Cairo, 30 November 2020: – African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) today in Cairo officially launched the operations of ‘MANSA’, a pan-African customer due diligence repository for financial institutions, corporate entities and SMEs, developed to address the perceived risk of doing business in Africa and with Africans.
MANSA is a single source of the primary data required for Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks on African entities, including financial institutions, corporates and SMEs, in accordance with best practices. The Platform will also serve to address key trade related challenges facing the continent, including, the lack of market information, the high cost of doing business in Africa and discovering African counterparties.
The launch of MANSA operations was announced at a virtual event hosted by Afreximbank that featured a panel discussion involving Prof. Benedict Oramah, President of Afreximbank; Mr. Ade Ayeyemi, Group CEO of Ecobank; Stefan Nalletamby, Director – Financial Sector Development Department at the African Development Bank; Dr. Naglaa Nozahie, Governor’s Advisor, African Affairs, Central Bank of Egypt and Engr. Mansur Ahmed, President, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.
Speaking during the event, Prof. Benedict Oramah said:
“Globally, regulators are toughening their stance as well as the severity of their sanctions for breaches of customer due diligence compliance regulations instituted to prevent various financial crimes and related activities. This has dramatically increased the cost and complexity of satisfying Customer Due Diligence and Know Your Customer requirements. We have created MANSA as the solution to the negative impact on Africa, such as de-risking, the withdrawal of correspondent banking relationships and cuts in trade finance and investment financial flows to Africa.
In a fragmented continent of 55 countries that hardly traded among themselves since they became colonies, MANSA offers an opportunity to begin bringing down the borders and support the realisation of the goals of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).”
The platform is named after Mansa Musa, the Emperor of the Malian Empire in the 1300s, who was responsible for opening up trade across Africa and believed to be the only person ever to control the flow of gold between Africa and the Mediterranean.
In this initial phase of implementation, MANSA is now open to African businesses to onboard their corporate profiles to the Repository. Following an onboarding and validation process in keeping with the Platform’s compliance requirements, African entities will have their profiles listed and made available to users of the Repository.
About Afreximbank: The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) is a Pan-African multilateral financial institution with the mandate of financing and promoting intra-and extra-African trade. Afreximbank was established in October 1993 and owned by African governments, the African Development Bank and other African multilateral financial institutions as well as African and non-African public and private investors. The Bank was established under two constitutive documents, an Agreement signed by member states, which confers on the Bank the status of an international organization, and a Charter signed by all Shareholders, which governs its corporate structure and operations. Afreximbank deploys innovative structures to deliver financing solutions that are supporting the transformation of the structure of Africa’s trade, accelerating industrialization and intra-regional trade, thereby sustaining economic expansion in Africa. At the end of 2019, the Bank’s total assets and guarantees stood at USD$15.5 billion and its shareholders funds amounted to US$2.8 billion. Voted “African Bank of the Year” in 2019, the Bank disbursed more than US$38billion between 2016 and 2020. Afreximbank has ratings assigned by GCR (international scale) (A-), Moody’s (Baa1) and Fitch (BBB-). The Bank is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt.
For more information, visit: www.afreximbank.com.
Follow us on Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram
Media Contact: Amadou Labba Sall, asall@afreximbank.com