Finance
The Impact of Financial Advisors Since the Uptick in Policy Risk – Center for Retirement Research
The brief’s key findings are:
- Our recent survey research found that older investors are more concerned about their financial future due to greater uncertainty over federal policy.
- This new analysis explores whether financial advisors can help them cope.
- Advisors are broadly more optimistic than investors on the economy and on how policy actions might impact financial security.
- But on the specifics, advisors express concern over Social Security, Medicare, federal debt, and inflation, with many urging precautionary actions.
- This ambivalence may help explain why advisors have no significant impact on their clients’ views on the future or investment strategy.
Introduction
Planning for retirement has always been hard, because people face numerous risks – including outliving their money (longevity risk), investment losses (market risk), unexpected health expenses (health risk), and the erosive impact of rapidly rising prices (inflation risk). Further complicating such planning are possible shifts in the public policy environment: changes to social insurance programs can undermine the foundations of a retirement plan; changes to the tax system can scramble a household’s finances; and a ballooning government debt can increase interest rates and slow the economy. The level of policy risk seems to have increased dramatically since the start of 2025, so the question is how the recent uptick may be affecting the decisions and behavior of near-retirees and retirees.
This brief is the second of two drawn from a recent study on the potential impact of policy risk on planning for retirement.1 The first addressed that question by combining a summary of the academic literature on the nature and effects of policy risk with a new survey of the changes in the views and actions of near-retiree and retiree investors since the start of 2025. This second brief adds the results of a companion survey of financial advisors, which provides information about what advisors are thinking regarding the uptick of policy risk in 2025 and what advice they are providing their older clients.
The discussion proceeds as follows. For background, the first section provides the major findings from the first brief. The literature review establishes that increased policy risk both harms the economy and burdens individuals. And the survey of near retirees and retirees indicates that older Americans are keenly aware of the increase in policy uncertainty and are taking defensive responses. The second section describes the 2025 Survey of Financial Advisors and presents the results. The final section concludes that, while older investors are worried and taking steps, financial advisors are ambivalent. This group retains a generally positive view of the economy despite recent developments, yet harbors some specific concerns. This ambivalence may explain why advisors have no impact on their clients’ views on the financial future or on investment decisions.
Policy Uncertainty and Response of Households
To be clear, “policy risk” is not about policy change, per se, but rather about the unpredictability of future policy. Even without any change to current policy, for example, a tight and polarized election forces households to consider a wider range of policies than if the election outcome were certain or the policy positions of the candidates were similar.
Major Findings from the Literature
Researchers have used an array of techniques to measure the level of policy risk and its impact. The most common approach is textual analysis of media coverage for terms associated with policy risk.2 But other approaches include looking at the impact of actual variability in policy parameters, estimating the impact of tight elections, and using surveys to gauge household perceptions of policy uncertainty and their likely responses.
The effects of policy uncertainty on the economy are broadly negative. In terms of the macroeconomy, uncertainty depresses economic activity, increases stock-market volatility, and reduces returns.3 Similarly, unemployment is found to rise in the face of greater uncertainty, while consumption and investment tend to fall.4
For those approaching retirement and retirees, the most salient risks are related to Social Security, Medicare, and fiscal policy (e.g., the federal debt and tariffs). In terms of Social Security, the big question is how policymakers will address the projected exhaustion of assets in the retirement trust fund in 2033 – raise payroll taxes by 4 percent, cut benefits by 23 percent, or some combination of the two. With regard to Medicare, while its finances are generally structurally sound, the issue is whether policymakers will continue to tolerate the program’s growing costs, which create an ever-increasing drain on federal revenues, or cut the program by raising either premiums or copayments. In terms of the ballooning federal debt, the risks are rapidly rising interest rates on Treasury securities, which cascade through to other forms of borrowing, and/or a major increase in taxes or a decline in spending.
As individuals take precautionary steps to protect themselves against policy risks, studies have shown that scaring people to take actions that they would not have taken in a stable environment has real costs. In the context of fixing Social Security, for example, researchers have found that individuals would be willing to forgo as much as 6 percent of expected benefits or 2.5 months of earnings to resolve the uncertainty.5
Results from the 2025 Retirement Investor Survey
The survey of near-retirees and retirees was conducted by Greenwald Research between July 7 and July 31, 2025. The sample consisted of 1,443 individuals ages 45-79 with over $100,000 in investable assets.
