Digitalisation and Financial Inclusion in Congo-Brazzaville
A decade ago the Republic of Congo’s commercial arteries still pulsed predominantly with cash, yet today mobile-money penetration has surpassed forty percent of adult users according to the latest figures from the Central Bank of Central African States (BEAC, 2023). The government’s National Development Plan underscores digitisation as a catalyst for inclusive growth, projecting that electronic transactions could represent twenty percent of retail payments before 2030. These ambitions resonate with continental trends: the African Development Bank estimates that the digital economy could add nearly three percent to Central Africa’s GDP within five years (AfDB, 2023). Such projections hinge on the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises—responsible for close to eighty percent of non-oil employment—to master modern payment instruments. It is in this strategic interstice between policy aspiration and entrepreneurial reality that United Bank for Africa Congo (UBA Congo) has positioned its ‘Each One Teach One’ programme.
UBA’s Pedagogical Diplomacy: Anatomy of the ‘Each One Teach One’ Model
Launched under the auspices of the UBA Foundation, the initiative distils corporate expertise into short, highly focused learning capsules delivered free of charge to entrepreneurs across the country. By framing its outreach as a skills-sharing obligation rather than a marketing ploy, the bank has appropriated what one Brazzaville-based analyst calls ‘pedagogical diplomacy,’ a soft-power strategy that nurtures trust while quietly enlarging the addressable market for digital banking. The inaugural session in April attracted ninety-four live participants out of more than two hundred registrations—a conversion rate that would reassure any training provider. Participants interviewed afterwards praised the pragmatic tone adopted by facilitators and the absence of sales pressure, echoing a World Bank survey suggesting that lack of impartial advice remains a principal barrier to technology adoption among Central African micro-entrepreneurs (World Bank, 2024).
Unpacking the July Session: Demystifying Electronic Payment Terminals
On 4 July 2025 at precisely 14:00 local time, UBA Congo’s Head of Digital Products, Mr. Gilles Missengue, will open the platform to explain what he describes as ‘the final metre of the digital transaction’. The training promises to unravel the mechanics of electronic payment terminals, clarify fee structures, and address cyber-security protocols in language accessible to non-technical audiences. By spotlighting both merchant and consumer advantages—reduced queue times, traceable revenue streams, enhanced sanitary safety—the bank seeks to normalise card and mobile-money payments in a market where many shoppers still equate plastic with exclusivity. Observers from the Congolese Agency for the Development of the Digital Economy note that such pedagogical ventures complement the agency’s own awareness campaigns rather than compete with them, smoothing the path toward national interoperability standards scheduled for rollout next year.
Synergies with National and Regional Policy Frameworks
The initiative aligns deftly with Brazzaville’s broader regulatory reforms, notably the 2024 ordinance that eased licensing procedures for non-bank payment service providers while tightening consumer-protection clauses. Regionally, the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa is championing a unified QR-code standard to facilitate cross-border retail payments, a development expected to unlock new corridors for Congolese exporters of agri-food products. By equipping SMEs early, UBA Congo positions its clients to seize those corridors the moment they materialise. Speaking under anonymity, a senior official at the Ministry of Economy characterised the programme as ‘a textbook example of the private sector operationalising public policy objectives without draining the fiscal space’, an assessment that underscores the subtle yet tangible complementarity at play.
Private-Sector Appetite and the Quest for Efficiency
Merchants in Pointe-Noire and Dolisie, interviewed via telephone, emphasised speed of settlement and reduced cash-handling risks as primary motivators for adopting terminals. Anecdotal evidence suggests that electronic takings can cut end-of-day reconciliation time by up to fifty percent, leaving owners free to focus on inventory and customer experience. While transaction fees remain a recurrent concern, recent competition among acquiring banks has nudged merchant discount rates downward, a trend that the International Monetary Fund regards as essential for sustaining Africa’s digital transformation (IMF, 2023). UBA Congo’s decision to embed practical simulations within its training framework could therefore translate to quicker onboarding and fewer dormant devices—persistent problems in comparable markets where training was either generic or absent.
Measured Optimism among International Partners
Development partners view the programme through the prism of risk mitigation. The European Investment Bank’s country office notes that electronic traceability can strengthen the credit profiles of smaller firms, potentially unlocking blended-finance instruments earmarked for green growth projects. Similarly, the United Nations Capital Development Fund regards merchant-level digitalisation as a prerequisite for scaling micro-insurance products. Although such ancillary benefits may seem peripheral to a two-hour webinar, they underline the concentric circles of impact that skill-building exercises can generate in frontier economies. By anchoring these prospects in demonstrable, low-cost interventions, UBA Congo contributes to what one UN official terms ‘the incremental architecture of trust’.
Toward a Cashless Ecosystem Anchored in Trust
If the July session meets or surpasses its attendance goals, the bank intends to replicate the format in regional hubs, pairing virtual modules with occasional in-person clinics. Such scaling ambitions remain consistent with domestic policy, which aims to reduce the informal sector’s share of GDP by ten percentage points before 2031. Success, however, will depend less on technological sophistication than on sustained dialogue among regulators, banks and merchants. The ‘Each One Teach One’ model illustrates an emerging philosophy within Congo-Brazzaville’s development narrative: progress is most resilient when knowledge circulates laterally rather than cascading from a single apex. In translating that philosophy into digital payments—the lifeblood of tomorrow’s commerce—UBA Congo stakes a claim not merely as a financial institution but as a civic interlocutor in the republic’s journey from handshake to handheld.