Karima El Hakim, a power package that contributes to the design of Africa’s fintech landscape, stands at the interface of risk capital, innovation and financial inclusion. In her current role as Land Director of Egypt and co-director of Africa on the Plug and Play Tech Center, El Hakim drives the investments and innovations on a continent with undeveloped potential.
“I support our innovation and investment efforts on the entire continent,” she said recently in an interview with Morocco World News (MWN), where she spoke about her work with startups, companies, state institutions and supervisory authorities in order to set up the next generation technology solutions.
In just a few weeks, El Hakim will bring her experience to Gitex Africa 2025, where she is supposed to share her specialist knowledge at the Future of Finance Summit.
From the leading strategy to FinTech
El Hakim’s journey started in France, where she worked in strategy in Danone. She quickly established herself in the investment landscape of Egypt after returning to her mother country.
She managed to work with Oascom Development’s investment arm before she came to Egypt’sventures and Falak startups.
A crucial career moment came when she came to Fawry, one of the leading Fintech companies in the region. There El Hakim hired over 10 million dollars in investments in Tech companies. An outstanding success: Fawry’s investment in Cashi, which changed Sudan’s digital payment landscape.
Today El Hakim advises the National Bank of Egypt-Die largest public bank in the Plug and Play Tech Center directly in local founders. Almost half of your portfolio consists of FinTech or FinTech startups.
“We work closely with the financial regulatory authority to support progressive license framework and to take on the enabling of infrastructures such as EKYC and cyber security,” she explains.
Africa’s fintech challenges tackle
El Hakim identifies fragmented regulatory framework, limited digital identity systems and inconsistent data exchange protocols as important hurdles that confront with African fintech. At the same time, she sees great opportunities when payments are benefited and embedded fintech solutions are created.
“At Plug and Play, we focus on the identification and support of infrastructures, the startups in particular SaaS models that not only serve end users, but also help companies to digitize their internal systems,” she says.
El Hakim and her team act as connections, investors and consultants who bring together innovation ecosystems and support sensible digital transformation. They help large institutions in particular bank skills to take open innovations into account, develop pilots with co-design and work with startup partners.
It also offers AI integration in FinTech as an opportunity and challenge. “Africa has no lack of talent, but we are infrastructural restrictions such as limited cloud access, fragmented data availability and inconsistent capital provision.”
Help women to realize their dreams
El Hakim’s leadership extends their boundaries within their roles over their roles, but makes a humanistic approach to the establishment of marginalized communities through economic strengthening.
In addition to her role in Plug and Play, El Hakim is a member of the Egyptian National Council for Women’s Economic Committee. There she is committed to digital financial integration for women in rural areas and promotes the leadership role of women in the decision -making of investments.
“I am firmly related to the inclusion and integration of ESG principles into the technological strategy, especially with regard to data management,” says El Hakim. “I have a weakness for founders who break barriers and expand the border of the innovation in the African and Arabic ecosystems.”
Building Pan African connections
El Hakim sees events such as Gitex Africa 2025 as a decisive platforms for the connection of state actors, investors and innovators. Her priorities include the advocates of the cooperation in the north-south, the increase in the African FinTech champions for regional and global scaling and the establishment of strategic partnerships.
“With better reporting, coordination and storytelling, we can present Africa a uniform voice worldwide,” she explains.
El Hakim introduces itself to Africa’s FinTech, which is defined by embedded infrastructure – financial technologies that enable other industries such as agriculture, logistics, healthcare and climate effectiveness.
It increases the work of Plug and Play in Morocco as a success story and points to portfolio companies such as Chari and WAFR, which have become regional managers. “Morocco is clearly at the top of the leadership of North Africa, not only in Fintech, but also in several important technologic vertical,” she says.
El Hakim, if she does not change the FinTech landscape in Africa, he enjoys Pilates and Golf and brings the same precision and the same strategic thinking in your personal activities as you are for building up the financial future of the continent.
Do not miss the chance to learn from this visionary leader on the future of the financial summit, which will carry out the duration of the Tech Fair from April 14th to 16th.
