GIMAC visits CWG facility

Mr. Valentin Mbozo’o, managing director of Cameroon’s interbank agency, “Groupement Interbancaire Monétique de l’Afrique Centrale (GIMAC), led a delegation of the agency on a working visit to the corporate head office of Computer Warehouse Group Plc (CWG) in Lagos, recently.

The objective of the team was to be appraised of CWG’s cloud offerings and identify areas of potential collaboration between both firms.

In his welcome remarks, Mr. James Agada, chief technology officer, CWG, explained that CWG has garnered a rich history of offering business enabling IT solutions to the finance industry in Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to him, “CWG has rolled out a plethora of innovation products and excellent support services to financial institutions in Nigeria that has improved their customers’ experience and expanded the business scope.”

“CWG in partnership with FBN powered Firstmonie, an innovative product that enables customers to access financial and other value added services offered through their mobile phones and we have recently followed up with Diamond Yello account in conjunction with Diamond bank and MTN. We have also deployed the Finacle banking application to leading banks to enhance their operations. We deployed about a third of the aggregate ATMs in the country and support quite a number as we speak.”

“Today, the visit by GIMAC bears the possibility of replicating this history in Cameroon and Francophone Africa”, he concluded.

For GIMAC, the visit presents a unique opportunity for the agency to partner with CWG in her bid to extend her scope of operations and service delivery.

According to Mr. Mbozo’o, “Our objective at GIMAC, named vision 2017, is to introduce a unique payment card that will be adopted in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) countries by 2017. This will enable us have a functional, regulatory financial ecosystem in the entire region in the nearest future.”

“We have seen that CWG has the technical expertise and the credibility to help actualize our vision and we are willing to partner with them to make this vision a reality”, he added.

In his remarks, Mr. Austin Okere, founder and chief executive officer, CWG Plc, observed that growing GIMAC’s transaction base to include the unbanked and underbanked population is a precursor for a successful actualization of her vision and that CWG has the capacity to boost the transaction base geometrically through financial inclusion and SME empowerment.

According to Mr. Okere, “We have rolled out a number of solutions that address the issue of financial inclusion. FINEDGE is designed to give Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) sustainability and mechanisms for control.