The year 2020 has been rich in lessons for Cofina Group. The African leader in mesofinance has continued its strategy of mobilizing funds by focusing on partnerships with DFI's, (Development Financial Institutions) like Proparco, FMO, and others. “These major players need structures like Cofina to directly reach SMEs and the world of microfinance. We offer them the means to reach the mass while creating impact. ”, explains Serge Massamba Ndombele, Director of Strategy and Institutional Clients at Cofina.

In the eyes of this strategic expert, $2.4 trillion in additional public and private investments each year in sustainable development sectors are needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including $630 billion per year to achieve the SDGs in Africa. It is therefore necessary to set up a strategic partnership between the various financial actors to truly create an ecosystem that would promote sustainable development mainly through SMEs

In addition to mobilizing funds, Cofina is also working to structure them in order to finance actors in the real economy over long periods of time. “We want to give priority to productive investment with our counterparties, because it determines the capacity to develop activities and the maintenance of jobs. Thanks to our last credit line with a maturity of seven years, obtained from BOAD, we have structured the SME offer on productive longer-term investments. This is a strong signal from our strategic partner BOAD, making it possible to make its mark in the development of SMEs over the long term

With 100,000 projects financed over the last 6 years for an outstanding amount of 500 billion FCFA (just under 1 billion dollars), Cofina has demonstrated the solidity of its model in a continent where more than 80% of businesses are SMEs and which is experiencing the greatest demographic and urban acceleration in human history. “Take the case of Senegal, a country with 16 million inhabitants. Every year, 350,000 children are born and around 600,000 people leave rural areas for cities. This necessarily creates significant challenges but also opportunities. It is therefore necessary to increase the efforts of financing actors to support young people who want to seize the emerging opportunities of these challenges,” continues Serge Massamba Ndombele, who is very familiar with the challenges of a continent in

Cofina has positioned itself at the top of microfinance and below banks. “We are faster than the latter”, with an average credit of around 5 million.

Like financial players, Cofina was faced with this year 2020, a year of resilience, explains the financial expert. “We have demonstrated our ability to protect our teams (1,300 employees), to protect our clients' assets and to help them better deal with this crisis, by allowing them to have a renegotiated schedule for example. “This year encourages us to see business differently and to accelerate the CSR dimension in the execution of our strategy.”

For 2021, Serge Massamba Ndombele recommends that economic actors on the continent reassess their strategies. “The big shock of 2020, marked by the interruption of supply chains and the cessation of activities, requires us to have a cold, clinical, and as honest an analysis as possible of the reality we are facing and the choices we must make

For Cofina's Director of Strategy and Institutional Clients, it is necessary to observe and analyze the value chains of the various target sectors of the ecosystem: agribusiness, energy, infrastructure, etc., to select the customers that are most anchored in this value chain, while asking three fundamental questions: What unique value do we bring to these customers? What quality of service? And how do we deliver this unique value

In short, says Serge Massamba Ndombele, at the start of the new year ahead, “we must select a pipeline of viable projects with a high CSR impact to finance while maintaining our strategic objectives and values.”