Drea Cabral, Contributing Photographer

On Wednesday, Tarek Mouganie spoke at a Morse College Tea about his childhood, nontraditional career path and the future of finance in Africa. 

Mouganie, a 2024 Jackson School of Global Affairs world fellow, is a fourth-generation Ghanaian and attributes much of his success to his supportive mother. He has had an atypical career — from receiving a doctorate in physics at the University of Cambridge to managing investment portfolios at Man Group and a brief stint as a beekeeper — yet eventually felt called to return to the issue he was most passionate about.

“I had this sort of flash of what was my North Star when I started this career, having an impact in Africa, looking at financial services and their impact in Africa,” Mouganie said.

Mouganie created the online bank Affinity Africa. He said his group focused heavily on making the bank accessible and affordable, resulting in Ghana’s first completely free online bank. 

His team designed the app’s interface based on the opinions of users in focus groups. After receiving feedback, Affinity changed the app from swipe-based to scroll-based, since Ghanaians typically use applications that came downloaded onto their phone. They also added a button that reveals the amount of money in one’s class to ensure privacy in heavily populated areas, like busy bus rides. 

While it is relatively easy to obtain a loan in Ghana just by shooting a quick text, interest rates can be upwards of 10 to 16 percent a month, according to Mouganie. The currency in Ghana has depreciated significantly within the past few years, but Affinity has ensured that interest is universally adjusted for inflation to address this discrepancy. 

“So we created this bank as a way of not just providing accessible financial services, but also affordable financial services, which is really, really, important,” he said.

Hanaé Yoshida ’26 was inspired by Mouganie’s ability to combine a career in finance with humanitarianism. She said it can often feel like an economically lucrative career is mutually exclusive from one aligning with her values. 

Kevin Zhong ’25 attended the talk because of his interest in emerging markets, entrepreneurship and the different types of innovation in Africa and the United States. He left inspired by Mouganie’s life story. 

“I wonder to what degree our lives are all an accumulation of small inflection points, small moments that you may not realize matter that much, but could have totally set you down a completely different path,” Zhong said. “I thought that was really fascinating.”

According to Mouganie, Affinity Africa has been extremely successful since launching in January of this year, opening thousands of accounts a day while spending almost no money on marketing. He said that Affinity has given out millions of dollars in loans with a default rate of less than 1 percent. 

“We’ve acquired 30,000 customers so far in eight and half months just by word of mouth,” said Mouganie. “And the plan is about 1.2 million in the next three years in Ghana.”

The tea ended with a surprise a cappella performance by the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus.

Morse College is located at 304 York St.