East Africa: African Trade Bloc Comesa Launches Digital Payments System

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) has launched a digital payments system to cut transaction costs by allowing businesses to settle deals in local currencies, it said on Thursday.

Comesa, which has 21 member states including Egypt, Kenya and Ethiopia, joins efforts by the African continent to push for local currency payments systems to cut trade costs by eliminating the need to convert local currencies into hard currencies, mostly US dollars, for cross-border payments.

The…