New requirements for MFIs in W-Africa

The Banque Centrale de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO), a regional central bank covering all 8 countries of the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union, has developed a new accounting framework for microfinance institutions.

As of 2010, all MFIs in the region are expected to use this new framework to submit their quarterly financial statements and performance indicators to the supervisory authorities. This requirement has left many MFIs scrambling to update their MIS or, if they are in the process of selecting a new MIS, to make sure that the new accounting framework is included. No easy task and TJAS has several projects in Mali, Senegal, Benin, Togo working with partner MFIs to ensure that their MIS can meet the new standards.
Since the new requirements literally affect thousands of MFIs throughout the region (Senegal alone has over 700 legally recognized MFIs), the AFR/017 project, which is funded by the Ministry of Finance of Luxembourg, has organized a series of workshops for MIS developers to understand the changes and streamline the process of updating their software. Triple Jump Advisory Services West Africa Senior Advisor attended the latest workshop held in Dakar on October 7th whose main focus was on the launch of a ‘’bridge’’ that can be integrated into an MIS and extract data from the accounting system to produce the financial statements and indicators required by the BCEAO. This bridge, which is temporary solution until MIS developers integrate the new reporting requirements into their own softwares, should greatly facilitate the ability of MFIs to send in their end-of-year reports to the BCEAO.