The Ethiopia Digital Payments Conference 2.0 (EDPC 2.0), held in Addis Ababa, marked a decisive shift in the nation’s digital transformation journey — from expanding access to driving real usage, rebuilding trust, and positioning Ethiopia within a continental digital economy. Despite rapid growth — with an estimated 128 million mobile money accounts — only 16% are actively used. EDPC 2.0 confronted this gap head-on with the launch of the National Digital Payments Strategy (NDPS 2026–2030) and Ethiopia’s new EthioPay Instant Payment System (IPS). The two initiatives aim to enforce interoperability, deepen inclusion, strengthen security, and unlock cross-border trade.

It was against this backdrop of ambitious strategic launches that we met with Oswell T. Kahonde, Head of Africa for the Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA), a United Nations-based partnership of governments, international organizations, and private sector actors. Established in 2012, the Alliance works globally to accelerate the transition from cash to responsible digital payments, advocating for inclusive financial systems that benefit governments, businesses, and people—especially women and marginalized communities. Mr. Kahonde shared his insights on Ethiopia’s digital payments journey, the shift from counting accounts to driving usage, and the Alliance's role in harmonizing regulations to support Africa’s continental trade goals.

A Conversation with Oswell T. Kahonde, Head of Africa for the Better Than Cash Alliance

Q: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. To begin, could you please state your full name and your current role within the Alliance?

Oswell T. Kahonde: It's a pleasure to be here and to speak with you. My name is Oswell T. Kahonde. I am the Head of Africa for the Better Than Cash Alliance. The Better Than Cash Alliance is a United Nations-based alliance that brings together governments, international organizations, and multinational corporations to accelerate the transition from cash to responsible digital payments.

We work primarily with our members. Ethiopia, for example, is one of our members, having joined the Alliance in July 2016. Since then, we have collaborated with them to support their priorities. We do not formulate programs; we work to support our members’ existing programs. Our work is anchored on the UN Principles for Responsible Digital Payments, and we focus on three main areas:

Advocacy: We advocate for responsible digital approaches to digital payments. We are not fighting cash; we are fighting irresponsible digitization, which often results in the exclusion of those already marginalized.
Advisory Support: We offer advisory support to our members, assisting them with strategy development and implementation, as we have done here in Ethiopia.
Global Reach: We are a global alliance, working across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Q: You highlighted the importance of responsible digital payments. Could you elaborate on what “responsible” means in this context?

Oswell T. Kahonde: Responsible digital payments simply means doing it in a responsible way. We have set up nine guiding principles for our members on how to digitize payments without leaving others behind. Digital must be better than cash — that is where our name comes from. If digital is not better, people should stick to cash.

For example, consider social protection payments. If you deposit money on my phone, but the area where I live lacks agents to cash out that money, it is irresponsible. I would have to spend money to access my funds, and I would have been better off with cash.

Responsibility means ensuring:

Fairness and transparency on pricing.
Access to funds for everyone, regardless of location (e.g., ensuring biometric ATMs are accessible).
Interoperability and a cohesive ecosystem where all facilitators are accountable.
Prioritization of women, because generic market solutions tend to exclude them. If you want true inclusion, you must build solutions with women in mind.

Q: Africa is experiencing both significant progress and persistent challenges. From your perspective, what are the key opportunities and major issues shaping the digital payments landscape today, particularly in Ethiopia?

Oswell T. Kahonde: I prefer to call them opportunities, because we now have the data and systems to address the challenges.

Africa has been moving at a very fast pace. Digital transformation follows stages: first, laying the foundational rails (policy, regulation, infrastructure), and then having the private sector invest on those rails. The advent of mobile money has fundamentally changed financial inclusion. Ethiopia, for example, had less than 5 million accounts five years ago. Now, we are talking about over 100 million accounts, largely driven by mobile money. Telebirr alone has more than 50 million accounts.

However, the big issue we are tackling now is the transition from adoption to usage. We are saying: let’s stop counting accounts and start looking at usage. This conference highlighted that explosive growth in accounts (~128 million) masks a low active usage rate of only 16%.

