As Africa’s tech boom reshapes access to skills development, the language-learning market is still searching for an effective model. Seeking to move beyond passive learning methods, she developed a solution built around interactivity and spoken communication.

Amina Boumaiza is a young Algerian entrepreneur and the founder and chief executive of Talkina, a digital language-learning platform.

Launched in 2025, Talkina aims to make language learning more engaging, practical and accessible. Through interactive lessons, regular sessions with tutors and immersion in real-life situations, the platform prioritises speaking skills, helping learners build confidence and fluency more quickly.

The platform offers a broad catalogue of languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Turkish, Italian and Chinese. Courses are organised by proficiency level, catering to both beginners and more advanced learners. Some programmes focus on everyday communication, while others target specific objectives such as exam preparation or improving spoken communication skills.

Talkina combines teacher-led classes with daily conversations with tutors and interactive workshops. Learners can practise languages in a variety of real-world contexts, ranging from cooking and sports to professional environments. The approach is designed to bridge the gap between classroom learning and practical language use.

The platform also seeks to expand access to language education through personalised support and what it describes as modern, accessible teaching methods. It offers structured learning pathways tailored to each learner’s level and objectives, with a focus on helping users achieve sustained progress.

The project reflects Boumaiza’s background in both business and language education. She holds a management degree from the University of Lille in France and a commerce degree from the Algerian School of Business (ESAA), which she completed in 2023.

Boumaiza began her professional career in 2021 as a Spanish teacher at IN-tuition Languages & Exams, an Algerian language-training centre. Between 2023 and 2024, she gained corporate experience as a human resources specialist at Schneider Electric, the multinational energy management and automation company.

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From his early days as a freelance developer to his rise as a seasoned business leader, he has established himself as a key figure in Africa's technology sector. Through his technology platform, he helps e-commerce businesses centralize and streamline the management of their advertising operations.

Mohamed Fergany is an Egyptian entrepreneur and investor, best known as the co-founder and chief executive of Converted, a company specializing in digital marketing solutions for e-commerce businesses.

Founded in 2019, Converted was created with a simple goal: to make it easier for businesses to find, attract and retain customers online. The company has developed an integrated platform that brings together advertising, communication and marketing management tools in a single interface, helping businesses manage their digital operations more efficiently.

Converted's growth platform is aimed primarily at emerging markets, enabling companies to manage advertising campaigns, online ad payments and broader marketing activities from one centralized workspace. The aim is to reduce the complexity of operating across multiple digital platforms and provide businesses with a more streamlined approach to digital marketing.

At the heart of the platform is a unified view of customer and product data. By consolidating this information, businesses can better understand consumer behavior, identify purchasing patterns and develop more personalized marketing campaigns. The platform also provides audience segmentation tools that allow brands to tailor their messaging based on customer interests and habits.

Beyond data management, Converted enables users to run advertising campaigns across multiple digital platforms from a single dashboard. The company has also integrated artificial intelligence tools designed to improve marketing performance by analyzing campaign results, identifying relevant audiences and helping businesses optimize advertising spending.

Alongside his role at Converted, Fergany is an active investor in the start-up ecosystem. His portfolio includes Nawy, a real estate platform; Captain, a technology venture studio focused on commerce; and Kenzz, an e-commerce platform.

An engineer by training, Fergany began his professional career in 2009 as a freelance software developer. His entrepreneurial journey took shape in 2015 when he co-founded Youtta, a mobile and cloud services application where he served as product lead. The following year, he joined Speakol, a digital advertising platform, as deputy chief executive and head of product. The experience helped shape the company he would later co-found, Converted.

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• A World Bank study found that businesses receiving digital payments are more likely to access credit because transaction records help banks assess their financial activity

• The impact is strongest for small firms and businesses in low-income countries, where limited banking data often makes access to financing difficult

• Africa’s rapid growth in mobile money and interoperable payment systems could help expand credit access and support small business financing

Digital payments are becoming increasingly central to business activity, particularly for small firms. A World Bank study published in January 2026 shows they go beyond saving time — they are also associated with better access to credit.

