Abstract
Sub-Saharan Africa enters the second half of 2026 with a financial identity problem that is finally being solved from an unexpected direction. Fewer than six in ten adults in the region hold a formal bank or mobile money account, and a much smaller share have ever appeared in a credit bureau file. Yet the same population is, in a data sense, richly visible: it tops up airtime, moves money by phone, pays for solar panels in instalments, and buys goods on credit from informal traders. Alternative credit scoring is the set of methods that convert this everyday digital exhaust into a usable measure of creditworthiness, and by mid-2026 it has moved from experimental pilot to mainstream market infrastructure across the region.
This brief takes stock of where that market stands. The global alternative credit scoring industry is estimated at roughly US$11 billion by 2031, with behavioural, psychometric and digital-footprint data the fastest-growing input category. Sub-Saharan Africa remains a modest slice of that global total, but it is the region where the underlying case for alternative data is strongest.
The brief closes with recommendations addressed to four audiences: regulators, fintechs, development finance institutions, and consumers and civil society. Sub-Saharan Africa's alternative credit scoring market has proven the underlying technical premise. The task for the remainder of this decade is to make its benefits as broad-based as its data footprint already is.