This low usage stems from several major gaps:

Trust Deficit and Security: Rising fraud and security threats, alongside a low digital literacy rate, undermine user confidence. We must strengthen security frameworks and build nationwide financial literacy programs to address the 66% literacy gap cited for women.
Exclusion and Data Gaps: We have significant inclusion challenges, including a 10 percentage-point gender gap and a 24 percentage-point rural–urban usage gap. Millions of farmers and MSMEs are left out. The lack of centralized data exchange also prevents the formal financial sector from offering credit based on transaction history.
Low Merchant Acceptance: Weak merchant acceptance limits daily utility, trapping users in the cash cycle. The new strategy must directly address this by setting aggressive targets to increase merchant participation.

To drive digital payments at scale, you must tailor the service to benefit the user. Once the user sees the benefit, adoption and usage become easy. This data-driven approach is guiding our work across agriculture, health, cross-border trade, and other sectors.

Q: Could you outline the broader continental vision for digital payments and explain how the Better Than Cash Alliance is supporting efforts to reduce fragmentation, especially in light of Ethiopia’s recent launch of EthioPay IPS?

Oswell T. Kahonde: The core vision for Africa is economic growth, which feeds into the AfCFTA and the promotion of intra-Africa trade.

For this trade to happen, payments must be seamless and cost-effective. The Secretary-General spoke yesterday about the issue of third currencies. If I want to buy a product from Ethiopia and I am in Nigeria, I should be able to pay in Naira, not seek dollars to pay an Ethiopian who uses the Ethiopian Birr.

The Alliance sits as an adviser on digital finance to the AfCFTA Secretariat. With the digital trade protocols now ratified by more than 50 countries, the next step is implementation — and this is where the EthioPay IPS is a major win. The problem of fragmentation, slow and expensive transfers, and reliance on correspondent banks must be solved domestically before we can scale.

Ethiopia’s launch of the EthioPay Instant Payment System (IPS) is the solution to their domestic fragmentation problem. It provides the secure, real-time national backbone for mandatory interoperability for all financial institutions. This is a crucial step for the pillar on Building Robust & Interoperable Infrastructure (BRIDGE).

This domestic success then directly supports continental goals, particularly the plan to enable low-value outbound cross-border transfers via digital channels and to align EthioPay with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS).

Ultimately, implementing the AfCFTA vision requires two key actions at the country level:

Domestic Interoperability: Solving issues within individual countries, which Ethiopia is doing with EthioPay IPS.
Cross-Border Harmonization: Achieving interoperability across countries. Central banks must harmonize regulations and remove barriers to support cross-border traders.

Q: Turning to the conference itself, how would you assess its outcomes, and what would you identify as the key achievements that define its success?

Oswell T. Kahonde: This conference is part of our work with the Government of Ethiopia, through the National Bank of Ethiopia. The driving purpose of this second conference was to launch the National Digital Payment Strategy 2.0 (NDPS 2026–2030), which we have spent the last year developing. It was meant to let the world know the strategy is out and to rally the local ecosystem around the central bank’s vision.

The conference, frankly, exceeded our expectations. We were not just talking about goals; we were launching concrete solutions.

The main outputs defining its success are:

The Launch of the NDPS 2026–2030: This five-year roadmap, built on six core pillars, is hugely ambitious, aiming to increase the value of digital payments from ~82% of GDP to 750% of GDP by 2030. The strategy clearly commits to raising the active usage rate to 60% and increasing merchant participation to 60%.
The Launch of the EthioPay Instant Payment System (IPS): This is the operational centerpiece. It provides the legal and technical backbone for instant settlement and lays the essential groundwork for achieving the continental vision.
Focus on Resilience and Inclusion: We looked at frontier issues such as the role of AI in fraud reduction, which Ethio Switch is already leveraging. The strategy’s pillar on “Reaching All Ethiopians” ensures that inclusion is not an afterthought, mandating tailored products to significantly narrow the gender and urban–rural usage gaps.

The Governor (Eyob Tekalign – PhD) laid out clear calls to action: collaboration, prioritizing interoperability, prioritizing women, and prioritizing rural reach. It is a vital platform to learn from each other and celebrate successes.

Q: Thank you for sharing these insights. Before we close, do you have any final thoughts or messages you would like to leave with our readers?

Oswell T. Kahonde: Thank you for having me. My final thought is a call to action: we must solve African problems as Africans. Our role at the Better Than Cash Alliance is to facilitate that, and we call upon our colleagues and development partners to collaborate.

Let’s invest more in driving usage and move away from just counting accounts. Let’s drive interoperability across borders. To the central bankers and regulators, let’s put our heads together and harmonize regulations for the betterment of our continent. We will achieve far more if we do this together. Thank you.

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