How fintechs can navigate Africa’s regulatory maze

Africa’s fintech boom has unlocked cross-border payments, digital banking, and new financial infrastructure. But behind this growth is one major challenge: regulation.

For companies expanding across the continent, regulatory compliance is not just a legal checkbox; it’s a strategic function that can determine how quickly and effectively they scale.

Enyioma Madubuike, Chief Legal Officer at Kora, a cross-border fintech company, has spent the last few years building compliance systems from scratch and navigating regulatory frameworks across multiple African markets. His experience offers a grounded look into what it really takes to operate in one of the world’s most fragmented regulatory environments.

Long before he was navigating regulatory complexities, Madubuike was helping people set up their first Yahoo Mail accounts and typing out documents in Lagos business centres.

Despite an early tech exposure, he followed a traditional path. Growing up in a lower-middle-income household, the career menu was limited: medicine, engineering, accountancy, or law. Law, for him, was less a calling and more a practical choice.

“It was one of those courses that was open to me,” he says. “I didn’t like science, I didn’t like numbers much, so law felt like the natural option.”

Madubuike headed to the University of Benin and later the Nigerian Law School, eventually landing a role at a top-tier Nigerian law firm. It was during this three-year stint that his initial dreams of becoming a courtroom advocate collided with the realities of the profession.

During his final year in university, his curiosity had evolved into academic exploration, culminating in a project on e-commerce and the emerging legal questions around online businesses. In its place, he discovered a new interest. Banking deals, cross-border agreements, and structured financial work offered a different kind of intellectual challenge, one that felt more aligned with his strengths.

Around the same time, Nigeria’s early fintech wave was beginning to take shape. Companies like Interswitch were already active, and Paystack was gaining traction. Recognising the shift, his law firm created a dedicated team focused on technology and fintech clients, and Madubuike became a part of it.

Eventually, the desire for more ownership led him away from the stability of a firm and into independent consulting. It was during this period that he consulted for various startups and eventually met the Kora team.

“Kora was one of the companies in my portfolio,” he explains. “After a while, they needed someone to come in and build out the legal program from scratch. I joined them, and over time, I built out not just the legal operations, but the compliance program as well.”

Over time, that role expanded into overseeing both legal and compliance functions, leading a growing team of about 10 people.

“It was during COVID. There was uncertainty, products were pivoting, and some didn’t work,” he says. “But over time, things stabilised. The company found product-market fit, and we grew from there.”

One of the biggest misconceptions about scaling in Africa is treating the continent as a single market.

“Africa is a continent of over 50 markets,” Madubuike explains. “You don’t enter Ghana assuming it works like Nigeria, or approach Kenya the same way you would Ghana.”

Even where regulations appear similar, their interpretation often differs. This is shaped by local economic priorities, institutional maturity, and regulators’ views of their role in the financial system. For fintechs, this means expansion is less about replication and more about localisation. Each new market demands a fresh regulatory strategy.

One particular radioactive area for almost all African regulators is foreign exchange (FX).

“All regulators in Africa are very touchy about FX,” Madubuike notes. “It’s a core part of macroeconomic policy. Understanding the products you intend to offer and managing the expectations of the regulator is key.”

Regulatory compliance in fintech is not simply about following rules; it is about balancing two competing forces.

This involves interpreting not just written regulations but also their intent, while ensuring the business can still pursue growth, profitability, and market expansion. It is a constant negotiation between structure and speed.

“You’re balancing regulation without breaking it, while still allowing the business to achieve its objectives.”

Interestingly, he notes that a legal background, while helpful, isn’t mandatory for leading compliance functions. What matters more is the ability to interpret regulations within a business context.

To navigate this complexity, Madubuike emphasises three key strategies: deep market understanding, product awareness, and local intelligence.

Scaling a fintech business across multiple markets inevitably introduces tension between growth and regulation.

“That’s where risk comes in,” Madubuike explains.

Companies must constantly evaluate their risk appetite, deciding how far they’re willing to go in pursuit of expansion while remaining compliant.

When it comes to balancing scale with compliance, Madubuike highlights a common industry tactic he calls the partnership play. Instead of diving into the expensive and time-consuming process of direct licensing in every market, a business might partner with a local processor first.

“A company might decide to let a local processor help process flows first to see if the market is good enough. If the revenue works, then you approach the regulator for a license. It’s a balance of meeting goals while staying within the regulatory framework.”

Not all African markets are equally complex. Larger economies like Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana tend to have more structured and demanding regulatory frameworks due to their deeper exposure to fintech.

Smaller markets, on the other hand, are often still developing their regulatory systems, sometimes requiring companies to work alongside regulators to shape emerging frameworks.

“If I could change one thing in regulation,” Madubuike adds, “it would be licensing and passporting.”

He points to the fact that licensing passporting is an effort that will enable cross-border regulatory recognition as a model worth expanding across the continent.

Despite the complexity of his work, Madubuike’s day-to-day tech stack is relatively simple: Gmail, Google Workspace, Slack, and WhatsApp for communication, alongside specialised tools for fraud monitoring, transaction tracking, and document signing.

More recently, AI tools like Gemini have begun to reshape how work gets done, something he sees as an evolving conversation within the industry.