Webinar Report | The MANSA Platform: Africa Customer Due Diligence Platform "Passport to Trade and Investment"
Afreximbank and MFW4A: an important partnership
On 28 October 2021, as part of its popular Webinar series and in partnership with Afreximbank, MFW4A held a webinar entitled ‘The MANSA Platform: Africa Customer Due Diligence Platform "Passport to Trade and Investment"’. The MANSA platform is a new and exciting digital repository that enables financial institutions and other business entities to conduct Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. Launched in November 2020, the repository is physically housed within Afreximbank, at its headquarters in Cairo. As a crucial vehicle for promoting trade and investment on the continent, the objectives of MANSA are well aligned with much of the work of MFW4A, with the focus on streamlining compliance processes, facilitating intra-African trade and extra-African trade, facilitating access to trade finance to support the growth of the millions of Africa’s SMEs.
Mr. Hugues Kamewe Tsafack, Financial Sector Advisor in the MFW4A Secretariat recalled that MFW4A has identified the need to strengthen KYC/CDD compliance systems and practices in African jurisdictions to combat financial crime and enhance the integrity of financial sectors. Promoting MANSA is considered an integral part of the initiative dubbed, “Strengthening Compliance Systems and Practices in Africa’s Financial Sectors”
The presentation slides are available here.
Introducing MANSA
Ms. Maureen Mba, Head of the Mansa Initiative at Afreximbank recalled that- “Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.” (C.J Cherryh). The global trade finance gap is wide – as wide as 70 percent among SMEs. With emerging economies housing most of the world’s SMEs it is in the African continent’s best interests to close the trade finance gap. A major challenge in Africa has been the lack of information for effective trading. This makes the costs of compliance with KYC and CDD requirements high, leading to de-risking and the withdrawal of banking relationships, which push the costs of trade finance up even more. This is why, in 2014, after much dialogue with other FI stakeholders on the continent Afreximbank embarked on this crucial initiative, culminating in the launch of the platform in November 2020. The MANSA repository derives its name from Mansa Musa, ruler of the Kingdom of Mali in the 14th century, who pioneered African trade, putting it firmly on the map.
Following Mr Roland Oroh, CEO Rossland Group and moderator of the session, Mr. Pape Ndieye, a consultant with the Mansa Initiative provided a detailed overview of the Mansa platform.
A comprehensive overview of MANSA
The MANSA repository aims to address the challenges of doing business on the continent: the growing trend in global financial flows and financial crime; the high cost of subscription to existing CDD/ KYC platforms; the high levels of de-risking and the withdrawal of banking relationships; the implications of increased regulations for African entities and financial institutions, the lack of adequate information in existing due diligence repositories, the need to eliminate the negative perceptions that doing business in Africa is a high-risk undertaking.
The MANSA repository will help addressing these challenges by: providing comprehensive information on intra-African trade and markets, de-risking African counterparties; eliminating payment risks (working in concert with the Pan African Payments Settlement System (PAPSS) – another Afreximbank initiative; providing a B2B marketplace; navigating African logistics networks; contributing to the digital transformation in financial and business transactions on the continent; eliminating the subjective evaluation of African entities; mitigating the perceived risks of doing business in Africa; reducing the costs and operational workload involved in compliance processes; and increasing intra-African trade.
MANSA answers the key questions that business and financiers ask when embarking on a trade or financial relationship (Where do you come from? Are you worthy of my time? Can I trust you? Are you creditworthy? What business are you doing? Can I risk being associated with you?). The presentation provided more detail on: global trends in money laundering and terrorism financing; Afreximbank's approach; the objectives, operational workings; the key players – contributors, verifiers and subscribers; the registration and verification process; the benefits of the MANSA repository platform; MANSA’s engagements and relationships with strategic partnerships on the African continent and beyond; global certification and harmonisation with other bodies and instruments (such between the MANSA’s African enterprise identifier (AEI) and the international Legal Entity Identifier (LEI); the importance of making the platform available in key African languages, notably Swahili and Haoussa; the key strategic goals of MANSA – being principally the scaling of onboarding on the platform, particularly among SMEs, and letting the trading world know about its existence; the factors contributing to MANSA’s success, and key statistics to date.
MANSA key statistics
- Sensitization webinars: between November 2020 and September 2021
An average of 16 sensitization webinars have been held a month across all the regions: Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, and West Anglophone and Francophone countries
- Contributor entities that have onboarded as of 28 October 2021:
1038: 692 corporate entities (66%), 173 financial institutions (17%) , and 173 SMEs(17%)
- Distribution in Africa: widespread, with representation in 50 countries. Profiles from entities in all the regions have been published, with North Africa and Central Africa showing the least to date.
