Situating African <scp>FinTech</scp> in Global Financial Networks

ABSTRACT Africa has witnessed a FinTech fever, yet these financial dynamics remain largely off the map. To address this gap, this paper explores the geographical patterns of firm creation and investments in African FinTech and how they have evolved since the emergence of FinTech on the continent. Tracing flows of capital across firms, cities and countries, we interpret the geography of investment in African FinTech through the lens of the Global Financial Network (GFN) approach. The analysis, based on a unique purpose‐built dataset of African FinTech firms, documents waves of firm creation and investment, starting in South Africa in the 1990s, led by Nigeria in recent years and concentrated in metropolitan areas. Our findings reveal an emerging specialisation in FinTech centres, including Mauritius as a diversified offshore FinTech jurisdiction and Seychelles as an offshore crypto‐hub. After documenting the preponderance of non‐African investment over cross‐border African and domestic origins of funding, we map the networks of FinTech capital flows by subsector and examine institutional, technological and geographical factors, with examples from three Nigerian unicorns. This paper uncovers how FinTech connects Africa's financial centres and offshore jurisdictions with established centres west and east of the continent in a new stage of GFN expansion.