SME, FinTech & Diaspora Investment
SME Finance & Deployment
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of every economy on the African continent. They account for over 80% of all businesses, contribute approximately 45% of GDP across sub-Saharan Africa, and provide the majority of formal and informal employment. Yet Africa’s SMEs face a financing gap estimated at USD 331 billion annually.
The FICA SME Finance & Deployment Programme (SME-FD) is a ten-year, USD 6.5 billion initiative to systematically expand access to finance for African SMEs across all 54 member nations. The Programme operates through a multi-layered capital deployment architecture combining direct lending facilities, credit guarantee schemes, equity participation vehicles, digital financial platforms, and comprehensive business development services.
By 2035, the Programme aims to directly finance 250,000 SMEs, catalyse 4.5 million jobs, and establish a permanent, self-sustaining African SME Financing Ecosystem.
Diaspora Investment
Africa’s diaspora is one of the most powerful and under-leveraged development assets on the planet. Each year, Africans living abroad remit over $100 billion to the continent — a sum that dwarfs foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined. Approximately 170 million people of African descent live outside the continent, with collective purchasing power exceeding $1.2 trillion.
FICA presents its Diaspora Investment and Crowdfunding Deployment as a definitive blueprint for transforming diaspora capital into a structured, scalable engine of African development.
FinTech & Decentralised Finance
Africa stands at a transformative crossroads in its financial evolution. The convergence of Financial Technology (FinTech) and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) presents an unprecedented opportunity to extend financial services to the continent’s 1.4 billion people — more than half of whom remain unbanked or underbanked.
FICA advocates for a regulatory approach grounded in five foundational principles:
- Innovation-First Regulation: Regulatory frameworks must default to enabling innovation unless specific harms are demonstrated
- Proportionality: Requirements must be proportional to the scale, risk profile, and business model of FinTech providers
- Interoperability: All FinTech regulation should promote interoperability between platforms, institutions, and countries
- Consumer Sovereignty: Consumers must retain ownership of their financial data and identity
- Pan-African Harmonization: Regulations must be designed with continental integration in mind, aligned with AfCFTA frameworks
Advocacy
FICA Pan-African Diaspora Investment Bond (PADIB)
FICA has created a sovereign-backed, multi-currency debt instrument specifically designed for diaspora investors. Key features: