Hackim Abdul, Director of Citi’s Public Sector Group for Africa, has warned that weak trust between governments and citizens remains one of the biggest obstacles to Africa’s financial growth. He spoke on Friday at the Africa Breakfast Convos (ABC) 2026 in New York, held on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81).
Speaking on the event’s first panel, Hackim argued that capital alone will not decide whether the continent meets its economic targets. “The presence or absence of trust can either unlock or restrict some of the big objectives we have as a continent,” he said.
He pointed to Ghana as a case study in how state action can damage public confidence for decades. In the 1980s, Ghana’s military government arbitrarily froze bank accounts holding more than 50,000 cedis. According to Hackim, savers in the informal sector responded by staying away from banks for years afterwards, keeping their money out of the formal system.
That caution has eased over time. By the 2010s and early 2020s, Hackim said, more Africans had begun to trust financial institutions. “People have started coming into the financial system. They’ve seen the value in keeping a bank account, having a banking relationship, getting a small loan to grow the business,” he said, noting that many had also started investing in the capital and bond markets.
The recovery is visible in the data. Account ownership in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 34 percent of adults in 2014 to 58 percent in 2024, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2025. The region now leads the world in mobile money, with 40 percent of adults holding a mobile money account. The global average for account ownership stands at 79 percent.
Hackim Abdul cautioned that fragile trust can reverse those gains. He said a default that forces investors to accept losses on their bonds discourages saving and sets back years of progress. “Those things breach trust, which is required to really deepen our financial institutions,” he said. The most recent example is Ghana’s 2022 default, which carried a direct Nigerian cost. Nigerian banks recorded about N284 billion in losses on Ghanaian bonds, while domestic bondholders in Ghana lost at least 30 percent of their money.
The argument sits at the centre of ABC 2026, an event built around how Africa converts its rising global profile into real investment. Trust at home and confidence from abroad are two sides of the same question, since foreign capital tends to follow institutions it believes in. This year’s forum carried the theme “Africa’s Next Chapter.”
At ABC 2026, Hackim Abdul shared the panel with Yasamin Alttahir, Director of Global Marketing, Communications and External Affairs at The King’s Trust International, and Otunba (Dr.) Bimbola Ashiru, Chairman of Blackcod Group and Group Director at Odu’a Investment Company Limited. Stephanie Busari, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SBB Media and a former CNN correspondent, moderated the session. The forum, hosted by Allison Worldwide in partnership with BHM, comes as Ghana posts a GH¢46.1 billion trade surplus and Kenya records 5.3 percent GDP growth in the first quarter of 2026.