Own Correspondent
Sub-Saharan Africa infrastructure development expert and business mogul, Dr Tinashe Manzungu, has been re-elected to the board of the Common Market for East and South Africa (COMESA) Business Council (CBC).
He was elected during a reshuffle of the CBC positions at the recent annual general meeting in Zambia where he was also elected the chairperson of the Finace Risk and Audit Committee of the CBC.
Dr Manzungu is southern Africa’s representative in the CBC and will now also be chairing the Finance Risk and Audit Committee.
“The new president of CBC is now Mr James Mwanza from Malawi. From Zimbabwe, I was elected to chair the Finance Risk and Audit Committee. I will be representing the SADC region in the nine-member board,” Dr Manzungu told Africa News 24 this week.
“It is such an honour for me to be trusted with such a significant role that makes a huge contribution in the socio-economic development of the COMESA member states. I am committed to delivering to the best of my ability as COMESA moves towards an inclusive digital system that promotes intra Africa trade.
“Part of the discussions during the engagements were on the liberalisation of trade in COMESA through the involvement of an inclusive digital system that promotes inter-Africa trade through a digital payment platform that we are launching in November. The discussions were centred on critical aspects that will shape the platform’s functionality, including forex providers, settlement models, technical specifications, and governance frameworks.”
The CBC is implementing a digital financial inclusion (DFI) programme that supports the design, development and deployment of an integrated regional digital retail payment scheme that is low-cost, interoperable and fraud resistant serving micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs), for the COMESA region.
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The programme has a keen focus on women and youth.
This will evolve from a regulatory focused business model to an operational and technical establishment, with clearly defined components.
“We have the DFI programme which we are putting into action and all that we are doing is putting transparency through compliance so that our funders and donors through the COMESA Treaty know that everything is being done transparently,” Dr Manzungu said.
