Tech in Africa
The Central Bank of Egypt has collaborated with the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) to launch an innovation sprint addressing the challenges brought about by Covid-19. This comes as part of Egypt’s financial technology and innovation strategy for promoting innovation ad financial inclusion.
The sprint is partly occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic that is creating new industry behaviors where the community’s needs are actual business priorities. Never before have businesses and industry players had to collaborate as a way of ensuring people stay safe and remain at home during the pandemic.
This new initiative is hosted by the Central Bank of Egypt and the Financial Regulatory Authority through the Covid-19 Sprint Initiative organized by early-stage fintech accelerator DFS Labs alongside FSD Africa.
The application window closed on February 19th and applications were only accepted if they went through CBE’s Fintech Egypt portal.
All applications will be sorted to select sprint participants based on their ability to provide efficient solutions to the challenges ad difficulties faced by the banking and financial institutions during the pandemic. Rami Aboul Naga, CBE’s Deputy Governor described the initiative as being in line with CBE’s objectives and financial technology strategy announced in 2019.
The selection of entrepreneurs and startups will be conducted by CBE while narrowing on the creative and applicable ideas. Virtual workshops and seminars will also be done alongside the representatives of banks and other financial institutions.
Innovation Sprint is managed by the Financial Sector Development (FSD) Africa who has partnered with the Digital Financial Service (DFS) Innovation Lab. The goals to strengthen international cooperation in FinTech and Innovation.
