City Traders Imperium (CTI) is highlighting a structural shift in who gets to trade professionally, pointing to its own funded trader base, now spread across more than 178 countries, as evidence that capital access, not location, increasingly determines who can build a career in the markets.

A large share of that growth is coming from regions historically shut out of institutional finance: MENA, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. For skilled traders in these markets, the barrier was rarely talent. It was the absence of the capital, credit, and brokerage infrastructure that traders in London, New York, or Singapore take for granted.

"We're watching the same talent that used to have nowhere to go finally get a route in," said Martin Najat, Co-Founder of City Traders Imperium. "A trader in Lagos or Karachi can now prove their edge and get funded on the same terms as someone sitting in a bank in London. That's not a small shift, that's the whole industry opening up."

The scale of what's being closed is well documented. The World Bank's most recent Global Findex data found that 1.3 billion adults worldwide still lack a formal financial account, with over half concentrated in just eight countries, including Nigeria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, several of which are now among CTI's fastest-growing trader populations . Traditional finance has been slow to reach these markets. Prop trading, by contrast, needs nothing more than a verified track record and an internet connection.

That shift is already visible in the data on where new traders are coming from. Retail forex participation across Africa has been growing at roughly 30% year-on-year since 2023, driven largely by mobile trading platforms and rising interest from markets like Nigeria and Kenya . CTI's own trader base reflects that same pull, growth concentrated in exactly the regions where formal capital access has historically been weakest.

CTI is careful to frame funded trading as a legitimate, capital-light career path rather than a side hustle, one that still depends on real education and support to work. The firm's evaluation model gives traders a structured route to capital without requiring personal savings, a credit history, or a broker relationship in their home market, while its Academy provides the training layer that turns access into actual competency.

"Access without education just moves the failure point," Najat added. "Giving someone capital doesn't help if they don't have the skills to manage it. That's the part we take just as seriously as the funding itself."