Nigeria, May 3 -- Not long ago, while doomscrolling through Facebook, I stumbled upon the inspiring story of Tosin Eniolorunda, a young Nigerian tech entrepreneur. In 2015, alongside his friend, Felix Ike, Tosin co-founded Moniepoint, a Lagos-based fintech company that offers digital banking and lending services via a mobile app.

It wasn't a name I was familiar with at first. But over time, I noticed something curious. Whenever I had to pay a vendor in Nigeria, whether for a service rendered or a product delivered, they often shared a Moniepoint or Opay account number. Initially, this puzzled me. Why would anyone entrust their hard-earned money to these "lesser-known" platforms, instead of the big, traditional banks we've come to view as...