In West Africa alone, about 85 percent of people lack proper access to financial services. This is one reason AFI has continued to encourage use of its services throughout the region, engaging with Ministries of Finance and Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO).

BCEAO, or Central Bank of West African States, serves eight countries within the West African Economic and Monetary Union and recently gave the AFI team a warm welcome at its headquarters in Dakar.

The Advisor to the Governor of the Bank, Kodzo Mawuena Dossa, along with a number of directors, met with AFI executive director Alfred Hannig and other members of the AFI team. The participants included the director of the BCEAO’s national branch for Senegal. The group explored how AFI could deploy its services to support BCEAO’s already existing plans for financial inclusion and financial education.

The BCEAO is currently determining a one payments system for eight countries across the region. At this point, the organization is considering a revision of the regulatory framework concerning payments systems, with the E-money Law passed in 2006 under particular scrutiny.

The plan for a unified payments system led the bank to take an enthusiastic interest in AFI’s work on mobile financial services and is now considering becoming a member of AFI’s mobile financial services working group to learn how other regulatory bodies created and effected a regulatory environment to enable these services. Furthermore, due to the success of Kenya and the Philippines in the area of mobile financial services, the BCEAO plans to visit these countries with AFI support to hear directly how the central banks have treated this new service from a policy and regulatory perspective. The bank also showed an interest in financial inclusion data and measurement, consumer empowerment, and market conduct. To address shortfalls in data, the BCEAO is considering asking for AFI support for a study on the state of financial inclusion in the region.