Throughout 2025, policy changed in drastic ways, and long-term trends in Medicare and Social Security financing have become more concerning. New deficits added to the already huge federal debt, and tariffs became a major source of anxiety. Not surprisingly, survey respondents have dramatically increased their consumption of media on these issues (see Figure 1).
It should therefore come as no surprise that near-retirees and retirees in the 2025 survey expressed concern about the direction and unpredictability of federal policy. Investors’ concerns for their financial future mounted (39 percent say concern increased versus 15 percent who say it decreased), while their confidence that federal policy will benefit Americans declined (61 percent decreased versus 26 percent increased, see Figure 2).
These older investors have already reacted to this unpredictability in several ways (see Figure 3). For example, 21 percent of the unretired respondents in the sample have decided to postpone their retirements. And, on the financial side, 28 percent of the entire group have increased the amount in their emergency fund, and 33 percent have shifted to more conservative investments.
In short, the evidence shows that older Americans are keenly aware of the increase in policy uncertainty and are taking defensive responses.
How Do Financial Advisors Differ from Investors and What Role Can They Play?
One group that could help older Americans cope with the heightened level of policy uncertainty is their financial advisors. To find out what advisors are thinking and what advice they are offering, the second survey interviewed 400 financial professionals. Each professional was required to have at least 75 clients, at least three years of experience at their current firm, and to manage over $30 million in assets. Furthermore, at least 40 percent of their clients must be 50 or older, and at least half their income must be derived from financial products or planning. These advisors represented a cross section of firms, including broker-dealers, registered investment advisors, insurance companies, banks, and full-service financial services firms.
The advisor survey reveals a different view of the retirement landscape and its susceptibility to policy risk than the investor survey, but also a nuanced one. On the one hand, advisors have a much rosier view of the economy in general. In particular, while 53 percent of near-retirees and retirees say the economy deteriorated between 2024 and early 2025 and only 26 percent say it improved, the numbers for advisors are nearly flipped, with 47 percent saying the state of the economy improved and only 25 percent saying it weakened (see Figure 4).
And while investors say the government’s future actions will weaken their financial security by a nearly two-to-one margin (47 percent versus 24 percent, see Figure 5), the views of advisors are again very different. Only 31 percent of advisors believe the government will weaken their clients’ finances, while 36 percent believe government actions will be positive.
On the other hand, even advisors seem to be recommending greater caution in response to the turbulent environment in 2025. In particular, 22 percent have recommended that their clients increase emergency savings since the beginning of 2025, as opposed to 3 percent recommending a decrease (75 percent recommend no change, see Figure 6). And the amount of attention advisors pay to political and policy issues has also increased since 2024 – 54 percent say they pay more attention to these topics than last year, as compared with 5 percent saying the opposite. Advisors’ level of concern about their own clients’ financial future also reveals their general unease: 28 percent say they are more concerned about their clients’ financial future in 2025 versus 2024, while only 9 percent say they are less concerned.
The advisors’ positive outlook for retirement is also somewhat contradicted by their concern regarding specific policy risks. Figure 7 shows that advisors are worried or very worried about a variety of risks. In fact, 63 percent report being worried about a major decline in the stock market, 65 percent are worried about a cut in Social Security benefits, and 79 percent about high inflation. Figure 7 also shows investor responses where the questions were similar to those for advisors. Notably, clients rank these risks quite similarly, but are almost uniformly more worried in absolute levels. Interestingly, both investors and advisors consider the federal debt to be the most concerning of the different topics.
The underlying pessimism of advisors beneath their overall positive sheen has some specific implications. While the vast majority of advisors either do not recommend a retirement age to their clients or did not change their recommendations between 2024 and 2025, 11 percent advised a later retirement age. Only 1 percent shifted in favor of earlier retirement (see Figure 8).
Moreover, the vast majority of advisors have recommended that their clients take precautionary actions in light of anticipated policy changes (see Figure 9). In particular, 21 percent have suggested cutting back spending; 49 percent have suggested changes to investments; 43 percent have suggested acquiring financial products to hedge investment losses; and 42 percent have suggested reallocation of resources, such as Roth conversions, based on the projection of higher future taxes. Only 21 percent have not recommended any of the above actions.
