Build, Buy or Assemble? A More Useful Technology Question for African Banks

17 August, 2026

For years, banks planning a technology transformation have begun with a familiar question:

Should we build the platform internally or buy it from a technology provider?

It sounds like a straightforward choice. In reality, particularly for African banks, it is rarely that simple.

The more useful question is:

Which capabilities must the bank own because they create a genuine competitive advantage and which should be delivered through proven technology so that the bank can move faster and operate at scale?

This distinction matters because banking transformation in Africa is taking place under very different conditions from one market to another. Africa has built some of the world’s most influential mobile-led financial ecosystems. At the same time, the continent is not a single, uniform banking market. Regulations, currencies, payment rails, customer behaviour, connectivity and levels of financial inclusion vary considerably across countries.

A lending model designed for a salaried customer in one market may need to be rethought for an informal merchant or agricultural borrower in another. A transaction banking proposition that works for a domestic corporate may require a different architecture when extended across regional trade corridors.

The decision is therefore not simply whether a bank can build a platform. It is whether it can continually adapt, secure and scale that platform across the products, customers and markets it intends to serve.

A Market Moving from Access to Participation

 
Africa’s financial-services opportunity is entering a new phase. According to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2025, account ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa increased from 49% of adults in 2021 to 58% in 2024. The region also continues to record the highest levels of mobile-money account usage globally.

The next challenge is to translate that access into meaningful financial participation.

Customers need more than the ability to open an account or make a payment. They need access to appropriate credit, reliable savings products and services that help them manage financial uncertainty. Businesses need efficient collections, working-capital finance, cash visibility, liquidity management and simpler ways to transact across borders.

The lending opportunity is especially significant. An IFC handbook published in 2025 cites approximately US$331 billion in unmet financing demand among MSMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa. The figure demonstrates the scale of the challenge, while advances in digital channels, data and analytics are creating new ways for financial institutions to serve this segment. Africa’s payment infrastructure is also becoming more connected.

Following the entry of the Bank of Central African States into PAPSS in July 2026, the network extended to 28 African countries, more than 190 commercial banks and fintechs, and 16 payment switches.

For banks, these developments create both urgency and complexity. They need to launch propositions faster, but they cannot afford to create technology that becomes difficult to change each time a new market, partner, product or payment rail is added.

When Building Creates Real Value

 
There are good reasons for a bank to build certain capabilities internally.

A bank may possess specialised knowledge of agricultural value chains, informal traders, distributors, salaried customers or cross-border businesses. It may understand customer behaviour in a market in ways that cannot be purchased from a software provider. That knowledge can support a distinctive credit model, customer journey, pricing strategy or ecosystem proposition. These are meaningful areas in which internal development can create an advantage.

Building may also provide greater control over the roadmap, user experience, data and pace of experimentation. But the decision should not be based only on whether an internal team can deliver the first release.

A banking platform is not complete when it goes live. It must be continuously secured, tested, monitored and upgraded. It must incorporate regulatory changes, support new integrations and operate reliably as transaction volumes grow. It must also remain understandable to the institution after the original development team has moved on.

This is the part of the build decision that is often underestimated.

The real cost is not simply the budget required to develop the platform. It is the permanent responsibility of operating and evolving it.

An internally developed platform can become legacy technology too. This often happens gradually. Product changes take longer. Knowledge becomes concentrated among a few individuals. Engineers spend more time maintaining standard processes than building new customer capabilities. Eventually, the technology that was intended to create independence begins to limit the bank’s choices.

Building makes the most sense when the capability is strategically distinctive and the institution is prepared to sustain the skills, governance and investment required over the long term.

What a Bank Should Expect When Buying?

 
Buying a proven platform can help a bank avoid recreating capabilities that have already been developed and tested across multiple products and operating environments.

In lending, these capabilities may include origination, credit workflows, account servicing, collateral management, document generation, collections and product configuration.

In transaction banking, they may include payments, receivables, virtual accounts, liquidity management, cash positioning, supply-chain finance and corporate connectivity. A strong platform can provide the operational foundation while allowing the bank to focus its resources on market-specific propositions.

However, buying should not mean accepting a rigid system. A platform may be relatively new and still behave like legacy technology if every business change requires extensive custom development.

African banks should therefore look beyond the number of features available during a product demonstration. They should examine how the platform will behave when the institution needs to introduce a local product, enter another country, connect to a new payment system or respond to a regulatory change.

