For too long, Africa has plugged into global financial systems that were never designed with Africa in mind.
We’ve relied on SWIFT, FedWire, and correspondent banks to send money across our own borders — incurring high fees, long delays, and unnecessary risks. We’ve watched as SEPA connected Europe, UPI empowered India, and RippleNet disrupted cross-border finance — while our own traders, farmers, and fintechs remained disconnected by outdated rails and fragmented regulation.
We’ve had brilliance. We’ve had innovation. But we haven’t had infrastructure.
That changes now.
SAPA is Africa’s Layer 2 financial internet — the Pan-African Financial Internet (PaFi) — built for our economies, our people, and our future. It connects the continent’s central banks, commercial banks, mobile money operators, fintechs, and government systems into one unified, interoperable ecosystem.
Unlike legacy systems that handle just one piece — payments, or messaging, or FX — SAPA is multi-dimensional:
It routes payments in real time across borders.
It powers FX discovery and policy control for central banks
And it enables mobile wallets to speak to each other, regardless of network, country, or currency.
It digitizes trade finance and customs data from port to payment.
It verifies users, transactions, and institutions with embedded AML, KYB, and fraud intelligence.
Africa doesn’t just need a faster way to send money — it needs a financial backbone to trade, grow, and govern in a digital era. SAPA makes it possible to buy goods in Ghana, pay in Rwanda, insure in Kenya, settle in Nigeria, and report in real time to a regulator in South Africa.
This is not a clone of Europe or America. This is infrastructure designed for Africa — to power AfCFTA, enable local currency monetization, support inclusive finance, and reduce dependency on external rails and currencies.
SAPA is more than a platform. It’s a commitment to financial self-determination. It’s how Africa will leapfrog — not follow — the rest of the world. And it’s the stack we will leave behind for the next generation of African innovators, regulators, and citizens.
Welcome to SAPA
– Ownership & Governance
– Coverage
– Functional Scope
– Inclusivity
– Technology Stack
– Strategic Alignment
– Sovereign-led, AfCFTA-aligned, co-governed by central banks
– Cross-border + cross-rail: banks, telcos, fintechs, governments
– Payments + FX + Trade Finance + AML + MoMo + Insurance
– Supports both formal FSIs and informal economy (via MoMo and agent networks)
– Modular Layer 2: ISO 20022, APIs, AI, stablecoins, FX tracking, AML scoring
– Built to operationalize AfCFTA’s trade, finance, and financial inclusion goals
SAPA is at the center of Payments & Trade Infrastructure Modernization Layer across the Africa cluster.