Of those advisors who recommended changes in investment strategies in 2025 relative to 2024, most suggested a more conservative allocation. Twenty-five percent chose that option, relative to 18 percent who recommended a more aggressive strategy (with 21 percent suggesting a mix and 36 percent suggesting no change; see Figure 10).
When asked about their personal investments, 29 percent of advisors say that the importance of protecting their assets has increased since 2024, while only 4 percent say that the need to protect assets has become less important, with 66 percent saying their views have not changed (see Figure 11).
Overall, the pattern of responses from advisors paints a picture of frothy optimism at a high level, coupled with fundamental concern about the implications of policy on financial security. When asked in any great detail about specific policies or about the appropriate posture to strike between conservative and aggressive investment behavior, the advisors generally display an increased preference for safety as opposed to chasing returns. Putting on a brave face despite underlying concerns may be a response to clients’ need for reassurance.
The ambivalence in advisors’ views may help explain why they do not appear to have much impact on their clients. Regression results show that the correlations between having a financial advisor, on the one hand, and the change in investors’ concern for either their investments or their financial future, on the other, are statistically insignificant in both cases (see Figure 12).
Conclusion
While policy uncertainty has been much studied, big questions remain about the impact of the apparent dramatic uptick in policy risk. Our first brief on this topic showed that near-retiree and retiree investors have grown significantly more concerned about their financial well-being since the start of 2025. Even for this sample of relatively wealthy households, the potential for substantial cuts in Social Security was the major concern. In response to these risks, a meaningful share of these groups have taken steps to protect themselves, such as increasing their emergency fund and moving to more conservative investments, and those still working have delayed their retirement date.
One resource that could help older Americans cope with the heightened level of policy uncertainty is their financial advisors. Advisors, however, seem conflicted. They are generally optimistic about the economy overall, with 47 percent saying they think that the economy is stronger since the start of 2025, and only 25 percent reporting they think it is weaker. On the other hand, advisors express concern about a broad array of developments, and most of those recommending changes for their clients suggest cautious actions, such as delaying retirement or moving to more conservative investments. The ambivalence in advisors’ views may help explain why they do not appear to have much impact on their clients’ confidence. The correlations between having a financial advisor, on the one hand, and the change in investors’ concern for either their investments or their financial future, on the other, are statistically insignificant in both cases.
References
Alexopolous, Michelle and Jon Cohen. 2015. “The Power of Print: Uncertainty Shocks, Markets, and the Economy.” International Review of Economics & Finance 40: 8-28.
Baker, Scott R., Nichola Bloom, and Steven J. Davis. 2016. “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(4): 1593-1636.
Boudoukh, Jacob, Ronen Feldman, Shimon Kogan, and Matthew Richardson. 2013. “Which News Moves Stock Prices? A Textual Analysis.” Working Paper 18725. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fernandez-Villaverde, Jesus, Pablo Guerron-Quintana, Keith Kuester, and Juan Rubio-Ramirez. 2015. “Fiscal Volatility Shocks and Economic Activity.” American Economic Review 105(11): 3352-3384.
Leduc, Sylvain and Zheng Liu. 2016. “Uncertainty Shocks are Aggregate Demand Shocks.” Journal of Monetary Economics 82: 20-35.
Luttmer, Erzo F.P. and Andrew A. Samwick. 2018. “The Welfare Cost of Perceived Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from Social Security.” American Economic Review 108(2): 275-307.
Munnell, Alicia H. and Gal Wettstein. 2026. “How Policy Risks Affect Retirement Planning.” Special Report. Chestnut Hill, MA: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
Shoven, John B., Sita Slavov, and John G. Watson. 2021. “How Does Social Security Reform Indecision Affect Younger Cohorts?” Working Paper 28850. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Endnotes
In Q1 2026, EfTEN United Property Fund earned 461 thousand euros in net profit (Q1 2025: 703 thousand euros). The decline in profit is primarily related to the Fund’s investment in EfTEN Real Estate Fund AS shares, whose price on the Tallinn Stock Exchange increased 2.9% in Q1 2026 compared with 4.5% in the same period of 2025. In addition, interest income from the investment in the development company Invego Uus-Järveküla OÜ decreased year-on-year, as the development company repaid the principal and interest of the shareholder loan to the Fund in full in mid-March.
