Charles is the Head of DFS and Market Infrastructure at Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR). In this role, he leads development and implementation of AFR’s DFS and Market Infrastructure program strategy; ensuring that a comprehensive portfolio of impactful projects are developed and implemented to support the achievement of digital financial inclusion.

Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) supports the removal of systemic barriers that hinder access to and use of financial services by low-income people, particularly the rural poor, women, youth and MSMEs, and supports the development and provision of financial services including savings, credit, insurance, investment, payments, and remittances.

In the fast evolving technological and regulatory landscape, it is important to keep one question that should remain core to the discussion: how CBDCs impact financial health through access and usage of financial services.

CBDCs, if inclusively designed, offer the potential to deliver fast, affordable, and secure financial services directly to individuals. Payments, programmability and other innovation build ups can bring about a new era of swift, customized and low-cost use cases.

Ecosystem design, regulatory alignment, public-private collaboration, and user-centric innovation must converge to ensure CBDCs serve the needs of the financially excluded and underserved not just the financially connected.

Learning from Rwanda’s journey of CBDC exploration, this session will engage on key considerations such as:

• How can CBDCs improve financial resilience and long-term well-being for individuals and small businesses?
• What technological and policy enablers are essential to reach the unserved and underserved?
• How can programmability support targeted financial interventions?