The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank)’s new digital customer due diligence (CDD) platform, called Mansa, will be available for use by the end of the year, says the bank’s president Benedict Oramah.

Mansa seeks to provide a single source of primary data required for financial institutions (FIs) to conduct CDD and know your customer (KYC) checks on counterparties in Africa. It is expected to make it easier and more cost-effective for FIs to onboard African banks and businesses, large and small. The platform was launched in July 2018.

Entities that use the platform are either ‘contributors’, namely African banks, corporates and SMEs, who will voluntarily upload their information to the repository using standardised KYC/AML templates, or ‘users’, specifically FIs that provide banking facilities and are looking for information on a particular company or bank.

Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of Afreximbank’s annual meetings in Moscow last week, Oramah said that the 2018 Mansa launch marked the conclusion of the technology build, and that the bank has since worked to upload due diligence information to the platform.

“Last year we produced the product called Mansa. But beyond creating the product we needed to have it populated with data. We expect that by the end of the year we will open Mansa up for people to start using it,” Oramah said.

The bank is partnering with regulators in various African countries, including the central banks of Egypt, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Eswatini “to name but a few”, Fungai Nyamahowa, manager of financial crime compliance at Afreximbank told GTR earlier in the year. The central banks have agreed to support Mansa by independently validating information contributed by their regulated entities.

According to Nyamahowa, Afreximbank is also working with regulatory agencies, law firms and accounting entities, who similarly will help to validate the information on the platform.

In April, Afreximbank announced that it had collaborated with the Central Bank of Egypt and the Egyptian Banking Institute to deliver the first in a series of trainings to Egyptian financial institutions, aimed at enhancing their capacity in using Mansa. Held in Cairo, the event attracted 23 participants from Egyptian banks.

Mansa is the first digital technology solution to be launched by Afreximbank. Although the primary focus of the platform is on the compliance space, it will also house information about investing in Africa and feature relevant events and activities.

The platform is named after Mansa Musa, the ruler of the West African Malian empire in the 1300s, who was responsible for opening up trade across Africa by establishing Timbuktu as a commercial, cultural and religious centre.