By Saidu Dumbuya
Sierra Leone’s Fintech Forum has been successfully organized in Freetown on Thursday 5th June, 2025 at the New Brookfields Hotel in Freetown with the theme: “Access, Inclusion and Growth.”
Giving his Keynote address, the Governor of the Central Bank of Sierra Leone, Dr. Ibrahim Stevens, stated that inter-switch Sierra Leone though not a regulated entity, but it supports and partners with twelve banks and three mobile money companies, underscoring that as a principal regulator, they are pleased to support a forum like that.
Governor Stevens maintained that Fintech is one of the financial services that play a very important role and it’s one of the major activities in their strategic plan.
According to him, the Bank has assumed the national lead role in promoting financial inclusion in Sierra Leone, revealing that they have achieved a single digit inflation rate.
Dilating on the macro environment, Governor Stevens stated that the role of the Central Bank is to maintain monitoring and financial systems stability, responsible for issuance of currency among others in the way to provide strategic payment system.
Giving his Keynote address on the topic; ‘building on progress, expanding access driving inclusion and innovation and fueling growth for national prosperity, Inter-switch Payment Processing and Switching Managing Director, Akeem Lawal stated that Sierra Leone Fintech Forum brought together the best minds in the industry and the industry players to collaboratively look at the opportunities and challenges and how to solve them.
He said collaboration is key and revealed that one of the most important lessons that they have learned is that no single organization can stake the entire payment industry to where it wants to take it and therefore needs collaboration.
According to the MD, it has also shown that if one needs collaboration, he/she needs to correctly create successes in many countries like they have done in twenty seven (27) other countries across Africa.
Welcoming the mammoth crowd, the Inter-switch Vice President Sales and Account Management, Olubunmi Aina, thanked the various financial institutions for attending the forum.
Panel session on the topic banking beyond boundaries navigating access, inclusion and innovation in a digital first economy were discussed by Managing Director of Rokel Commercial Bank, Dr. Walter Gilpin, MD/CEO First Bank Sierra Leone, Udeme Udoh, UBA MD and Mohamed Samura among others.
