Roadmap for African E-Payment Ecosystems

Welcome to your course on the Roadmap for African E-Payment Ecosystems!

This course is designed for policymakers, regulators, and public sector leaders who want to build inclusive, interoperable digital payment systems across Africa. Most e-payment strategies fail not because the ambition was wrong, but because they were drawn up without a clear reading of the conditions on the ground: copying a roadmap from a more developed market, or building infrastructure before anyone assessed what was actually needed. A roadmap approach flips that around. It begins with an honest baseline, anchors every intervention in financial inclusion, and walks a disciplined process from analysis to measured outcome so that the plan can be steered, not just launched.

The curriculum reads the baseline conditions behind Africa's e-payment challenges across four themes (policy and regulation, infrastructure and interoperability, business ecosystems and partnerships, and cross-cutting areas), then unpacks the sixteen strategic interventions grouped under those themes. You will work through the four-step roadmap process, from baseline analysis to outcome evaluation, illustrated by a worked high-remittance case, before turning to outcome indicators and the Kenya M-Pesa case, and the seven common implementation risks and how to mitigate each.

By mastering these concepts, you will be equipped to read your own market's baseline, choose and prioritise interventions that widen inclusion, and design a roadmap whose progress you can actually measure, in your own local context.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Explain why a roadmap approach matters and read a market's baseline conditions across the four themes of an e-payment ecosystem.
• Identify the sixteen strategic interventions and the area each one sets out to fix, anchored in the goal of financial inclusion.
• Apply the four-step roadmap process, from baseline analysis to outcome evaluation, to a payment challenge in your jurisdiction.
• Evaluate outcomes with the right indicators and anticipate the seven common implementation risks, pairing each with a practical mitigation.

Who is this course for?

This course is designed for policymakers, regulators, and public sector leaders across Africa. It is highly beneficial for individuals who are:

• Responsible for digital payments policy, financial inclusion strategy, or the regulation of payment systems and providers.
• Designing or coordinating a national or regional e-payment roadmap across several agencies.
• Working in central banks, finance ministries, or development finance on digital trade and financial infrastructure.