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Hello and happy Workers' Day!

Adetomiwa here, shimming to “Break My Soul” by Beyonce, because nobody loves enjoyment more than me.

This edition moves through a few things shaping the economy right now: markets picking up again, fintech becoming everyone’s favourite new business line, and the slightly uncomfortable question of where all the next round of growth is actually going to come from. Stocks are up, borrowing is a bit cheaper, and capital is still flowing in. But the real economy is slowing down, and global money is getting tighter. So yeah, a mix of momentum and tension this week.

Let’s get into it.

Airtel Africa is trying to list its mobile money arm for up to $2 billion, valuing it at around $10 billion. Not bad for something that started as “just a feature” on a telecom app.

Airtel Money is now doing $986m in revenue, over 52 million users, and basically acting like the main character, while traditional telecom revenue is collecting dust in the corner. The plan is to list it on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The listing, still at an early stage, could value Airtel Money at up to $10 billion and make it one of Africa’s largest recent fintech IPOs.

MTN is taking a more surgical approach
MTN Nigeria is planning to carve out its fintech unit, sell a 60% stake to its parent, and call it a “structure optimisation.” They’ve found that running a fintech is expensive, margins are messy, and investors don’t love seeing it drag down the core telecom business. So now MoMo and Y’ello get their own structure, their own funding, and their own problems without wreaking havoc on MTN Nigeria’s balance sheet anymore.

GTCO finds its fintech balance
While telcos are restructuring like it’s spring cleaning, Guaranty Trust Holding Company is over in the corner doing fintech profitability speedruns. Its HabariPay unit posted a 155% profit jump to ₦9.7 billion. Not bad for a business that once struggled to find its identity between “super app” and “payments platform.”

Data says fintechs’ long game is paying off
The vibe has shifted. A few years ago, fintech in Africa was “growth at all costs.” Now it’s “please separate this so we can understand it.” Airtel is IPO-ing it, MTN is spinning it out, and banks are proving it can actually make money if you survive long enough.

Bottom line

The Fintech Approach (TM) isn’t an experiment to seem “progressive” anymore; it’s now the main business, just with a different set of headaches. Telcos are unlocking value, banks are proving profitability, and investors are finally asking harder questions about structure and returns. But as everyone piles in, the bigger question is whether the market can absorb it all, or if we’re heading toward a crowded field where it becomes a Hunger Games-style survival of the fittest for scale, margins, and staying power.

💡 #LightUpLagos: Lagos is building its own power supply. After securing about 400 megawatts from private suppliers, the state is expanding its own generation and distribution, taking advantage of new reforms that allow states to run their own electricity markets. So far, at least 22 other states are moving in the same direction as the national grid continues to underperform. Lagos has gone further than any other state, setting up its own regulator and taking full control of its internal electricity market in 2025. It has also signed deals with private companies to supply power to public facilities, with a new payment model that only pays for electricity actually delivered. Analysts say state-level markets could improve reliability, but we still have to face big challenges, including gas supply issues, forex constraints, affordability, and weak infrastructure.

🤝 Nigeria’s latest partner roster: China is expanding its zero-tariff policy to cover nearly all African countries it has diplomatic ties with, starting May 1, 2026. This builds on an earlier policy for least developed countries and positions China as the first major economy to offer tariff-free access across the continent. The goal is to make it easier for African goods to enter China and deepen trade ties. China is also launching faster shipping routes from key ports and cutting transit times by up to 10 days. Exports from Chinese ports to Africa are already rising sharply, especially in machinery, electronics, and industrial goods, showing strong demand from African markets.

💸 PMI is down like the economy: Nigeria’s economy just tapped out a 16-month growth streak. The Composite PMI slipped to 49.4 in April 2026, slipping just below the 50 line that separates “expanding” from “shrinking”. The slowdown wasn’t picky. Industry and services both contracted, with services taking the harder hit after 14 straight months of growth. New orders, hiring, and inventory levels all cooled at the same time, suggesting hits from current economic realities. Agriculture, however, stayed in the green, quietly doing its job while everyone else stumbled. It’s not a crash, more like a loss of momentum. But the timing matters: global uncertainty and rising costs are starting to show up in real business activity, even if agriculture and supply chain improvements are still keeping things from slipping further.

Sub-Saharan Africa is walking into a tighter money environment. The African Finance Corporation (AFC) says official development assistance could fall by as much as 28% in the coming years, extending a slide that’s already taken aid from $83.8 billion in 2020 to $73.5 billion in 2023.

But aid is just one piece of the squeeze. Global borrowing costs are still high, inflation isn’t fully under control, and geopolitical tension is making capital move more cautiously. African sovereign bond markets (once a reliable funding tap) have gone from $29 billion in issuances in 2018 to just $4-6 billion a year recently. Foreign investment hasn’t disappeared, but it’s become selective, clustering around a few “safe” markets while everyone else waits in line.

The irony is that the real constraint isn’t money, it’s access. Africa is sitting on over $2 trillion in institutional capital, but a lot of it isn’t making its way into infrastructure and productive investment. So the continent isn’t exactly running out of funds, it’s more running into a pipeline problem.

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