The Thesis
Africa carries 19% of the world’s population and generates less than 1% of global insurance premiums. That mismatch isn’t just a development metric — it has a direct cost. African companies and governments pay 3 to 4 percentage points more than comparable actors elsewhere to access finance, because unpriced risk flows through the entire system. In July 2026, the Federation of African National Insurance Companies (FANAF) moved to change the math, gathering nearly 400 decision-makers in Cotonou to adopt the continent’s first Pan-African Pact for Insurance Inclusion. The headline target: double insurance penetration across the FANAF zone by 2040. But for the CIMA zone’s Muslim-majority markets, the pact names a problem it hasn’t yet solved — takaful barely exists in the region, and the framework doesn’t say what it intends to do about that.
The Structural Deficit
Within the CIMA zone — 14 Francophone West and Central African countries operating under a shared insurance regulatory framework — penetration sits below 1% of GDP. The global average is above 6%.
Didier Acouetey, special advisor to the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), put the business case at the center of the States General on Insurance for All, held July 6–8, 2026 at the Sofitel Hotel in Cotonou, Benin. SMEs, he argued, represent 95% of Africa’s private sector — and their chronic underinsurance inflates the cost of capital for the entire economy. The 3–4 percentage point financing premium that African actors pay versus comparable risks elsewhere makes the insurance gap visible as something more than an access problem: it is a structural drag on private investment at continental scale.
What the Cotonou Pact Commits To
The event — convened by FANAF with nearly 400 participants from governments, regulators, insurers, financial institutions, and development partners — ended with two concrete outputs: the Pan-African Pact for Insurance Inclusion, a shared reference framework for mobilizing cross-sector actors around common objectives; and a 2026–2030 Strategic Action Plan defining priority areas, coordination mechanisms, and monitoring commitments.
The headline target is contributing to a doubling of insurance penetration across the FANAF zone by 2040.
Acouetey was measured about what this can achieve on its own. The pact, he noted, would only produce effects if accompanied by reinforced dialogue with regulators and a genuine monitoring mechanism. A signed commitment across 14 regulators with varying political will is not a guarantee of execution.
The Takaful Blind Spot in the CIMA Zone
For the CIMA zone, the underinsurance problem sits inside a second, less-discussed gap: takaful — the shariah-compliant alternative to conventional insurance — is nearly invisible in the region.
CIMA introduced a takaful regulatory framework through Regulation No. 003, which allows individual member states to develop Islamic insurance rules. In practice, Takaful Mali Assurance Islamique (TMAI) is the only fully dedicated takaful insurer operating in the zone. Takaful windows exist in a handful of conventional insurers in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. That is the extent of the coverage.
The overlap between weak insurance adoption and Muslim-majority demographics is not incidental. Mali, Senegal, Niger, and Burkina Faso — all CIMA zone members with high Muslim population shares — are among the zone’s least insured markets. Globally, the takaful market is estimated at USD 38–40 billion in 2026. Sudan leads Africa’s share; Nigeria and Kenya are developing micro-takaful models. The CIMA zone, which already holds the regulatory permission to host dedicated takaful operators through Regulation No. 003, has not moved to match that permission with market development.
The Headwinds
The structural economics of takaful in low-penetration markets are difficult. Small client bases mean high administration costs relative to premiums, which discourages conventional insurers from opening windows and new entrants from building dedicated players. TMAI has operated in Mali without triggering regional competition — which says something about how hard this market is to make work at the unit level, even with regulatory approval in hand.
Acouetey’s caution about the pact’s implementation applies here as well. A framework that does not explicitly pull takaful into its targets and monitoring metrics will not automatically benefit the segment. Inclusive insurance, as a concept, can mean conventional product extension; it does not have to mean takaful-inclusive coverage.
What to Watch
Two signals will reveal whether this pact reaches Muslim-majority markets in the CIMA zone. First: which CIMA member state next operationalizes Regulation No. 003 beyond Mali? A second dedicated takaful insurer anywhere in the zone would confirm that TMAI was not an isolated exception.
Second: the 2026–2030 action plan’s content, once public. Does it include a specific takaful development track, or does “inclusive insurance” in the pact’s language refer exclusively to conventional product extension? That detail will tell you whether Cotonou opened a real door for Islamic insurance in Francophone Africa, or whether the door was already open and the pact simply didn’t walk through it.