At the inaugural MTN Fintech Summit 2025 in Johannesburg, CEO of MobileMoney Limited, Shaibu Haruna, made a passionate call for true digital inclusion across Africa.

Speaking on a panel titled “Leading Through Disruption: The CEO Perspective on Regulation, Innovation, and Financial Inclusion”, Haruna stressed that financial inclusion must go beyond buzzwords.

“Financial inclusion has become a buzz word and everybody’s using it, but for me, it’s a very simple thing. It’s about offering digital inclusion for every single person,” he said.

For Shaibu Haruna, equal access means that no one should be left behind, whether in remote villages or bustling cities.

“That means that every single African has the power of being part of the financial ecosystem in a very convenient manner and a very accessible manner, irrespective of whether you live in the most remote part of Africa, and what kind of device you’re using, or what the needs, whatever need you have, you should be able to have access to affordable and convenient digital financial services,” he added.

His remarks were reinforced by Mudassar Aqil, MTN Group Fintech Executive for Banktech, who underlined that access to finance should be universal.

“Finance is not a privilege, but it’s a right for every person. So the mandate, which is given to me, is essentially democratising access to credit for everyone across Africa,” he said.

Mudassar explained how technology and data are central to delivering this vision.

“We’re using the digital tools to make that happen. And then data is our friend, so we use data to create intelligence to understand the risk and then make affordable, fair, transparent credit available to everyone across the MTN footprint.”

The summit, held under the theme “Take Off”, brought together fintech leaders from across Africa, including Richard Yego (MTN MoMo Uganda CEO), Alain Claude Nono (MTN MoMo Cameroon CEO), and Kagiso Mothibi (MTN MoMo South Africa CEO).