Bridget Zimaga

Nigerian fintech pioneer revolutionizing financial inclusion through mobile banking

Bridget Zimaga is a visionary entrepreneur and tech innovator from Nigeria who has made significant contributions to expanding financial inclusion across Africa through her work in mobile banking. As founder and CEO of Zimeks, she developed groundbreaking solutions that enable unbanked populations to access essential financial services using basic mobile phones. Her platform processes over 2 million transactions monthly, providing services like microloans, savings accounts, and cross-border payments in regions lacking traditional banking infrastructure.

Zimaga's work has been instrumental in empowering women entrepreneurs in West Africa. She created the Women's Financial Empowerment Initiative, which has trained over 50,000 female business owners in digital financial literacy. Her TEDx talk "Building Banks for the Unbanked" has been viewed over 2 million times, highlighting her innovative approaches to fintech challenges.

In 2022, Zimaga was named one of Fortune's 40 Under 40 African Leaders and received the African Business Leader Award at the World Economic Forum. Her open-source payment protocols have been adopted by 14 African countries' central banks, creating new standards for mobile money interoperability.