Wave’s Regional Director, Coura Carine Tine Sene, arrived at the Africa Financial Industry Summit (AFIS) 2026 in Luanda, Angola, on November 3 and 4 with a clear message: Africa’s digital financial revolution will be judged not by awards or technology, but by whether services actually reach the people who need them.
Wave came with a delivery record worth examining. The company serves more than 25 million monthly active users across 11 African markets, and its African Disrupter Award at the summit recognised its contribution to expanding affordable digital financial services. For Sene, the prize was less a destination than a prompt to assess what that operational scale delivers. Disruption, she argued in a post-summit reflection, becomes meaningful only when sending money costs less, when payments become easier, and when millions gain access to services that once seemed beyond their reach. She credited Wave’s teams for their daily commitment to that mission and pointed to customer trust as central to its progress.
The operational questions went well beyond payments. During the Women In panel at AFIS, Sene examined whether alternative data could help overcome the barriers women entrepreneurs face in accessing credit, or whether such tools risk reinforcing inequalities already embedded in conventional lending systems. The underlying problem is practical. Women entrepreneurs often run viable businesses but lack the collateral, formal credit histories or financial documentation that traditional lenders require. Digital transaction records and alternative credit assessment methods could allow financial institutions to understand those businesses better and extend financing to underserved borrowers.
The delivery gap is considerable. According to the AFIS 2026 programme, women-led small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa face an estimated $42 billion annual financing gap. Alternative credit scoring offers one route to narrowing it, but the summit also flagged a risk that algorithms trained on historical financial data could reproduce gender discrimination. For Sene, the challenge is ensuring that new financial models do not repeat the exclusions of the past, and she placed particular weight on the responsibility of fintech companies, lenders and policymakers to turn technological progress into fairer access to economic opportunity.
Meanwhile, her engagements in Luanda also touched on the regulatory machinery that underpins reliable service delivery. Sene took part in discussions organised by AXIAN, where attention turned to the relationship between innovation, regulation and the trust required to build sustainable digital financial systems. Those conversations examined how regulators and financial service providers can work together to expand access to credit, savings, insurance and other products while safeguarding consumers and maintaining financial stability. As Africa’s fintech industry moves beyond basic payments into more sophisticated services, that cooperation is becoming increasingly important.
The implications for economic development are straightforward. Affordable digital payments can help small businesses operate more efficiently, and responsible lending innovations could open financing to entrepreneurs who have struggled with conventional banking. The test, as Sene framed it, is whether these benefits reach women, rural communities and other underserved groups rather than remaining concentrated among populations already financially connected. Her reflections suggest the next phase of Africa’s financial transformation will require more than technological breakthroughs: building public confidence, protecting customers and maintaining meaningful dialogue with regulators will matter as much as new products or expansion into additional markets.
Wave participated in AFIS 2026 as a Diamond Sponsor, and the discussions in Luanda form part of its broader ambition to make Africa the world’s first cashless continent. Sene described that vision as a collective undertaking requiring sustained commitment from financial institutions, regulators, technology providers and the millions of Africans increasingly relying on digital services. As reported by Pan African Visions, her reflections and the summit’s wider debates are documented at https://panafricanvisions.com/2026/11/waves-coura-carine-tine-sene-says-financial-inclusion-must-be-at-the-heart-of-africas-digital-revolution/
She left Luanda proud of Wave’s progress, grateful to the colleagues advancing its mission and more determined to build on the company’s achievements. The award offered encouragement, but her message made clear that the work of delivery remains substantial. At a time when Africa’s financial industry is rapidly embracing digital transformation, Sene’s argument brings the conversation back to the people the innovation is meant to serve. The continent’s financial future will be shaped not only by faster payments and expanding platforms, but by whether women entrepreneurs secure financing, underserved communities gain meaningful access and ordinary Africans experience greater economic opportunity. For Sene, that is what gives disruption its real meaning, and Wave’s cashless ambition will be realised through the cumulative impact of millions of everyday transactions, each contributing to a more accessible and inclusive financial system.