Ep 18. Solving Africa's Credit Gap with Open Banking and AI

Tunde Ogundipe, CEO of E-Doc, has made it his mission to help banks lend money effectively through open banking and AI. This is a major challenge, but one that comes with significant upside. In Nigeria, for instance, only 6% of adults accessed credit from a regulated institution in 2025, and this is a challenge that extends to SMEs too, blocking small businesses from urgently needed capital or the funds required to scale. This is where Tunde and E-Doc come in. By helping banks to get a better understanding of who they are dealing with, and by using open banking and AI to accurately profile borrowers, E-Doc is able to considerably de-risk the lending process and help businesses get access to the funding that they need. In this episode Tunde talks us through his career background, his experience working for major banks, and how he spotted the opportunity. He also discusses the drawbacks of manual reporting and outdated record-keeping, all of which place limits on lending processes. There are some fascinating lessons for founders here too. Tunde goes into the challenges of building for open banking before Nigeria's regulations had been written, and he lets us into his thought processes for building amidst uncertainty. He also dives into the differences between building a B2B proposition versus a D2C and why he greatly prefers the former. We look at the benefits of technology, the rise of AI, and the importance of high-quality data to back it up. As Tunde says, "Quality is better than speed." We also glance at E-Doc's future and why Tunde hasn't been keen to grow as fast as possible and into as many regions as possible. Instead, he makes the case for improving processes and building knowledge before trying to take on the entire continent. This is an episode that offers both common sense and optimism. In Tunde's words, "we're sitting on a gold mine because there [are] so many use cases for financial data." Exciting times indeed. Subscribe to LFG! for regular podcasts and insights on global fintech: https://letfintechgrow.beehiiv.com/