• Zambian entrepreneur Mkuzo Kuwani founded ComGrow to digitalize African savings groups and village banking.

• The platform replaces cash, notebooks, and spreadsheets with traceable, automated records.

• ComGrow enables community lending with transparent rules and shared interest income.

Mkuzo Kuwani founded ComGrow, a fintech that digitalizes rotating savings groups, village banking, and community-based savings and credit groups across Africa.

Founded in 2019, ComGrow allows groups of people who already know each other—friends, colleagues, or neighbors—to pool money, grant loans to members, and track transactions securely and transparently through a mobile application.

The platform replaces notebooks, cash boxes, and Excel files with a single tool that centralizes savings, loans, repayments, and profit sharing. The system automatically records every transaction, reduces human error, and eliminates recurring disputes over paid or outstanding amounts. Members no longer search through WhatsApp messages to find information or payment proof.

The application prioritizes simplicity. Each member selects a payment method and pays monthly contributions in a few clicks. The group monitors savings levels, outstanding loans, completed repayments, and distributable amounts in real time at the end of each cycle. A member can request a loan from the collective pool and repay it with a low interest rate under group-defined rules. The group redistributes interest income to members and increases collective savings.

Alongside his entrepreneurial activity, Kuwani works as an investment banking services analyst at MELCOFIN & Co., a firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions advisory and corporate finance.

Kuwani graduated from Durham University in England with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2021. He also served as a sales development representative at UK-based workforce management platform Playroll from 2023 to 2024.

This article was initially published in French by Melchior Koba

Adapted in English by Ange Jason Quenum