Launch of the TIDE Seminar Series 

The TIDE Centre launched its new Seminar Series with an inaugural session featuring Jonathan Greenacre, whose work examines the institutional foundations of Kenya’s mobile money revolution. The seminar focused on how Kenya built a nationwide network of agents that now provides mobile financial services to tens of millions of people, highlighting the legal and regulatory innovations that enabled rapid scale while protecting consumers. 

Rather than framing mobile money as a purely technological success, the discussion emphasised the importance of “bridge contracts” — legal and institutional arrangements that connected informal practices with formal financial systems. Greenacre’s presentation illustrated how thoughtful regulation, adaptive governance, and incremental experimentation allowed new financial technologies to flourish while maintaining trust and inclusion. The launch of the Seminar Series marks TIDE’s commitment to creating a space where emerging research on technology and development can engage directly with policy debates, fostering dialogue between scholars, practitioners, and students on how institutions shape innovation outcomes.