The more important questions include:

• Can products and workflows be configured without altering the core platform?
• Can the bank connect its existing channels, data sources and partner ecosystems through open interfaces?
• Can country-level requirements be supported without creating a different codebase for every market?
• Can the bank access and use its data without becoming dependent on the provider?
• Can the platform be upgraded without repeatedly rebuilding previous customisations?

Buying should provide speed and depth without weakening the bank’s control over its strategy, customers, data or risk decisions.

Lending: Own the Judgement, Not Necessarily Every Process

 
In lending, the bank’s most valuable intellectual property is rarely the repayment schedule or document-generation process. It lies in the institution’s understanding of whom to serve, how to assess risk, how to structure the facility and how to respond when a customer begins to experience financial stress. That judgement should remain within the bank.

The institution must own its credit philosophy, risk appetite, pricing approach, customer proposition, data policy and collections strategy. But it does not necessarily need to develop every operational capability supporting those decisions.

Consider a bank creating a working-capital proposition for small distributors. Its competitive advantage may come from understanding the distributor’s transaction flows, supplier relationships, inventory cycles and cash position. That knowledge can help the bank make a more informed credit decision and structure the facility around the realities of the business. The advantage does not necessarily come from internally coding every workflow required to originate and service the loan.

This is particularly relevant in African markets, where lending journeys may need to accommodate limited formal credit histories, variable income, alternative forms of collateral, mobile-money records and a combination of assisted and fully digital interactions. The technology must allow these differences to be reflected without creating operational inconsistency or weakening risk controls.

A practical principle is: Build the judgement that determines whom the bank serves and how it competes. Use proven technology to execute that judgement consistently.

Transaction Banking: Differentiation Begins After the Payment

 
The same principle applies to transaction banking.

Corporate customers are unlikely to choose a bank because it developed its payment-processing engine internally. They are more concerned with whether payments are completed reliably, collections can be reconciled, liquidity is visible and their systems can connect to the bank without unnecessary complexity.

As African trade and payment networks become more interconnected, banks will need to integrate with domestic switches, regional systems, enterprise platforms, fintechs and emerging commercial ecosystems. In this environment, interoperability may be more valuable than ownership of every component.

A bank can differentiate by understanding the cash cycles of an industry, combining payments with working-capital finance, simplifying corporate onboarding or giving a business clearer visibility across its accounts and entities. It may also create stronger propositions by connecting large corporates with their dealers, suppliers and distributors. These are areas in which market knowledge, relationship insight and intelligent use of data matter.

The underlying payment, account and liquidity capabilities must be reliable, but they should provide a foundation for differentiation rather than consume all the bank’s technology capacity.

The Case for an Assembled Model

 
For many African banks, the most effective model will not be entirely built or entirely bought. It will be deliberately assembled.

A bank can use proven platforms for the foundational capabilities that require scale, operational controls and continuous investment. It can then configure or develop the decisioning, customer experiences, analytics and ecosystem connections that reflect its strategy.

This is not a compromise between two choices. It is a more disciplined allocation of talent and capital. Internal teams can concentrate on areas such as customer propositions, risk intelligence, data, integration, experience design and responsible use of AI. Technology partners can provide the repeatable machinery required to operate lending and transaction banking securely and reliably.

In my view, the principle should be:

• Build where it changes the bank.
• Partner where it accelerates the bank.
• Retain ownership of the outcome.

A Decision About Institutional Focus

The build, buy or assemble decision should ultimately be guided by the institution the bank wants to become. A regional bank seeking consistent operations across several countries will make different choices from a digital lender operating a single product in one market.

A bank with a mature engineering organisation may retain more development internally. Another may gain more value by directing its people towards customer insight, analytics and product innovation while relying on specialised platforms for core processing.

Neither approach is automatically right. The danger lies in building standard capabilities simply because internal development appears to offer control, or buying a platform simply because it promises a faster implementation. Control is not determined by who wrote the code. It is determined by whether the bank can direct the roadmap, understand its data, change its products, manage its risks and serve customers without unnecessary constraints.

African banks do not need to own every line of software to demonstrate innovation. They need to own the customer relationship, the institutional judgement and the capabilities that make them relevant in their chosen markets.

The winners will be those that can move quickly without losing control, localise without fragmenting their architecture, and innovate without creating tomorrow’s legacy systems today.

That is why “build or buy?” is no longer the most useful question.

The more valuable question is:
What must we own, what should we assemble, and where can the right partnership help us create value sooner?