Is This Inclusion or Digital Apartheid? The High-Tech Lie Locking Out Millions of Africans
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By Thuita Gatero | Managing Editor, Africa Digest News
They call it “financial inclusion.”
A phrase repeated so often in fintech panels, government whitepapers, and glossy investor decks that it now sounds like a promise. But for millions of Africans still excluded from the digital economy, it feels more like a cruel joke.
Yes, mobile money has changed lives. Yes, fintech apps have brought convenience. But let’s be honest: inclusion, real inclusion, is not about access to shiny interfaces. It’s about equity. It’s about participation. It’s about dignity.
And right now, what we’re building is not inclusive.
It’s a two-tier digital economy: sleek, globalized financial systems for those who can afford Visa, PayPal, and virtual wallets, and informal, fragmented alternatives for everyone else.
This isn’t a revolution. It’s segregation with a software update.
It’s like building a luxury highway in a city where only 10% own cars and then patting yourself on the back for improving transportation. The rest of the population? They’re still walking in the dust, watching Teslas speed by on roads paid for with public money.
So, no, you don’t get to call this progress. And if you still think this is inclusion, then maybe you’ve never walked.
Ask Wanjiku, a second-hand clothes trader in Gikomba Market, Nairobi.
She wakes up at 4 a.m., pushes a bale-laden cart through chaotic traffic, and hustles all day to sell mitumba jackets for a few hundred shillings profit. Her customers pay in cash or M-Pesa. But when she tries to restock from a seller in Kampala or Dar es Salaam, she hits a wall.
PAPSS? Never heard of it. Dollar payments? She can’t access formal forex channels, she’s unbanked. Visa or PayPal? That’s for her supplier’s “corporate” clients. Her money moves through informal agents who charge exorbitant fees and take days to deliver, if they don’t disappear entirely.
So while fintech panels discuss interoperability, Wanjiku is living the very opposite: fragmentation, delay, and financial penalty.
She doesn’t need another app.
She needs a system that was built with her in mind.
And until that happens, don’t talk to Wanjiku about “financial inclusion.” She already knows what it looks like, and this ain’t it.
The Illusion of Progress
In Kenya, often celebrated as Africa’s “Silicon Savannah,” only seven banks are integrated with PAPSS, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System. That’s seven out of 39 commercial banks. Meanwhile, Visa and Mastercard continue to dominate everyday transactions.
Charles Kiarie, Visa’s Director for Sub-Saharan Africa, recently reminded us that intra-African trade still hovers around 20%. Translation? Africa is not trading with itself. Not because it can’t. But because it’s cheaper, faster, and more convenient to route payments through London, New York, or San Francisco than through Lagos or Kigali.
Let that sink in: for Africans, trading with other Africans still means going through the West.
Whose Future Is This, Anyway?
We’re told that financial technology will democratize opportunity. But whose future are we really building?
When African apps rely on U.S.-based APIs, when local wallets must partner with Western processors, and when transaction fees are dictated by corporations headquartered 10,000 kilometers away, can we really claim sovereignty?
We are plugging into a system that was never designed for us, only to find that the rules were written in someone else’s favor.
And here’s the deeper danger: as we digitize, we are hard-coding exclusion.
Because algorithms don’t question inequality. They replicate it, efficiently, silently, and at scale.
The Price of Convenience
Let’s be clear: global payment giants offer speed, scale, and security. They have built infrastructure that African firms can’t match, yet. But that convenience comes at a cost.
Transaction fees on small cross-border payments can reach 15%. For a trader moving goods between Uganda and Rwanda, that’s not just a fee, it’s a tax on ambition.
And because these systems are optimized for credit cards and formal bank accounts, they leave out the very people they claim to serve: the unbanked, the undocumented, the informal hustlers who form Africa’s economic backbone.
So what we have is a digital economy where the rich swipe, and the rest scramble.
That’s not inclusion. That’s digital apartheid.
The Wisdom Africa Forgot
There is a proverb: “When the roots of a tree begin to decay, it spreads death to the branches.”
Our economic roots, payment systems, trade protocols, and data infrastructure are still anchored in colonial blueprints. We are building digital branches on decayed foundations.
We talk of leapfrogging, but how do you leap while shackled?
The idea that mobile money alone will solve Africa’s financial exclusion is naïve. M-Pesa was revolutionary but it remains a domestic solution in a world that is increasingly borderless.
To trade, grow, and compete, Africa must build a unified, sovereign digital ecosystem, not patchwork fixes layered on foreign rails.
Inclusion Must Be Redefined
So what does real inclusion look like?
- Interoperability across borders.
A farmer in Burkina Faso should be able to receive payments from Nigeria without routing through France. PAPSS, if fully embraced, can make that happen, but governments and private banks must stop dragging their feet. - Local control of infrastructure.
From payment rails to data centers, Africa must own the pipes not just the apps. Sovereignty in the digital age begins with infrastructure. - Subsidized access for the informal sector.
Financial products must meet people where they are, not where spreadsheets say they should be. That means building tools for those earning $2 a day, not just salaried elites. - Cultural relevance.
Inclusion is not just financial, it’s linguistic, cultural, and contextual. A payment app in English that excludes local dialects is still exclusion. - Data justice.
Who owns the data generated by African users? Where is it stored? Who profits from it? Without answers to these questions, inclusion becomes surveillance in disguise.
The Real Question: Inclusion for Whom?
There is a chilling irony in the fact that as we digitize, we may be widening the very gaps we set out to close. A continent that has long been excluded from traditional banking is now being excluded from digital banking too, just in new, less visible ways.
It’s not enough to celebrate mobile penetration rates and app downloads. We must ask: Who is being left behind? Who controls the rails? And most importantly, whose version of inclusion are we chasing?
Because if the current trend continues, the digital divide will not disappear, it will deepen. And it will be encrypted in code, disguised as progress.
Inclusion without justice is just a faster way to exclude more people. If we don’t act now, we will wake up to a future where Africa is fully digitized but still fundamentally powerless.
So let’s call it what it is, not just an economic issue, but a civil rights issue.
And let’s remember: “You cannot climb a tree from the top.”
Real inclusion starts at the roots.
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