The Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has just made public a snapshot of the state of financial inclusion in Togo, as well as the other UEMOA countries.

Main lesson of this report entitled "Evolution of financial inclusion monitoring indicators in WAEMU for the year 2019", and which reviews the statistics of the last 10 years, Togo is in its growth phase fast since 2017. A dynamic stimulated by the advent of Mobile Money.

Financial services outlets grew substantially in 2017, driven by solid growth in e-money services.

If demographics are changing faster than the creation of new microfinance agencies, MFIs seem to be getting closer and closer to the people, the data shows.

There are now at least 9 microfinance structures on every 1000 km2, compared to 8 in 2010. For banks, there are now 9 against 2 in 2009.

The slower development of microfinance can be explained by the tightening of conditions for entering this segment after the ReDéMaRe scandal.

Overall, 53% of Togolese aged 15 or over hold accounts in microfinance institutions.

This figure rises to 78% when the Banks, the Post Office, the savings banks and the Treasury are added. It is estimated that 84% of Togolese aged 15 or over have at least one electronic account. But only 34% of these accounts are truly active.

In the end, the rate of use of financial services was 72% at the end of 2019, on the basis of active EM (Electronic Money) accounts corrected for multi-banking, i.e. the extended banking rate + rate of use of electronic money services .