Open Banking in Africa: Why the Next Decade Will Unlock SME Finance at Scale
Open banking infrastructure is maturing across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa. Here's what it means for SME lending and why financial identity is the missing layer.
Tunde Adeyemi
Co-founder, Creditlinker
The Central Bank of Nigeria's Open Banking Framework, published in 2023, established the regulatory foundation for banks to share customer financial data — with customer consent — with licensed third parties. Similar frameworks are taking shape in Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa.
The implication for SME finance is significant. For the first time, it is possible to build a verified financial profile for a business from its real transaction history — not from credit bureau data that barely covers the SME segment.
The data layer was always there
African SMEs have been generating rich financial data for years — in their bank accounts, their mobile money wallets, their accounting software, and their operational records. The infrastructure to aggregate, normalize, and make that data legible to capital providers simply didn't exist.
Open banking creates the pipe. Financial identity infrastructure — the normalization, enrichment, scoring, and consent management layer — is what makes that data actionable.
Why this moment matters
The IMF estimates the SME financing gap in sub-Saharan Africa at approximately $330 billion per year. A large portion of that gap exists not because capital isn't available, but because the evaluation infrastructure needed to deploy it responsibly doesn't reach the SME segment.
Open banking doesn't solve the SME financing gap on its own. It creates the raw material. Financial identity infrastructure is what transforms that raw material into something capital providers can act on.
The next decade will see the gap narrow — not because banks become more generous, but because the infrastructure to evaluate SMEs on their actual financial behavior finally exists. Open banking is the pipe. Financial identity is the system.