The international FinTech Academy will be launching in South Africa in April, offering C-Level executives with limited time the chance to “deep dive” into global best practice in financial technologies.
The FinTech Academy Africa will launch on April 24-25, with the two-day curriculum designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of key areas of fintech that would normally take between nine months and one year to attain in normal working circumstances.
The FinTech Academy has combined international expertise, along with local core capability, to bridge the cutting edge of fintech trends internationally with relevant South African and African applicability.
It comes as a result of the partnership between the London-based FinTech Circle and the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi), and follows on from a recent successful collaboration to create specialised fintech incubation support programmes.
“Board directors and Executive Committee members are increasingly being called upon to make far reaching strategic business decisions in areas affected by rapidly developing disruptive technology. The curriculum of the FinTech Academy has been specifically developed to fast track their knowledge, support decision making and also to future proof their careers,” said Ian Merrington, chief executive officer (CEO) of CiTi.
Nicole Anderson, CEO and co-founder of FinTech Circle, said the curriculum had been adapted with particular care to be of relevance to executives based in Africa.
“South Africa and the rest of the continent present a number of unique and exciting opportunities for the use of fintech, particularly in areas of fintech convergence,” she said.
“Skills are a hot topic anywhere in the world when it comes to fintech and this region is no exception. This is still a nascent industry – and stakeholders are learning in parallel. Innovation is much more about experimentation and execution than theory and through the academy we are able to bring world class learnings and trends to life with African use cases and serve the needs of all key stakeholders – big business, policymakers, government bodies and the innovators themselves – in a relevant and engaging way.”
