Aishah Ahmad: Africa Should Help Write the Rules of Global Finance

Aishah Ahmad, founder of the Bridgforte Centre for Global Impact and chair of the Graça Machel Trust’s Expert Leaders’ Group, believes the next test of digital finance is not simply access, but trust. The former Central Bank of Nigeria Deputy Governor for Financial System Stability speaks with Nume Ekeghe about Africa’s place in global financial governance, what Nigeria must do to earn public confidence in financial systems and why women’s leadership representation must come with real authority. Having recently turned 50, she also reflects on her heritage, the responsibilities of leadership and the next chapter she is building

Bridgforte’s work argues that access to digital finance has expanded faster than public confidence. What are we missing?

We have become much better at measuring whether people can enter the financial system. We need to pay equal attention to what happens after they do.

A person can have an account and still be reluctant to leave savings in it. A merchant can accept a digital payment and immediately withdraw the proceeds. Those choices tell us something that account numbers alone cannot explain.

People want to know whether their money is safe, whether a transaction will work and whether someone will put things right when it does not. A failed transfer, an unexplained charge or fraud that takes months to resolve can undo years of progress. A payment may pass through a bank, a fintech and several infrastructure providers. The customer experiences one system, even when responsibility is divided among several organisations. Our Trust Architecture framework examines five elements: infrastructure integrity, institutional accountability, technology governance, ecosystem coordination and cultural confidence. Together, they help us understand how confidence is earned through the way a system works.

This is a global question. As finance becomes more interconnected, leaders everywhere must ask who takes responsibility for the outcome the customer actually experiences. Access is not the same as trust.

What prompted you to establish Bridgforte, and how do you intend to turn its conversations into practical change?

I kept encountering problems that fell between different parts of the financial system. Regulators, financial institutions, technology companies and consumers could each describe an important part of the problem, but their perspectives were rarely brought together in a sustained way. My experience across private financial markets, regulation and public policy made closing that gap a compelling objective. I established Bridgforte to connect practical experience with research and create room for people to examine questions beyond their own organisational boundaries. I also wanted Bridgforte to bring ideas and experience from Africa and the wider Global South into the setting of global agendas. Our markets are producing innovations and insights that should help shape which questions get asked, what gets researched and how policy develops. Our focus on trust reflects that ambition: drawing on our experience of expanding digital access to ask whether people’s confidence was keeping pace, and what that means for the future of finance. Our work on trust began at our first Dialogue during United Nations General Assembly week in 2025. An Executive Table in Lagos helped shape the Trust Architecture report, launched in July 2026 with a keynote from the South African Reserve Bank’s Deputy Governor. We returned to New York during UNGA81 in September 2026 to examine the more developed framework with leaders from industry, policy and multilateral institutions. The next step is to deepen the evidence through the research agenda we are developing in the Trust Lab. Where does confidence break down? What happens after a failed transaction? Which forms of remedy help people return to using a service? For me, the test is whether the work identifies new priorities and helps leaders make better decisions. Practical change requires the courage to identify what must be fixed, convene the right actors, assign clear ownership and follow through.

Drawing on your discussions during United Nations General Assembly week and the IMF–World Bank Spring Meetings, what can the wider world learn from Africa’s experience of digital finance and payments?

Africa’s experience belongs at the centre of global discussions about the future of finance. We have had to solve difficult problems: reaching people far from bank branches, making small transactions affordable and connecting markets with different currencies and rules. Those challenges have driven innovation. Mobile money and agent banking show what becomes possible when you design around how people actually live and transact. Nigeria’s instant payments journey also demonstrates the value of shared infrastructure that allows different providers to connect and build services on it. Through PAPSS, we are addressing the practical challenge of making payments across African borders.

Having chaired NIBSS and the PAPSS Oversight Committee, I have seen the work behind that transformation. It takes technical ingenuity, regulatory adaptation and cooperation between organisations that also compete. The lesson is that solving a specific local problem can produce knowledge and capabilities with much wider relevance.

Other markets are also grappling with the cost of payments, reaching underserved people and connecting fragmented systems. Africa brings practical experience to those discussions, including lessons about what happens when adoption moves faster than consumer protection or public confidence.

