The Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) and the Banque Centrale de la République de Guinée (BCRG) are hosting the 6th Annual Roundtable of the Leaders of the African Financial Inclusion Policy Initiative (AfPI) from 10 to 11 May 2018 in Conakry, Republic of Guinea.

AfPI is the primary platform for AFI’s African members to support and develop financial inclusion policy and regulatory frameworks in Africa and to coordinate regional peer learning efforts.

The scope of AfPI includes policy solutions for small and medium enterprise (SME) finance, agriculture finance and women’s financial inclusion. These solutions offer greater potential for deepening financial inclusion in Africa and go beyond the work on enabling regulatory environment for scaling up mobile phone financial services.

This year, AfPI convenes over 100 regulators and policymakers from Africa, and Technical Director Barry Cooper is moderating a panel on Digitally enabled cross-border remittances: key policy considerations to break uptake barriers. Together with the Bank of Uganda, the Central bank of Lesotho, the Bank of Zambia, TransferTo and GSMA, Barry explores policy considerations to foster the uptake of digitally enabled cross-border payment solutions. Drawing on successful digital cross-border payment examples from the East African community, SADC and the West African CFA franc, he emphasises the need for regional instead of national payment system and regulatory approaches to remove the current barriers to sustainable digital solutions. Interoperability is key to unlocking consumer value propositions and to fill the current jurisdictional gap.