Building upon the joint commitment to driving financial inclusion and digital innovation across Central Africa, AfricaNenda and GIMAC (Groupement Interbancaire Monétique de l’Afrique Centrale) hosted a workshop from March 12 to 14, 2024, in Douala, Cameroon. The workshop marked a significant milestone in the ongoing collaboration between the two entities, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in September 2023.
The workshop, which gathered 25 participants from Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, was designed to deepen understanding of inclusive payment systems, use-cases and best practices and review of key initiatives outlined in the MoU. These initiatives aim to enhance interoperability, drive digital payments, and expand financial access throughout the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC).
“The workshop with AfricaNenda will help us in the CEMAC region; develop, improve the modelling of the instant and inclusive payment system, and better specify key performance indicators, while improving the monitoring of the GIMACPAY ecosystem. GIMACPAY Participants were able to enhance their service offerings and improve their merchant payments customer, thus enabling the inclusion of CEMAC populations currently excluded from the financial system”, declared Valentin MBOZO’O, the GM of GIMAC.
“We are excited to start our journey with GIMAC through this workshop, where we aimed to identify key areas of refinement in scheme rules, level the playing field to ensure inclusivity within the GIMAC payment scheme and explore innovative solutions for merchant payments and cross-border remittances. We hope to achieve our goals of driving tangible progress in digital payments and financial accessibility across Central Africa in the coming months,” stated Jamelino Akogbeto, West Africa Regional Director at AfricaNenda.
Through a series of interactive sessions and collaborative discussions, the workshop focused on:
- Enhancing the use case for merchant payments to stimulate economic development and digital financial inclusion.
- Conducting a comprehensive assessment to measure the impact of interoperability within the region’s digital payment ecosystem.
- Integrating QR codes into the merchant network to facilitate secure and convenient transactions.
AfricaNenda is an African-led team of experts committed to unlocking the potential of digital financial services for the financially excluded across the continent by accelerating the scale-up of instant and inclusive payment systems. AfricaNenda’s approach is to provide public and private sector stakeholders with technical expertise and the capacity to reduce barriers to digital payments. AfricaNenda wants to enable everybody in Africa to make digital transactions seamlessly and at a low cost wherever they are on the continent by 2030. AfricaNenda is financially sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
GIMAC an Economic Interesting Grouping (EIG) 99.2%-owned by the Central Bank of Central Africaz (BEAC), headquartered at BEAC in Yaoundé, Cameroon. GMAC’s main goal is to implement the interbank electronic payment system in CEMAC region (that is Cameroon, Centrafric, Chad, Congo, Gabon, and Equatoria Guinea). GIMAC promotes, supplies, supervises and regulates electronic payment services and interoperability.
Through its ecosystem GIMACPAY, an instant inclusive system payment, GIMAC interconnects 95 Participants among which there are; BEAC, national public treasuries, banks, micro finance and payment institutions (mobile money in general), postal administrations, fintechs (billers and remitters). GIMACPAY makes interoperable mobile services available for its participants. GIMACPAY connects 37 million mobile account carriers in the CEMAC region, and enables more than 2.7 million GIMAC and international cardholders to carry out interoperable and convergent transactions within the ecosystem.
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