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Dr.
George Elombi, Afreximbank Executive Vice-President, addressing participants at
the Forum in Kigali
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Africa must institute
stronger financial control mechanisms and capacity-building for customer due
diligence and corporate governance in order to attract capital competitively
and ensure greater financial stability and sustainable development,
participants in the Third Annual Forum on Customer Due Diligence and Corporate
Governance organised by the African Export-Import Bank’s (Afreximbank) have
said.
In conclusions at the end of the two-day Forum
held in Kigali on 26 and 27 October, the close to 200 participants said that
strong corporate governance was critical to ensuring the integrity and
credibility of financial systems and to reducing the vulnerability of African
economies to financial instability and shocks
They called on African financial institutions
to engage frequently with their boards and senior management and to assess the
adequacy and accuracy of information being submitted them.
Other conclusions include the need for government
bodies and institutions to foster initiatives to promote good corporate
governance practices and for effective capacity building and collaboration to
be established between the public and private sectors in order to enhance
corporate governance and customer due diligence.
Given
the fast-changing business dynamics and the growth of online banking, mobile
payments and other electronic platforms, the participants expressed the need
for a strong technology-driven approach to corporate governance and customer
due diligence so as to increase effectiveness and responsiveness to change.
The
participants, in addition, welcomed the Afreximbank initiative to establish an
online African Customer Due Diligence Repository Platform to serve as a centralized source of primary data required
to conduct customer due diligence checks on African counter parties.
In an address to the Forum, John Rangombwa,
Governor of the National Bank of Rwanda, had said that previous global
financial crises had shown that weaknesses in governance contributed to
systemic vulnerability and failures. He argued that financial institutions and
regulators had a critical role to play in putting in place regulations and
monitoring mechanisms to ensure sustained stability of the financial sector.
Participating in the Forum were representatives
of regulatory bodies, financial institutions, and legal firms from more than 20
African countries, who were joined by international experts and Rwandan
government officials.
Manal Mounir Hendy
Associate
Communications
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