AWI Lunch and Learn: Breaking the Double Debt Cycle

When African countries borrow to fund development, the money often flows straight back out. Local firms are too small to win contracts, too opaque to access finance, and too undercapitalised to compete with international players. The country takes on debt and loses the economic multiplier. Professor Leonce Ndikumana documented this pattern of capital outflow decades ago. The structural dynamics haven't changed much since.


This talk argues that AI-powered financial infrastructure offers a realistic path to disrupting that cycle by changing who is legible in the financial system. When lenders can analyse cash flow patterns, mobile money data, and operational signals instead of relying solely on story-telling prowess, collateral and credit history, a different set of businesses becomes fundable. Those businesses can grow, win contracts, and keep development spending circulating domestically.

Drawing on practical experience building AI credit assessment and investment management tools for financial institutions across Africa, the talk will move from the macro-level problem to concrete examples of what this looks like in practice: a microfinance lender in Uganda scoring borrowers differently, a development finance institution screening deals in hours instead of weeks, and the emerging data infrastructure that connects them.

Join Nic Rawhani, the CEO and cofounder of Vula, a London-based AI company building investment management and open finance infrastructure for African financial markets, for a lunchtime talk and discussion. Learn about how AI-powered financial infrastructure offers a realistic path to disrupting investment structures that disadvantage African players by changing who is legible in the financial system. The event is open to all Princeton undergraduate and graduate students regardless of identity.
Lunch will be provided to all attendees.

Africa World Initiative | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Program in African Studies, Africa World Initiative (OWNER)

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