Despite the decline in profit, EfTEN United Property Fund AS received record owner income from its underlying funds at the beginning of 2026. This forms the basis for the Fund’s first distribution of the year to investors in Q2 2026, in the amount of approximately one million euros. The distribution is based on dividends and income received from all underlying funds, as well as interest from the Invego Uus-Järveküla OÜ and the Menulio 7 office building shareholder loans. The distribution does not include the profit from the Invego Uus-Järveküla development project, which the Fund plans to distribute largely in the second half of the year.
Since EfTEN United Property Fund’s portfolio is diversified across nearly 50 different properties in the Baltic states, developments across all segments of the regional real estate market affect the Fund’s results. There have been no major changes in the Baltic commercial real estate market over the last few quarters. In the residential real estate market, however, sales of new developments have improved in all Baltic states. In Tallinn, monthly sales of new developments grew to approximately 160 units per month in Q1 2026, compared with an average of around 100 units in 2024 and the first half of 2025. The biggest jump in the Baltic states was made by the Vilnius new-development market, where — partly thanks to expectations of funds being released from the second pension pillar — Q1 2026 sales volumes reached all-time highs, at times reaching up to 700 units per month.
The pace of sales also remained strong at the start of the year in Invego Uus-Järveküla OÜ, the development company for the Uus-Järveküla residential district in which EfTEN United Property Fund holds an 80% stake. In the first quarter, 22 units were sold (real rights contracts signed) and reservation agreements were concluded for three terraced houses. As of the end of the quarter, 8 terraced houses in the development remain unreserved. In March, Invego Uus-Järveküla OÜ repaid its entire bank loan and returned the shareholder loan to the Fund in full (1.51 million euros) along with the accrued interest (56 thousand euros). EfTEN United Property Fund invested a total of 3.52 million euros in the Uus-Järveküla development project in 2021 and 2023, and has to date received 4.8 million euros back.
Today, 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water, and 3.5 billion people live without safely managed sanitation (UNSD, 2024). Action is urgently needed. AIIB’s recent Where the Water Flows report offers clear pathways for addressing these challenges in an increasingly destabilized hydrological environment. Yet, financing remains insufficient: an additional USD 140.8 billion in investment is needed annually to meet SDG targets 6.1 and 6.2 by 2030 (World Bank, 2024).
Traditional water funding modalities – tariffs, taxes, and transfers – are under strain, jeopardizing sustained investment and potentially widening the funding gap. Innovative governance models and financing solutions have a critical role to play in this evolving landscape. As the World Bank operationalizes its new global initiative Water Forward, there is a growing need for alignment and dialogue on the strategic allocation of capital for water, alongside the potential of new financing and governance models.
This event, held on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings, convened water finance practitioners actively leveraging innovative governance and financial approaches to fund water in emerging markets.
Opening remarks were delivered by Zou Jiayi, President and Chair of the Board of Directors, AIIB.
Speakers included:
Finance
Digital Finance as a Geopolitical Arena: China, Web3, and the Competition Over Africa’s Digital Payments Landscape
A young Nigerian man uses cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer transactions to avoid the challenges of Naira inflation, while thousands of miles away, a farmer in rural Kenya uses her smartphone to access a mobile credit platform for a microloan. These two examples represent just a small sample of how the payments landscape is transforming at a global level.
The rapid evolution of Africa’s financial landscape is being influenced by global and regional forces that are reshaping how money flows through digital systems across the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as the world’s third-fastest growing crypto market. Widespread digital asset adoption in countries like Nigeria and South Africa highlight Africa’s demand for accessible, efficient, and low-cost financial infrastructure. With Africa’s digital payments industry increasing at an average of more than 8% yearly, digital finance has become a strategic point of competition over influence in setting the technical standards, financial messaging protocols, and digital infrastructure that determines how international and domestic payments are processed. As Chinese investments aggressively enter the region, it is important for African nations to maintain their digital infrastructure sovereignty by adopting digital finance in a manner free from foreign interference.
Fintech, Web3, and the Challenge to Traditional Finance
Africa’s new digital financial infrastructure increasingly relies on Web3 to alleviate cross-border payments friction. Web3 broadly describes an emerging layer of internet-based financial infrastructure built on decentralized blockchain networks. In contrast with traditional financial (tradfi) intermediaries, these systems enable peer-to-peer transactions executed through a decentralized, shared, secure digital record maintained across various computers for accuracy and transparency.
