops next week, will lay out my perspective on how the fintech opportunity is evolving.

Illustration by Sarah Hanson (featured in The Future of Fintech Is Unfolding in Africa)