Ecobank Group, the pan-African bank, has announced the appointment of Aissatou Djiba Diallo, formerly of Microsoft, as its new senior fintech advisor to strategically raise Ecobank’s support for the fintech sector
Djiba will lead the Group’s fintech initiatives and advise senior management on the banking group’s fintech strategy. Her appointment is an important step in the ongoing implementation of the group’s broader digital strategy and demonstrates Ecobank’s commitment to playing a major and high-profile role in helping Africa’s innovative fintech sector to achieve significant global market share.
Prior to joining the Ecobank Group, Djiba was the head of innovations at Microsoft4Afrika, where she built the strategy to identify, support and attract major African fintech start-ups and partners to the Microsoft Cloud platform and oversaw 50 countries. Before that, she was marketing manager and partner and strategy programme lead for West and Central Africa, Microsoft.
Speaking on the appointment, Eddy Ogbogu, group executive, operations and technology, noted, “Djiba’s appointment represents an important step in the overall Ecobank Group’s fintech and digital agenda. The expertise, passion and innovation she brings to the role will allow us to take the next crucial steps on our path to further cementing our position as Africa’s leading digital bank.”
A large part of Djiba’s role will focus on growing the bank’s flagship annual fintech initiative – the Ecobank Fintech Challenge and Ecobank Fintech Fellowship – through which the Ecobank group has promoted Africa’s most promising fintech start-ups. The programme provides selected fintechs with the opportunity to fast-track their growth by gaining a commercial partnership and product integration with Ecobank’s pan-African platform and unified ecosystem. The Challenge and Fellowship have been run for two years (2017 and 2018) and is poised for an enhanced third edition in 2020.