Africa should not only adopt the rules of global finance. It should help write them. Our transformation has given us knowledge to contribute, even as we continue to learn from others. That conviction is part of why I established Bridgforte: to help shape the questions on the global agenda, drawing on experience that too often sits outside the discussions that set it.

Closer to home, what would show that Nigeria’s financial system has become more trustworthy and more beneficial to ordinary Nigerians over the next five years?

 I would look for evidence in people’s everyday experience, not only in headline numbers. First, that when something goes wrong, it is put right quickly. Someone whose transfer fails or who loses money to fraud should know where to go, how long resolution will take and who is accountable. We should measure and publish redress times with the same seriousness we bring to inclusion figures. Second, that people use the system with confidence: keeping savings in accounts, taking up insurance and pensions, and building payment histories for small businesses that can support access to credit. That is when access begins to change household welfare. Third, that the gains reach women, rural communities and the informal sector, who are too often counted in and then underserved.

Nigeria has built remarkable payment infrastructure and some of the continent’s most valuable and dynamic fintech companies. The next achievement is a system that people trust as much as they use. If we get that right, Nigeria will be more than one of Africa’s largest digital finance markets. It will set the standard for trust.

As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in finance, what should leaders and boards be asking?

They should begin with the decisions being made and the people affected by them. What is the system being asked to do? What information does it use? How is its performance tested? Who can challenge an outcome, and who can correct it?

These questions become especially important when technology influences access to credit, fraud detection or the handling of a customer’s complaint. A model may perform well on average while producing poor outcomes for particular groups. Leaders need enough understanding to recognise that possibility and demand evidence.

From an investment perspective, these questions also affect a business’s ability to grow. Capital can accelerate the use of technology, but weak governance can allow mistakes to spread just as quickly. Founders need to build accountability into the business early, while investors should examine how customer outcomes are monitored as the company scales.

Boards should create the conditions for ambitious innovation while making accountability clear. They need visibility into dependence on external providers, the quality of data and the ability to respond when something fails.

Technology can expand what an organisation is capable of doing. Leadership determines whether that capability is used wisely.

Your work with the Financial Alliance for Women and the Graça Machel Trust addresses women’s economic power. Where do you believe the greatest change is needed? 

We need to look more closely at who controls resources and who shapes decisions. Women’s economic power includes the ability to earn, own assets, build businesses and exercise authority over the choices affecting their lives.

Through the Financial Alliance for Women, I see how experience from different markets can improve commercial decisions and economic opportunity. At the IMF–World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington this year, I moderated a roundtable on the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Code, or WE Finance Code, which calls for better data on financing for women-led businesses and measurable commitments to expanding it. At the Graça Machel Trust’s Expert Leaders’ Group, which I chair, the concern is also how women’s leadership can influence the systems that allocate capital and opportunity. Representation becomes more consequential when it comes with authority over budgets, strategy and execution. We should examine the experience behind the numbers. A woman may hold an account without controlling the money in it. A capable entrepreneur may remain difficult for a lender to assess because her business does not fit conventional assumptions. Developing people is part of this work, too. WIMBIZ’s Big Sister programme and the Amfani Zhiba Foundation’s mentoring of girls in Bida reflect my belief in widening what younger women and girls can imagine for themselves. Encouragement matters most when it is accompanied by access, preparation and opportunity.

You were the first woman to serve as Deputy Governor for Financial System Stability at the CBN. What did that teach you about women and leadership?

Being first matters, but what women are entrusted to lead is also important. Financial System Stability is a consequential portfolio, spanning supervision, payments and the resilience of the financial system. You are making decisions that affect institutions, businesses and people’s livelihoods. I was conscious of the significance of being the first woman in that role. But my daily focus was on doing the work well: asking difficult questions, exercising sound judgement and creating the conditions for capable people to contribute. Women need opportunities to lead across the full range of an organisation’s responsibilities and build the experience that prepares them for its highest office. Sponsorship is important here. Advice helps, but someone also has to entrust you with a difficult assignment, put your name forward and back your ability to deliver. I benefited from that confidence and have sought to extend it to others. It was fulfilling to support capable women within the Bank and across the financial system, making them more visible for leadership opportunities, helping build a culture that recognised their contributions and engaging male leaders as allies. During my tenure, we saw more women appointed as executive directors, bank board members and CEOs. Those appointments reflected the efforts of many people, but advancing that progress was important to me. The measure of being first is how quickly you stop being the only one.

