There is a Disconnect Between Fintech Founders and Policymakers in Nigeria

A while back, we sat with a group of Nigerian pre-seed and seed-stage fintech founders preparing for an international roadshow. Their pitch decks were sharp, and their unit economics were sound. Their compliance narratives were well thought through. But when we asked them, “When was the last time you engaged a policymaker?” They couldn’t respond. That captures a structural problem in Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem. Founders and regulators operate in proximity, but not in partnership.

Nigeria has produced globally relevant fintech companies and continues to attract capital into digital financial services. Yet the conversations that shape the sector’s future remain largely disconnected from the people building it. While fintech founders are building infrastructure such as payment rails, identity systems, credit models, and increasingly, blockchain-based financial layers, regulators (the government), on the other hand, are tasked with ensuring stability, security, and systemic trust. But they both operate from different vantage points, with limited structured interaction, even though they are both aiming to achieve the same outcome of a functional financial system.

For instance, policy is often discussed at high-level forums, but you rarely find both the fintech founders and policymakers together in these forums.

Other markets have deliberately addressed this gap.

In India, alignment between founders and policymakers was driven through structured public infrastructure and coordinated dialogue. For example, the development and expansion of UPI (Unified Payments Interface) was the result of sustained collaboration between regulators, banks, and private fintech players under a clear national framework. It was not just a technical innovation. Founders did not need to guess or fear regulatory direction; they built within it.

Similarly, the UK’s fintech ecosystem benefited from formal mechanisms of engagement. The Kalifa Review of UK Fintech was commissioned by the Treasury and brought together founders, regulators, investors, and technical operators to define a national strategy. In parallel, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) established regulatory sandboxes, allowing startups to test products in controlled environments while engaging regulators early.

These represent institutionalised channels that ensure that engagement is strategically designed.

Nigeria has demonstrated the ability to convene stakeholders. The Africa Capital Forum, hosted by the Central Bank of Nigeria and international partners, is one example of this. But these engagements often prioritise macroeconomic narratives over product-level realities, exclude early-stage founders experimenting at the edge, and lack continuity beyond the event itself. Most critically, they fail to integrate the technical talent responsible for execution.

Fintech today is not just about ideas or capital. It is about systems — secure, scalable, and interoperable systems. Cybersecurity experts, product leaders, and AI program managers have become central to whether policy can be translated into functioning infrastructure. But they are rarely in the room.

The cost of this misalignment is that when policy lags behind innovation, startups are forced to build around uncertainty rather than within a clear framework. Meanwhile, regulators or policymakers respond reactively instead of engaging the startups. So, investor confidence weakens, and infrastructure development becomes fragmented. Now, founders operating without sufficient regulatory insight risk failing compliance late in the product lifecycle, exposing systems to avoidable security vulnerabilities, and missing opportunities for meaningful public–private collaboration.

How can this be solved?

Meetings like the World Bank Spring Meetings, which have already begun, could be a rare opportunity to reset this dynamic. What is missing is not access, but structure. Rather than relying on informal networking or high-level discussions, engagement should take the form of a curated, closed-door working session that brings together a small, representative group of founders across payments, crypto, lending, and infrastructure, particularly at the early stage, alongside policymakers and development partners.

This forum should extend beyond founders to include execution talent such as cybersecurity leads, senior product operators, and AI and data program managers, who are responsible for translating policy into functional systems. The agenda should be explicitly problem-led, anchored in national priorities such as reducing remittance costs, expanding financial inclusion infrastructure, improving transparency in public financial flows, and strengthening fraud detection. In this setting, founders would not be seeking permission but presenting deployable solutions aligned with the government’s stated objectives.

For this to work, engagement must move from symbolic to operational, with each interaction defined by clear outcomes, supported by follow-through beyond events, and structured to embed founder input directly into policy development cycles while establishing recurring platforms for dialogue rather than one-off meetings. In essence, the relationship must shift from reactive engagement to continuous coordination.

Of course, a single meeting will not resolve this gap. But it can signal a shift in approach.

Nigeria’s fintech sector sits at a critical intersection. Global capital is watching. Development institutions are investing heavily in digital infrastructure. Diaspora networks are increasingly active. But that lack of coordination between the founders and policymakers remains a huge gap. Until that gap is filled in the ecosystem, both sides will continue to operate efficiently but separately. And that is the risk.

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Chaste Inegbedion is a fintech ecosystem builder who hosts handshake events on the sidelines of major global gatherings, matching founders, nonprofit professionals, and government and enterprise leaders. He focuses on bridging the gap between founders in the diaspora, global markets, and policy. He serves as Head of Happiness at ConcordeApp and Head of Failure & Social Experiments at Semaform Foundation.

Eyitayo Ogunmola is the founder and CEO of Utiva, a global talent infrastructure company that has trained over 100,000 people and helps companies across the US, UK, and Europe hire top talent from more than 39 markets. A recognised technology entrepreneur, he has held senior roles at Creative Associates and Afrissance, and is an alumnus of Chevening, Halcyon, and the Jack Ma Foundation Business Heroes program. He consults as an AI product manager and founded The Velocity, a community of over 700 high‑performing entrepreneurs and operators across Africa and the diaspora.