Is the African Monetary Union 2030 target achievable? Ugo Umeseaka, COO of Redtech, shed light on this

On June 3, 1991, the Abuja Treaty was signed, establishing the African Economic Community. This originally meant a target for a single currency, and a full monetary union was set for 2028.

35 years later, as reviewed in Agenda 2063, it is still far from it. The African Central Bank, the institution tasked with issuing and managing the single currency, does not yet exist.

In May 2026, President Bola Tinubu advocated for an African commodity exchange during the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, Rwanda. He added that building a cross-border commodity and payment platform should take priority over a single currency.

Ugo Umeseaka, COO of Redtech, discussed in an exclusive interview with Condia what infrastructure is needed to support Africa’s next phase of economic growth.

Redtech is a financial technology subsidiary of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu’s pan-African conglomerate. The company focuses on building payment infrastructure across the continent, with a mandate rooted in the Africapitalism philosophy.

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Detailed below are excerpts from the conversation with Ugo Umeseaka. The conversations have been edited lightly for clarity. 

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Q: How does Redtech come into all of this — cross-border payments and the African Monetary Union?

At the holding company level, Redtech’s guiding philosophy has been Africapitalism. For us at Redtech, our entry point is primarily from the payments perspective. We believe in building infrastructure that can connect the whole of Africa or at least be part of that story.

As for how it connects to the African Monetary Union, the AMU aims to facilitate inter-country trade. Redtech aims to implement infrastructure that is seamless across the continent, and that would have aided the AMU vision as well.

Q: In the midst of all this activity, why haven’t cross-border payments been unified before now? What was actually stopping it?

Every country has payment switches that are designed to serve domestic priorities. The CBN has a settlement system. Ghana has one. Tanzania has one. They are all optimised for home markets. The challenge is that interoperability is lacking. It is difficult to expose your settlement infrastructure, as doing so also exposes you to regulatory limits, liquidity risks, and security risks.

Then there is another irony I always give. If I start a transaction from Nigeria to Ghana, I have to use a US or European correspondent bank to settle it. Why? Those banks provide liquidity that we don’t yet have locally. They provide compliance coverage and dispute resolution. We need to replicate that locally, and that is what the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System  (PAPSS) is trying to achieve. The technology is not the problem.

The problem is getting central banks to come together and agree to ensure interoperability across their infrastructure and to create an ecosystem that provides the same safety, liquidity, and compliance coverage that correspondent banks in Europe and the US currently provide us.

Q: PAPSS already exists. So why hasn’t it taken off, given we are only four years from the 2030 target?

PAPSS is real. It is live in 19 countries, with over 150 banks having gone live on it. It is facing a liquidity problem. I want assurance that I can settle quickly, cheaply, and seamlessly, and that liquidity in this market requires volume. If there are only one or two players, there is no liquidity. But volume also requires liquidity. It is a chicken-and-egg situation.

PAPSS’s problem is really around maturity and adoption. Swift was developed in 1973. It took 20 years to become the default. PAPSS is just three years old. It takes time to build confidence and trust.

Then there is another critical problem: South Africa, the second-largest economy in Africa, is not on PAPSS, which sends a negative signal for the entire system. I am confident that PAPSS will gain traction, but it is a journey.

Q: Is continental regulatory harmonisation even possible?

Top-down regulatory harmonisation across 54 African countries, where everyone aligns their technologies, regulations, and infrastructure simultaneously, has never happened before. Not even in the European Union was it achieved that way. It has only ever been regional.

What we are proposing at Redtech mirrors that approach: identify regions with the most common features, gain scale there, and then connect outward to other regions. We are going to build region by region until the regions can connect. Then the political and institutional frameworks can meet us where we are.

Q: When people talk about a “unified cross-border payment platform,” they mean different things — a single switch, interoperability between existing switches, a common currency layer, a shared regulatory framework. Which version is actually feasible?

Let me separate what is possible now from what belongs to the future.

What is feasible today is interoperability between switches from different countries, and that is what PAPSS has achieved by creating a settlement layer that sits above every existing switch. Call it a switch of switches. Every country keeps its own infrastructure; PAPSS sits above it. Countries can accept that without surrendering sovereignty. That is the achievable version of a unified cross-border payment platform right now.

A shared regulatory framework is achievable at the regional economic community level, like in the ECOWAS, where common features already exist. At the continental level across all 54 countries, it is aspirational at best. A common currency layer is possible but belongs to the medium term. A single continental regulatory framework is a journey, not a destination we reach in four years.

Q: So the realistic path is a patchwork of corridors that eventually connects, rather than a top-down unified system?

Absolutely. That is just the way to capture it. The regional approach is the most viable because regions already share commonalities that lower barriers. When those regions eventually connect, the conversation becomes easier. The EU achieved this in 1951, when six countries introduced some measure of regional harmonisation. They built from there. That is how I believe the African Monetary Union will ultimately be realised.

Q: Is the 2030 target realistic?

Four years from now, I don’t believe Africa can have a single currency. There is no African Central Bank. There is no macroeconomic convergence. Those things have to happen first, and it took Europe over 40 years. I think 2030 is more of a directional target than a hard commitment. It is useful to keep the conversation going, but there is a lot of work still to be done.

We don’t actually need a single currency to trade. Technology already allows us to settle in local currencies across the continent. A single currency will add a layer of maturity when it arrives, but it is not the prerequisite for intra-African trade that some assume.

Q: What is the one thing that, if it changed, would most accelerate the African Monetary Union?

South Africa needs to join PAPSS. I keep saying this for three reasons. First, South Africa is the second-largest economy on the continent. Their participation means a significant share of the African trade volume is included immediately. Second, South Africa has the most mature financial markets in Africa. Their credibility means that countries currently watching from the sidelines will take PAPSS more seriously. Third, South Africa has the most mature payment infrastructure in Africa. Their joining would address the liquidity problem directly — more volume, more switching, and the social proof that drives others to follow.

The compliance benefits are also significant. The compliance exposure we currently carry with New York and London correspondent banks disappears when we can settle within the continent. The multiplier effect of South Africa joining PAPSS would be enormous. And honestly, the bloc they anchor in southern Africa would pull with them. That is the single move I believe would have the greatest impact.

Q: But if PAPSS is the solution, why are African countries not buying into it?

I don’t have a perfect answer. It is still the chicken-and-egg problem. Everybody is watching from the sidelines, waiting for someone else to move first, and by waiting, they are each making it harder for it to happen. Swift took 20 years. I am hoping PAPSS will not need 20 years to gain the maturity to drive the monetary conversation Africa needs.

We don’t need to invent new technology. We don’t need to reinvent the rails. We need to find ways to make payments seamless with what already exists. The technology is there. The infrastructure is there. What we are waiting for is the commercial and political will from regulators, central banks, and the large economies to allow it to function. Africa is on the right trajectory.