Financial technology (fintech) seeks to disrupt tradfi, with fintech broadly referring to the software and digital platforms designed to improve access to financial services. One of the most successful examples of fintech in Africa is M-Pesa, a mobile money transfer and payment service that allows users to send, receive, and store money through their mobile phones, M-Pesa originated in Kenya, and is now a widely-used, pan-African digital money app.
The Convergence of Digital and Legacy Financial Infrastructure in Africa
In conjunction with the advent of Web3, a new standard for financial transactions called ISO 20022 is bringing greater efficiency, transparency and interoperability to those transactions. On November 22, 2025, the global financial messaging network, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), retired the legacy message type (MT) messages, and migrated fully to ISO 20022. This new global standard for financial messaging enables financial transactions that can carry more data compared to MTs and brings increased legitimacy and transparency to payments. Together, these changes offer a significant opportunity for the growth of digital payments and financial inclusion across the continent.
SWIFT’s transition to the ISO 20022 standard represents one of the most significant efforts to date to standardize Africa’s financial markets. First introduced in 2004, ISO 20022 standardization has been slow because adherence to such standards requires significant infrastructure investment, which is typically challenging for emerging economies to afford. That’s why several African countries have only recently transitioned to ISO 20022. For instance, South Africa’s Reserve Bank announced its adoption of ISO 20022 in late 2022. Nigeria’s central bank mandated adherence to ISO 20022 only on August 25, 2025, just two months prior to the discontinuation of MT messages. Ghana transitioned even later, in September 2025.
At the same time that governments are spending to upgrade digital financial infrastructure, tradfi is also becoming more expensive. In late September 2025, while the Parliament of Ghana sought to regulate cryptocurrency activities, the Bank of Ghana directed all commercial banks to charge a 5% fee on dollar cash withdrawals, creating new friction in transactions.
If effectively implemented, Web3 native payment rails such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) may be able to circumvent such friction. Africa is already emerging as a hotbed of such technologies, including stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value. Stablecoins rely on Web3 to carry structured, data-rich, auditable transactions. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) formed a task force in late October 2025 to study its population’s embrace of stablecoin adoption. SWIFT has also recognized the popularity of stablecoins by including South Africa-based Amalgamated Banks of South Africa (ABSA) and FirstRand Bank with 32 other banks in a September 2025 blockchain-based pilot focused on cross-border payments.
As African financial institutions upgrade their systems to accommodate Web3 payment rails and comply with ISO 20022, governments must decide how to modernize legacy banking infrastructure while also determining how to integrate emerging technologies alongside traditional financial systems. These choices will not only shape the future-state development of Africa’s digital infrastructure, but they will also influence geopolitical dynamics, with secondary effects on the US standing against global competitors in resource-rich Africa.
China’s Digital Statecraft in Africa
Amidst the growth of digital finance across the continent, China has exhibited a keen interest in shaping Africa’s digital financial infrastructure, building on its flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Through a parallel effort in Africa, the Digital Silk Road (DSR), China is playing a key role in everything from the region’s telecommunications services to centralizing blockchain infrastructure through the Blockchain Service Network (BSN), a Chinese-backed digital infrastructure platform that allows governments and institutions to run blockchain applications akin to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.
More foundationally, China is playing an increasing role in Africa’s digital payments scene. China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) went live with South Africa-based Standard Bank Group in early December 2025, better enabling RMB (which stands for Renminbi, the official currency of China)-denominated clearing services to other African banks. This, along with region-wide initiatives like the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Digital Silk Road, in addition to local efforts like Nigeria’s Ogun-Guangdong free trade zone and the China-Congo Industrial City, highlight China’s increasing role in building Africa’s digital infrastructure. Taken together, these initiatives highlight a broad effort to create a parallel financial ecosystem reliant on Chinese standards and technology, aimed at securing strategic influence and infrastructure dominance.