- Published profiles: The number has been increasing steadily, with a marked increase in July, August and September 2021. The number of financial institutions has been increasing steadily, the number of corporate entities rose particularly sharply between June and September 2021, as did the number of SMEs.
Input from the panellists
Panellists commented on their experience with the MANSA platform as follows:
Ms. Moira Mapundu, Compliance Manager, NMB Bank Limited Zimbabwe
“MANSA is all about investment opportunities in Africa and helping to kill negative perceptions of doing business in Africa”
MANSA is a Seamless, secure, platform to facilitate cross-border trade. It is user friendly and has been set up in line with international recommendations. It is apparent that it is a fulfilling a vital function in bridging the trade gap, allowing the onboarding of any size of enterprise – from large corporates to the smallest of SMEs. Its single-source nature reduces bottlenecks in the KYC and CDD compliance processes. Crucially it is bringing visibility to African entities, and encouraging the digitalization of business on the continent. It is all about investment opportunities in Africa.
Mr. Sagaye Gaye, Compliance Officer, Trust Bank Limited Gambia
“It couldn’t have come at a better time.”
Having registered as a contributor, we have experienced the MANSA platform as a user friendly with key strengths being its easy step by step guide, its single source nature, and from the perspective of a finance institution such as the Trust Bank we believe this could really open up opportunities, providing customers with more opportunities for trade finance, and there is so much information available for determining credit worthiness. It is a great initiative for addressing the significant gap in global trade, and couldn’t have come at a better time.
Mr. Chimezie Emewulu, Group CEO, Seamfix
“The AEI is also an excellent way of tracking the movement of money and protecting against money laundering”
After having experienced such problems when expanding our business into Europe and trying to open a bank account in the UK, where it was difficult for them to get KYC and CDD verification, we turned to Afreximbank and then MANSA. We are deeply convinced of its value in addressing these problems and firmly believe and that no corporation or individual should be discriminated against and that there should be equal opportunities for all. In the registration process, the unique AEI makes this more possible, and this is also an an excellent way of tracking the movement of money and protecting against money laundering.
Mr. John Kalisa, CEO, East Africa Business Council
“MANSA is a game changer.”
MANSA has just been launched in Nairobi Very heartening to see all the hindrances to trade and trade growth being addressed. MANSA is a game changer. East African Economic area is growing rapidly – particularly Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia, with Rwanda predicting double-digit growth over the next few years. All this demonstrates great resilience and opportunities for trade and investment. It is hugely important for SMEs, which represents 80 percent of our businesses. We have identified construction, textile and garments, and agriculture as key growth sectors, but the current cost of trade finance and the difficult in accessing it could prevent them growing optimally. MANSA is helping to address information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders and improving trust. This will be such a positive development for the 20 million registered SMEs in Africa.
Mr. Inya Lawal, CEO Ascend Studio Foundation
“MANSA features in all the Foundation’s mentoring and training programmes.”
MANSA is in perfect harmony with our foundation’s work, which focuses on empowering women and youth in business. It features in all our mentorship and training programmes: at the end of our programme we have a MANSA onboarding component, to help the entities with access to funding and markets, and ease of payment. We think the platform is very well set up.
Dr. Naglaa Nozahie, Governor’s Advisor for African Affairs, Central Bank of Egypt
“MANSA is particularly important from the point of view of transparency.”
The Central Bank of Egypt signed an MoU with Afreximbank to formalise the setting up of the MANSA platform. The platform is seen to be hugely important to facilitating trade growth and trade transparency in Africa. The Central Bank of Egypt has been involved in training people from 22 countries in operating the platform, and understanding how to upload data and maximise its benefits. It is particularly important for transparency as currently only 29 out of 55 countries in Africa have a Sovereign rating, so there needs to be credibility and trust among all partners. It also makes the verifying process from the Central Banks much more efficient. We encourage all African traders to onboard their profiles and enable trade on the continent and around the world.
Q&A and closing comments
Questions related mainly to practical and operational issues, and the panellists were available to answer the questions.
Ms Mba in a passionate closing statement emphasised that MANSA ensures KYC/CDD information is reliable, verifiable and accessible for effective trade. MANSA provides a gateway to trade on the continent and supports the objectives of African SMEs and all businesses of growing, diversifying, accessing finance and thereby helping to put the continent back on a strong economic path.