The Bretton Woods institutions, and particularly the International Monetary Fund, have a long and revealing history with economic novelty in the developing world. Their reactions are often misunderstood as ideological hostility or geopolitical bias. In reality, they are better explained as institutional reflex. The International Monetary Fund is not neutral in the abstract. It is an architecture-preserving institution. Its core mandate is to: • Preserve global monetary stabi

The appeal for a unified fintech regulator is obvious: one license, one compliance regime, seamless cross-border innovation. The Ghana-Rwanda fintech passport tested this model. But uptake has been minimal, revealing an uncomfortable truth: regulatory harmonization only matters when underlying trade and financial flows already exist. Building unified regulation before building real economic integration may be solving the wrong problem first. The question is more complex