Own writer
The COMESA Business Council’s digital financial inclusion system is set to change the dynamics of intra Africa Trade as it is expected to remove financial trade barriers, CBC’s Chair of the Finance Risk and Audit Committee-Dr Tinashe Manzungu has revealed.
In an interview, Manzungu who was recently appointed as the FRAC Chair said the Digital Financial Inclusion system that will be launched in November this year is designed to boost intra-Africa trade.
“Under CBC we have various number of projects that we are implementing and under these projects, we are set to launch a digital financial inclusion, where the aim is to trade within Africa as a blog, we want Africa to end up having for example one currency. We want Africa to have a place where they meet and trade, and for that to happen then, this is one of the mandate that Comesa business council is striving for at the moment,” said Manzungu.
“The digital financial inclusion system which is a system that we are designing to digitally bringing in the 21 African countries to the issues to do with financial inclusion, we are talking of payment platform where all the country meet to exchange trade. If I am to buy something from Zambia from Mauritius it has to be something on the click of a button using your own individual country currencies that you domestically us , so this is something that we are looking forward to launch in 2024 November.”
He said that this platform is going to be inclusive of the Reserve banks across Africa and that the CBC has already started with the engagements.
Manzungu added, “The reserve banks across the continent will then liaise with their local banks to position themselves in embracing the initiatives. This will also include the issues of mobile money systems where all these platforms are also going to be used, as well as all the platforms that has to do with exchange money systems.
He said the concept behind the idea is simply developing a system that Africa is developing internally and be deployed to the masses of the whole continent.
He added, “This means that our Africa can easily trade in other words it enhances the intra Africa trade concept. Barriers of trade will be avoided. You also see that this is a retail payment system that is going to be accepted widely by our SMEs within Africa. Most of these are informally operating and this will also then bring them to the formalised system, which means that they will be able to be paying taxes.”
He said the system will cut on unnecessary transactional costs that were acting as a barrier to the striving of intra-trade.
