Africa: Eric T. Mboma’s ‘Synthetic Bank’ seeks to manufacture bankability

• In a note shared with DecryptEco RDC & Afrique, Eric T. Mboma argues that Africa’s banking problem is not simply a shortage of financial institutions, but a financial architecture poorly suited to economies where much commercial activity remains informal, thinly documented and difficult for lenders to assess.

• His proposed “Synthetic Bank” would keep the regulated balance sheet and core risk functions inside the bank, while drawing on transaction data, digital platforms, insurers, guarantee providers and development-finance institutions to make previously opaque businesses easier to finance.

Africa’s financial systems have become considerably better at moving money but remain much less effective at turning economically active businesses into credible borrowers. That distinction sits at the centre of The Synthetic Bank: Manufacturing Bankability in Africa, a note by Eric T. Mboma shared with DecryptEco RDC & Afrique. His argument is that the continent does not simply need more banks; it needs banks built around the structure of the economies they are expected to finance.

In countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Niger, large parts of the adult population remain outside formal finance or participate through little more than basic transactions. Mboma sees this not only as a financial-inclusion problem, but also as an information problem.

A substantial share of economic activity remains only partially visible to the institutions expected to finance it. Businesses can trade, employ workers, buy inventory and serve customers without producing the audited accounts, conventional credit histories or physical collateral on which banks have traditionally relied. Commercial activity exists, but much of it remains difficult for lenders to read.

The consequences are particularly important in the DRC, where ambitions around local content, mining subcontracting, industrial development and the emergence of stronger domestic companies depend on the availability of finance. Reserving contracts for Congolese suppliers, Mboma argues, addresses only part of the problem.

A local company supplying a mine, manufacturer, logistics operator or large retailer must still be able to finance inventory, acquire equipment, insure its operations, recruit skilled workers, meet certification requirements and absorb the delay between executing a contract and receiving payment. A procurement opportunity is of limited value if the company winning it lacks the working capital required to perform.

For Mboma, local-content policy therefore requires what he calls a “financial architecture for local content.” The Synthetic Bank is his attempt to define what such an architecture might look like.

The word “synthetic” does not refer to an artificial bank or to a structured-finance product. It describes a bank built through synthesis: one that starts with the actual constraints of African banking and assembles the financial, technological and institutional tools needed to deal with them without weakening prudential discipline.

Those constraints are familiar but difficult to address simultaneously. They include widespread informality, shallow credit markets, short-duration deposits, underdeveloped capital markets, dollarisation in some economies, expensive distribution, inadequate infrastructure and uneven regulatory capacity.

Mboma’s proposal is not to strip the bank of its traditional functions. The regulated balance sheet remains central, as do liquidity management, capital allocation, risk-bearing capacity and fiduciary responsibility. What changes is the assumption that the bank must own every component required to understand and serve the customer.

Payments, identity, commercial information, insurance, guarantees, logistics data and access to particular pools of capital can increasingly be supplied by fintech companies, telecom operators, marketplaces, insurers, development-finance institutions and digital public infrastructure. In this model, the bank remains responsible for credit discipline and the integrity of its balance sheet, but becomes more capable of assembling information and services produced elsewhere. It moves from trying to control the entire financial relationship to orchestrating the elements required to assess and finance a business properly.

Mboma draws on international examples to show that parts of this architecture already exist. Nubank demonstrated in Latin America that a financial institution could reach enormous scale without relying on a traditional branch network. Revolut showed how quickly a digitally native financial platform could expand across borders. Europe has pushed open banking and instant payments, while India has demonstrated the reach of digital public infrastructure. In Africa, M-Pesa, Wave, Capitec and TymeBank have shown how simpler products, digital channels and lower distribution costs can alter the economics of financial services.

His argument, however, is explicitly against copying these models wholesale. African markets often combine extensive informality, fragmented supply chains, weak business documentation, expensive logistics, difficult collateral enforcement, limited long-term funding and shallow insurance markets. Institutional capacity also varies sharply from one country to another.

The relevant question is therefore not which foreign model Africa should reproduce, but which elements can be adapted to local constraints and combined into a workable banking architecture.

B2B platforms provide a useful example. Mboma points to Wasoko because such platforms can observe elements of a merchant’s economic activity that may never appear in a conventional bank file. They can know how frequently a business places orders, which products sell, how quickly inventory turns, whether deliveries are accepted, how demand changes with the season and whether repayment obligations are met on time. For a lender assessing a small business with limited audited accounts and little physical collateral, those records can provide a richer picture of how the company actually operates.

That does not mean the bank should become a logistics platform, nor that data generated by a marketplace automatically proves creditworthiness.

Mboma notes that several African B2B platforms have themselves shown how difficult logistics-intensive business models can be to scale profitably. His preferred structure is one of partnership: the platform provides commercial context and transaction visibility; the bank provides the regulated balance sheet, liquidity and credit discipline; insurers and guarantee institutions absorb defined portions of risk; and the entrepreneur builds an economic reputation that can remain portable rather than being permanently tied to one platform.

This is the practical meaning of what Mboma calls “manufacturing bankability.” Mobile-money transactions, invoices, purchase orders, supplier payments, payroll records, utility consumption, inventory movements, delivery histories, insurance coverage and repayment behaviour all contain information about the quality of a business.

Taken together, they can create an economic history where traditional financial documentation is weak. That history can make a firm more legible to a lender, reduce uncertainty and allow credit to be structured more closely around actual cash flows rather than almost entirely around land or buildings that can be pledged as collateral.

Data, however, addresses only one part of the problem. The other is the allocation of risk. Mboma argues that African banks should not be expected to carry every component of SME credit risk on their own balance sheets. Trade-credit insurance, anchor buyers, partial guarantees, supply-chain finance, DFI risk-sharing, private credit, securitisation and capital markets can distribute different risks among institutions better placed to bear them.

The objective is not to make weak credit appear safe, but to move progressively from an unknown risk to an observable one, from an observable risk to a structured one, and from a structured risk to one that can be financed.

For the DRC, this leads Mboma to propose a different measure of financial progress. The conventional question is how many people or companies can be brought into the financial system. His question is more demanding: how many firms can be made financeable? Financial inclusion remains important, but access to a bank account or digital wallet does not by itself create productive capacity. Participation in the financial system must eventually translate into savings, credit, insurance, investment, stronger suppliers and businesses capable of operating at greater scale.

The same reasoning shapes how Mboma would judge the success of a Synthetic Bank. Its performance should not be measured primarily by app downloads, registered wallets or account openings, but by how many firms it can move from invisible to legible, from legible to credible, from credible to financeable, and from financeable to productive and scalable. In his formulation, the African bank of the future would still price risk, protect its balance sheet and preserve prudential discipline, but it would also help create the information, partnerships and financial structures that allow more businesses to become bankable in the first place.

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