On Tuesday in Yaounde, we hosted the GSMA Central African Mobile Money Roundtable. This was the first regional event of its kind hosted by the GSMA, and it was designed to share information and experiences regulating mobile money with BEAC, the financial services regulator for the Economic Community of Central African States, which includes Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.

The roundtable was attended by MTN, Orange, Zain, Camtel, Citibank, Afriland First Bank, BEAC, BCEAO, Central Bank of Kenya (thanks to the support of the Alliance of Financial Inclusion), Bank of Ghana, CGAP and GSMA.

So why did we choose to host our first regional regulatory roundtable in Cameroon? If you look at our deployment tracker, it’s clear that East and West Africa are hotbeds of mobile money activity, but so far no deployments have been launched in Central Africa – this in spite of the fact that MTN, Orange and Zain all have strong footprints in the region. Our hope is that this will change in 2010, and if Tuesday’s session was any indication, the outlook is positive.

I’d like to highlight two promising themes from the day:

Mobile Operators and Banks Working Together

MTN, Orange and Zain all made brief presentations describing their models, and it was clear that each of them have logically divided responsibilities between bank and MNO based on which party has the relevant expertise. It became clear to the participants (and regulators) that there is a clear win-win situation both for banks and MNOs (not to mention the social and economic benefits for Central Africa) when they work together.

Dialogue – Curiosity From All Sides

We left a great deal of time for discussion on the agenda, but even still it wasn’t enough. Regulators were keen to share their perspectives and ask candid questions to their peers from other markets, as well as the banks and operators in the room. It’s clear that there is a huge desire to exchange knowledge, particularly between countries that share similar contexts and challenges.

A lot of the day’s value came from creating dialogue between the key stakeholders on the specific issues that are relevant to Central Africa as a precursor to (hopefully) approving the launch of mobile money. There is an incredible amount of potential for mobile money in Central Africa – but, like any other region, there are questions about the service that must be answered first. Tuesday was an important step in the process.

We’d like to thank our co-hosts, MTN and Citibank for helping to make this roundtable possible, as well as BEAC for actively participating in and contributing to our first regional regulatory event.