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African governments still treat digital skills, digital trade and digital payments as three separate policy conversations. [Courtesy]
Africa's digital economy is no longer a promise on a slide deck. It is a live, fast-moving market. In 2025 alone, $1.4 trillion moved through mobile money accounts on the continent, roughly two thirds of everything transacted through mobile money on earth. Merchant payments jumped 42 percent to $155 billion. Interoperable transfers between banks and wallets reached $167 billion. These are not projections. They are receipts.
Ask a young graduate in Kigali, Accra or Gaborone whether she feels equipped to build, secure or govern the systems behind that $1.4 trillion, and the honest answer is usually no. But the deeper problem is not simply a shortage of digital talent. It is that many African governments still treat digital skills, digital trade and digital payments as three separate policy conversations, run by different ministries, financed through different budgets, measured against different national targets, when across a continent of fifty-four markets they function, in truth, as one interlocking digital economy. The real question is not how many coders any single country can produce. It is whether the talent already spread across Nairobi, Lagos, Kigali, Accra and dozens of other cities can operate across borders, reach a market beyond its home country, and get paid for the work.
