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Ethiopian FinTech company Kifiya Financial Technology has signed an investment agreement with IFC, a member of the World Bank Group. The deal was announced on 4 November 2026 at the Africa Financial Summit (AFIS) in Luanda, Angola. It is IFC’s first investment in Kifiya, and the amount was not disclosed.
The money will help Kifiya grow its AgFinTech and rural work. This connects smallholder farmers, small agricultural businesses and other underserved firms to finance and markets. The company’s AI risk decisioning and financial systems already sit behind more than $1 billion in credit.
The investment follows earlier advisory work between IFC and Kifiya. IFC’s 2026 report, Cracking the Credit Code, uses Kifiya as a case study. It shows how the company’s alternative data scoring and digital lending systems help banks serve informal businesses and first-time borrowers.
“Our purpose is to make Africa’s invisible economy investable. Farmers and microenterprises already produce, trade and create value, but much of that activity remains unseen by formal finance. We have built the AI and data infrastructure to make it visible and financeable, while supporting the orchestration and governance of capital,” said Munir Duri, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kifiya.
Kifiya builds AI and data-based systems for risk decisioning, financial services and markets. They help banks and other lenders reach smallholder farmers and small businesses that formal finance has not served.
The company says its systems have enabled financing and insurance for 1.1 million micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and farmers. That includes more than 860,000 MSMEs and 230,000 farmers.
The company’s technology has four layers:
- Its data and AI layer turns more than 42 data families and 10 billion alternative data signals into a risk profile for borrowers who have never been assessed.
- Its decisioning layer turns these profiles into risk scores, credit limits, fraud and climate risk checks, and portfolio monitoring.
- Its financial layer lets lenders send out and collect small loans digitally through agents and rural cooperatives.
- Its market layer links borrowers to buyers, suppliers and services.
Partner institutions keep their own capital, credit policy and customers. Kifiya supplies the systems that make the lending possible.
In agriculture, these systems profile and credit-score farmers, group them together, and link them to financial services, inputs, mechanisation, advisory services and markets. Suppliers, traders and processors also gain access to working capital.
Kifiya is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with AI and technology hubs in Nairobi and Cape Town.
“Across Africa, too many farmers and entrepreneurs still lack access to the financing they need to grow. Technology can help close that gap. Through our investment in Kifiya, IFC is helping bring financing within reach of more farmers and entrepreneurs, so they can invest, create jobs, and build stronger livelihoods,” said Ethiopis Tafara, IFC Vice President for Africa.
IFC is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. It works in more than 100 countries and committed a record $71.7 billion to private companies and financial institutions in developing countries in fiscal year 2025.
IFC’s investment will let Kifiya scale its AgFinTech work in Ethiopia and support its move into new markets. The company is in expansion talks in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. It builds its systems once and sets them up for each market’s institutions, currency and regulation.
The announcement follows a day after IFC invested $100 million in the initial public offering (IPO) of Egypt’s Banque du Caire.
