The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a grant of US$1.024-million towards AI-enabled systems designed to reinforce CRM and process customer complaints in Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia.

The grant has been sourced from a special fund under the auspices of the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), a pan-African initiative that aims to facilitate digital financial inclusion for an estimated 322 million unbanked people across Africa.

In Zambia, the grant will be given to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) - while in Ghana and Rwanda, the funds will be given to the National Bank of Rwanda and the Bank of Ghana respectively.

The project will establish a complaints handling system for the financial regulators, using multilingual chatbots and AI that will interface with key financial service providers in the three countries.

The system will incorporate local languages for ease of use, record customer complaints including audio complaints for those unable to read and write and track their resolution.

In Zambia, English will be used as the official language including local languages Nyanje and Chewa.

The project is also expected to improve the tracking of customer complaints made to financial service providers, strengthen the support of marginalised groups which will build confidence in the use of financial services, and improve the collection of consistent data to be used for the development or improvement of customer-protection policies.

ADFI’s coordinator Sheila Okiro said facilitation of sound policies and regulations, including those that enhance consumer protection and catalyse financial inclusion, is a key mandate of ADFI.

“With the proliferation of digital financial services, the financial industry needs innovative mechanisms for customer recourse and tracking for regulators. The Sinitic project is one such solution,” said Okiro.

The AfDB said it has also approved US$2.33 million grant to support the modernisation of digital payments infrastructure in Ethiopia.