(Togo First) - Operationalizing the OQSF-TG is the key condition for translating quantitative inclusion into real quality — especially as Togo prepares its 2026-2030 National Financial Inclusion Strategy and holds the FAPBEF-UEMOA presidency.

It was a rare acknowledgment from the top levels of government. At its Feb. 19, 2026 meeting, Togo’s Council of Ministers said strengthening financial inclusion would require making the OQSF-TG fully operational. In practice, that meant admitting that the Observatoire de la qualité des services financiers du Togo, created by decree in September 2022 during a cabinet session in Kpalimé, has yet to deliver tangible results.

The shortcoming is particularly striking given that Lomé has chaired the Fédération des associations professionnelles de banques et établissements financiers de l'UEMOA (FAPBEF-UEMOA) since March 4, 2025. The position is held by Guy Martial Awona, managing director of Orabank Togo, for a two-year term.

The contrast is stark. Togo’s financial inclusion rate reached 89.04% in 2024, up 1.34 percentage points from a year earlier, making it the second-highest in the UEMOA zone. The National Fund for Inclusive Finance (FNFI) reported 1.94 million cumulative loans worth 117.7 billion CFA francs disbursed between 2014 and 2025, with a repayment rate of 94.98%, according to figures presented at the Feb. 25, 2026 Council of Ministers meeting. BCEAO data also showed that Togo had 14 banks and three other licensed financial institutions at end-2025.

Yet the figures mask persistent weaknesses in the relationship between banks and their customers. Pricing remains poorly disclosed, account maintenance charges are sometimes difficult to justify, and some services that BCEAO Instruction 004-06-2014 of June 25, 2014 requires to be free are still billed to customers in breach of the regulation.

The watchdog was designed precisely to address such complaints. Senegal, which created its own financial services quality observatory under Decree No. 2009-95 of Feb. 6, 2009, offers a working example. Its 2024 report recorded 308 banking and microfinance mediation cases, up from 77 in 2023, with a resolution rate of 93%. Since 2010, the institution has handled 4,131 cases, including 2,576 involving banks, decentralized financial systems and La Poste. Its SATIS platform classifies complaints ranging from lack of transparency to fraud linked to digital financial services. Such granular data is exactly what Togo’s authorities need to better shape consumer protection policies.

Four reforms could help make the Togolese mechanism effective. The first would be the appointment of an independent financial mediator, following the Senegalese model, backed by multi-year funding starting with the 2027 finance law. The second would require the publication of the effective fee schedules of all credit institutions on a public portal, in line with BCEAO transparency rules. The third would involve the publication of an annual activity report submitted to the National Credit Council. The fourth would explicitly integrate the OQSF-TG into the 2026-2030 National Financial Inclusion Strategy currently being prepared, instead of leaving it outside the broader inclusion framework.

Togo cannot credibly position itself as a leader in West Africa’s banking sector while leaving consumers without organized channels for recourse. Nearly four years after its founding decree and 18 months after the installation of its steering committee, the watchdog has yet to record any visible activity. The result is the appearance of an operational institution, while bank customers still largely face disputes alone.

Fiacre E. Kakpo