This environment also attracts gray-zone actors and illicit networks, especially as cryptocurrency takes hold across the continent. In early 2024, at the same time that the state-owned Ethiopian Investment Holdings announced a $250 million data mining partnership with a subsidiary of Hong-Kong based West Data Group, Chinese Bitcoin miners were reported to be moving to Ethiopia en-masse to avoid Chinese legislation banning cryptocurrency and to take advantage of low electricity costs. In August 2025, the Interpol-coordinated Operation Serengeti 2.0 recovered nearly $100 million in proceeds from criminal activities throughout Africa, including a variety of cryptocurrency-focused scams. Among those arrested were 60 Chinese nationals accused of illegally validating blockchain transactions to generate cryptocurrency.
This dangerous combination of state-backed economic statecraft and transnational organized crime mediated through digital financial infrastructure is not only challenging the stability of African institutions, but by limiting economic access, fostering illicit activities, and shifting geopolitical alignments, China’s increasing influence over Africa’s digital infrastructure could also challenge American security and economic interests in the region.
Safeguarding Digital Sovereignty
In the face of both the opportunities that new technologies offer to African enterprises and individuals, and the challenges to sovereignty and stability that accompany China’s interventions, it is important for countries across the region to put in place robust regulatory frameworks for digital transactions. The experience of the Central African Republic offers a cautionary tale in the risks of adopting new technologies in the absence of such regulations. In 2022, the Central African Republic made history as the first African country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. In the aftermath, however, accusations of corruption via digital assets have clarified the potential for crypto to promote criminal activity and expose gaps in regulatory oversight and enforcement capacity.
With African countries already facing significant difficulties for tradfi standards adoption and the increasing prevalence of cybercrime, misguided efforts to adopt Web3 to facilitate digital financial transactions could increase corruption, organized crime, and digital dependencies. This could take the form of enabling illicit financial flows and sanctions evasions via cross-border transactions, reduced central bank control over monetary policy through widespread stablecoin usage, and overdependence on foreign-built digital infrastructure. Such an environment could end up undermining economic stability for the region as a whole through reliance on potentially corruptible financial systems, thereby reducing national control over financial data, transaction visibility, and regulatory enforcement. For the US, reduced visibility into cross-border financial flows limits the effectiveness of economic tools such as sanctions and risks diminishing influence over the very standards and systems that currently underpin the global financial system.
A better alternative is for digital asset usage to have not only clear regulatory guidance and approval, but also product-market fit to ensure long-term sustainability. This clearest example of the consequences of a lack of such a fit is Nigeria’s late 2021 debut of the eNaira CBDC. Despite what CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele characterized as “overwhelming interest,” transaction numbers remain relatively low, with the eNaira being seen by many as a failed initiative, in part because Nigerians have found greater utility in stablecoins.
Ghana has taken a more deliberate approach. One month after its transition to ISO 20022, Ghana’s Parliament approved a Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill, which created a legal framework to regulate and legalize cryptocurrency activities within the country. By providing legislation that enables the Bank of Ghana to oversee and license exchanges and wallet providers, Ghana is able to increase its legitimacy in both the cryptocurrency and traditional financial markets.
As strategic competition in Africa’s digital realm intensifies, maintaining sovereignty will require African countries to foster growth and innovation through robust regulatory frameworks and financial technologies tailored to their local markets.
Conclusion
Global leaders must recognize that digital payment rails are now critical instruments of national power. As global standards like ISO 20022 converge with Web3-native payment rails, African nations have a rare opportunity to leapfrog over legacy systems while still pursuing digital growth on their own terms. Understanding and responding to the influence of China’s Digital Silk Road will be critical for African nations to maintain digital sovereignty while embracing innovation.
With this in mind, African nations can strengthen their digital sovereignty by implementing comprehensive regulatory frameworks, investing in local fintech ecosystems, and promoting partnerships with trustworthy international players to ensure security and transparency. As they do so, the US can play a supportive role by offering technical assistance, facilitating knowledge-sharing initiatives, and encouraging private-sector investments that align with Africa’s strategic interests. These actions could ensure that African countries embrace financial and technological innovation, while safeguarding their digital sovereignty.
Author Bio: Hugh Harsono’s research interests focus on emerging technologies’ impact on international security, technology policy, and strategic competition. Hugh received his graduate and undergraduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.
Main image: Street scene in Freetown, Sierra Leone by Random Institute on Unsplash.
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This article is a Focus Area self-published piece, and the content has not undergone standard editorial review. IWI hosts these pieces to facilitate rapid dialogue among practitioners, but the analysis, research, and original thought within the article remain the sole responsibility of the author.
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