The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has launched "Mansa", a pan-African customer due-diligence platform that will facilitate African trade by providing the single trusted source of primary data required to conduct due diligence checks on counterparties in Africa. The Mansa platform is being positioned as the centralised "go-to" platform for fulfilling client due-diligence (CDD) and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements throughout the African continent. By providing comprehensive due-diligence information, it will end the subjective evaluation of customers and eliminate the perceived, and often unfair, risk in trading with African counterparties. The platform also offers insight into the investment climate and information on related services on the continent. The platform is named after Mansa Musa, the powerful 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. He is believed to be the only person ever to control the flow of gold between Africa and the Mediterranean. Afreximbank President Benedict Oramah said, "Our new Mansa platform is a natural extension of Afreximbank's mission to expand, develop, and diversify African trade. Mansa will enhance intra-African trade by enabling the efficient on-boarding of customers, whilst reducing both operational workloads and the costs of compliance. Sometimes a new service comes along which represents a win-win for its users and Mansa is a perfect example of this." Oramah added that Afreximbank has taken the lead by creating a platform for client due-diligence and know-your-customer to enable African financial institutions and corporate entities to meet customer and business partners' expectations at the same time as ensuring consistent and effective regulatory compliance. "The ultimate aim of the platform is to increase trade in, and with, Africa by de-risking compliance and strengthening relationships between international banks and global trading entities with their African counterparties, by promoting good governance, transparency and accountability," he added.
