Lezanne Anderson

Lezanne is a senior associate, who focuses on advancing inclusive financial integrity and driving digital transformation and innovation. Since joining Cenfri in 2020, she has provided regulatory analyses and capacity-building support to service providers and regulators, enabling them to comply with financial integrity guidelines while mitigating the impact of unintended consequences such as financial exclusion and de-risking. She is passionate about driving socio-economic growth, and her work in the digital transformation and innovation space has spanned sectors such as financial services, tourism, and agriculture.

A few key project highlights include:

• Enhancing financial inclusion: Improved remittance access across Africa by refining know-your-customer (KYC) protocols, customer due diligence, and risk management frameworks, thereby expanding financial services to low-income, rural households, and women. Developed a toolkit to extend these impacts to additional regulators and financial service providers.
• Pioneering Legal Entity Identifiers: Co-ordinated the pilot project to introduce Africa’s first legal entity identifier agent, successfully issuing the first identifier to an MSME. This initiative is exploring ways to empower female-owned MSMEs with greater access to trade finance.
• Strengthening MSME resilience: Tested innovative approaches to developing holistic resilience solutions aimed at securing the vital role of MSMEs in development and exploring commercial opportunities within this underserved market.
• Digital transformation in tourism: Managed a digital diagnostic of Ghana’s tourism sector, identifying opportunities to harness technology and data for job creation and economic growth.
• Strategic policy support: Conducted scenario exercises with regulators and policymakers to enhance their ability to leverage data for informed decision-making and strategic planning.
• Shaping fintech futures: Collaborated with policymakers and regulators to craft a forward-thinking fintech policy and strategy, positioning regions for sustainable digital advancement.

Qualifications

• MSc State, Society and Development, SOAS, University of London
• BSocSci (Honours) in Political Science, the University of Cape Town
• BSocSci in Politics and Industrial and Economic Sociology, Rhodes University