The report, titled "Firm Credit Constraints and Electronic Payments: A Global Analysis," notes that banks will not lend to businesses whose revenues, payment habits and commercial standing remain unknown to them. In Africa, where most business-to-business transactions are still conducted in cash, many merchants and traders remain largely invisible to banks. Without sales data or a verifiable track record, they struggle to obtain credit even when their business is thriving.

The study surveyed 48,581 firms across 101 countries and quantifies the scale of the problem. Across all countries studied, 14.78% of firms have no access to external financing, while another 16.23% have only partial access. In total, more than 30% of formally registered private-sector firms worldwide are cut off from the credit they need to grow.

The unexpected role of digital payments

The report finds that firms receiving payments digitally — via bank transfer, mobile money, card or similar methods — are significantly more likely to obtain credit than those operating exclusively in cash.

The mechanism is straightforward. When a customer pays by mobile money or bank transfer, the transaction leaves a digital record: date, amount and frequency. Accumulated over months or years, these data points give banks a clearer picture of a firm's revenue streams. To some extent, they can compensate for the lack of formal accounting records that many small African businesses do not maintain.

Receiving digital payments reduces by an average of 3.3 percentage points the probability that a firm is completely excluded from credit. That is equivalent to 22% of the average exclusion rate observed in the study.

The World Bank also specifies that receiving digital payments matters more than making them. Payment inflows directly reflect a firm's sales activity and the revenue it generates. That is the information banks rely on when deciding whether to extend credit.

Smaller firms benefit the most

The effect is strongest among the smallest firms, which are often the least visible to banks. For businesses with fewer than 20 employees, the reduction in the probability of being excluded from credit reaches 4 percentage points, compared with less than 2 points for larger firms. Companies with no formal accounting systems, no declared innovation activity or low productivity also benefit more from adopting digital payments.

At the country level, the effect is even more pronounced in low-income economies and those with underdeveloped credit registries. According to the report, the impact of digital payments on access to credit is nearly three times greater in poorer countries than in wealthy ones.

Where conventional tools for assessing borrowers are lacking, a digital transaction history can serve as a credible alternative.

Africa at the heart of the transformation

Africa combines two dynamics rarely found together: limited access to formal banking services and widespread adoption of mobile payments. According to the annual report of the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), published in March 2026, more than $1.4 trillion passed through mobile money accounts in Africa in 2025, up more than 27% year-on-year. The continent accounts for 52% of all mobile money accounts worldwide and 66% of the global value of such transactions.

These flows represent a massive reservoir of information on firms' financial health that banks have only begun to exploit. Some fintech companies are already moving in that direction. In East Africa, 4G Capital uses mobile usage data to extend loans to small entrepreneurs. In Nigeria, platforms such as Moniepoint combine digital payment collection with lending services for small and medium-sized enterprises based on their payment histories.

Interoperability remains essential

For banks to make effective use of payment data, the information must be consolidated and accessible. A merchant receiving payments through several operators generates fragmented datasets that are difficult to aggregate. Interoperability — the ability of different payment systems to communicate with one another — therefore remains a key technical requirement.

Significant progress is under way. According to the "State of Inclusive Instant Payment Systems in Africa 2025" report by the AfricaNenda Foundation, published jointly with the World Bank, 36 instant payment systems were active across Africa in 2024, processing 64 billion transactions worth a combined $2 trillion. The report highlights growing interoperability across the continent. “Half of Africa's instant payment systems (IPS) now connect banks, mobile payment operators and fintechs through cross-domain platforms,” AfricaNenda states.

In the countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), the regional central bank has set Tuesday, June 30, 2026, as the deadline for all financial institutions to join the Interoperable Instant Payment System Platform (PI-SPI), a shared instant payment infrastructure launched in September 2025. This could mark an important step toward smoother transactions and broader access to credit.

The study provides African governments with a concrete policy argument: encouraging businesses to adopt digital payments is not only a modernization strategy, but also a tool for improving private-sector financing.

Three priorities emerge from the findings: accelerating the rollout of interoperable payment systems; encouraging banks to incorporate transactional data into credit assessments; and establishing clear rules governing the use of payment data so that businesses can share it with confidence.

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