Across Sub-Saharan Africa, tens of millions of people are crossing a quiet threshold — from the informal economy of cash and invisibility into systems that record, recognize, and ultimately empower. Between 2021 and 2024, financial account ownership in the region climbed from roughly half of adults to 58 percent, a shift driven not by grand policy alone but by the humble act of a market trader accepting a digital payment for the first time. The infrastructure behind this moment is vast and largely unseen, yet its consequences are deeply human: where there was no record, now there is history; w