You have Nupe and Ijesha roots and hold traditional titles in both communities. How does that inheritance shape your perspective?

I am a proud Nigerian who has never had to choose between my Northern   and Southern heritage. My father’s family is Nupe, while my mother’s line runs to Imesi-Ile in Ijeshalannd, Both are part of who I am. Being Soniya Asusu Nupe and Yeye Tayese of Imesi-Ile is deeply meaningful to me. These honours connect my professional life with communities whose regard I value personally. They also remind me that contribution is understood in practical terms: being present, supporting people and taking an interest in what happens beyond your own immediate world. That inheritance has shaped how I approach difference. Many disagreements are less about facts than about where people are standing. I am comfortable listening across perspectives, and I want to understand what matters to people before assuming I know. It also shapes what I care about. I see talent, enterprise and resources in the North whose potential is too often constrained by weak connections to finance, markets and opportunity. That conviction sits behind the Amfani Zhiba Foundation, which earlier this year delivered its global mentoring programme to 110 girls at my former school, Federal Government Girls’ College, Bida. It is an outlook I carry into international work. People bring their histories into the room, whether those histories are cultural, professional or organisational. Finding common purpose requires curiosity about those differences and respect for what others know.

Public leadership can be demanding. What have you learnt about judgement at that level, and how do you preserve an inner life beyond the work?

We must keep the people we are trying to serve at the centre of our decisions. I have learnt that good judgement requires preparation and a willingness to be challenged. Consequential decisions often involve incomplete information, competing needs and limited time. You have to understand the trade-offs, listen carefully and still be prepared to act. I value people who can tell me what I may be missing. A leader needs colleagues who feel able to raise difficult questions early. You also need the discipline to revisit your assumptions when the evidence changes. That experience has deepened my interest in the interior life of leadership: the questions people carry privately while appearing composed in public. There is much more uncertainty, reflection and human complexity behind consequential decisions than we often acknowledge. Moving on from public office also taught me that a title is something you hold, not something you are. Your commitment to the change you want to see continues beyond it. So does the value of the people you developed and what you built. History gives me perspective on all of this. It helps me see how people have navigated change, exercised power and lived with the consequences of their choices. Writing gives me another way to examine an experience and understand what I actually think about it. Relationships, humour and creativity matter enormously too. They keep me connected to the fullness of life. I want to do substantial work while remaining curious, engaged and available to the people who matter to me.

You recently turned 50. Has the milestone changed how you think about your time and what matters to you?

People keep welcoming me to freedom, and I do feel it. But it has also made me wonder why we sometimes wait for a milestone to give ourselves permission: to pursue an idea, make room for joy or be more deliberate about our time. Much of that freedom was available before the birthday. Perhaps I am more willing to claim it now.

I have a clearer sense of where I can contribute and what deserves my energy. Through Bridgforte and my wider work, I am bringing together experience, relationships and questions I care deeply about. There is still so much I want to learn and build.

Threads, the theme of my birthday celebration, was about the people woven through my life and how much we owe to those who open doors, challenge us, stand beside us and make life more joyful.

I also take real pride in seeing people I have worked with doing remarkable things and finding their own way. They are part of what legacy means to me, and those relationships continue.

Alongside the work, I want more room for curiosity, creativity and the things I enjoy simply for themselves. Fifty has made me more intentional about giving all of that a place in my life.

Looking ahead, what do you want your work to make possible?

I want to help close the distance between the promise of progress and what people actually experience. For Bridgforte, that means producing research that helps decision-makers understand where confidence breaks down and what can be done about it. Our next phase is to deepen the evidence on trust and develop approaches that can be tested in practice. Across my wider work, I want to keep advancing women’s economic power and helping capable people move into positions where they can shape consequential decisions.

These questions reach across borders. I want to help shape how financial systems are governed as technology changes them, drawing on experience across markets and building collaborations that turn evidence into better decisions about capital, trust and opportunity.

There is a great deal more I want to build, and I am approaching it with energy and a clearer sense of purpose.