Washington, D.C.
IMF / World Bank Spring Meetings
At the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C., Bridgforte’s Founder moderated a roundtable on scaling up the WE Finance Code. It was convened by the We-Fi Secretariat under Japan’s chairship of the We-Fi Governing Committee and brought together central bank governors, multilateral institutions, development finance leaders, donors and implementing partners from across regions.
The roundtable was structured around implementation updates from partners from Montenegro, Kenya and Rwanda, illustrating distinct national pathways for embedding the Code in financial system reform. It underscored themes central to Bridgforte’s work: that durable progress comes when initiatives are country-led, data-anchored and embedded in national priorities, and that the real test of financial system reform lies not in collecting evidence but in translating it into products, policy and capital flows.
Now spanning 33 countries with a credible pathway to 90, the Code stands as one of the more serious efforts to reshape what financial systems are designed to serve. Bridgforte, through the Founder's board membership of the Financial Alliance for Women, a long-standing We-Fi partner, has engaged with its evolution from early design to systemic initiative.
Academic Partnership
King’s College, London
Bridgforte’s academic engagement extends to a partnership with the African Leadership Centre at King’s College London, where the Founder led a seminar and mentorship session for postgraduate students and fellows on institutional leadership in Africa’s fintech sector.
Co-facilitated with financial inclusion advocate Ruth Goodwin-Groen, the session explored how African countries built modern payment and financial systems within a remarkably short timeframe, and argued that the continent’s fintech success is rooted more in governance innovation than in technological advancement, with today’s systems reflecting strategic leadership choices made under economic and infrastructural constraint.
The discussion examined trust between traditional banking and mobile money platforms, drawing on examples such as M-PESA in Kenya, where adoption succeeded because the technology was new but the behaviour was known. This is a strong reminder that where you sit shapes what you see when evaluating trust in financial systems.
The session reflects Bridgforte’s conviction that African fintech represents one of the most significant endogenous development experiments in recent economic history - and that mentorship and knowledge exchange between global institutions and emerging leaders will shape the policy and governance decisions on which tomorrow’s financial systems depend.