Financial Sector Deepening Africa (FSD Africa)
Nairobi, KenyaFSD Africa is a specialist development agency working to build and strengthen financial markets across subSaharan Africa. FSD Africa is incorporated as a non-profit company limited by guarantee in Kenya. It is funded by UK aid from the UK government. We work to reduce poverty through a ‘market systems development’ approach, which means we aim to address the structural, underlying causes of poverty by improving how financial market systems function.
At FSD Africa, our programming is designed to address systemic challenges within Africa’s financial markets, with the aim of sparking large-scale and long-term change. FSD Africa is part of a family of 9 financial sector deepening, or FSD programmes, operating across sub-Saharan Africa, known as the FSD Network. Together, the network provides over £50m a year in financial support to high-potential financial market development programmes, and employs over 150 financial sector experts, based in local offices across Africa.
Geographical Jurisdiction
sub – Saharan AfricaFSD Africa has been active in the Fintech and Innovation space and has been providing support to Fintechs, industry associations (such as Africa Crowdfunding Association) and regulators through use of some of its tools such as; technical assistance, grant or investment capital. In the regulating innovation space, we are currently working directly with regulators in Sierra Leone, DRC, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia. FSD Africa provides technical assistance to regulators in development of frameworks for regulating of innovation. FSD Africa alongside the UNCDF helped set up the Bank of Sierra Leone sandbox in 2018.
FSD Africa also provides market insights and convenes industry stakeholders on relevant fintech areas to build knowledge on emerging trends.
Focus Area
