A multibillion-dollar cross-border payments platform serving southern Africa plans to expand beyond the South African rand and Angolan kwanza, widening the range of currencies it supports to lower transaction costs and boost trade.
The Southern African Development Community real-time gross settlement system, which processed about $3.77 billion of trade and interbank transactions across its 15 member countries in 2025, formally added the kwanza as a settlement currency on Monday.
It also plans to include additional regional currencies including Botswana’s pula and Mozambique’s metical, Arif Ismail, head of the National Payment System Department at the South African Reserve Bank, told reporters in Pretoria.
The vast majority of Africa’s intra-regional trade is done through conversions to the dollar, adding costs and delays. Initiatives like SADC-RTGS system, which has exclusively settled transactions using the rand since it was established in 2013, aims to reduce those frictions by enabling direct settlement in local currencies.
The addition of the kwanza advances the region’s multi-currency vision, Governor Lesetja Kganyago told the event. “For Angola, this is a significant achievement,” he said. “For the region, it is an important signal on confidence in our shared infrastructure.”
The move is likely to boost demand for the kwanza beyond Angola’s borders and make the currency more liquid.
While the kwanza’s inclusion is unlikely to have an immediate impact on Angola’s international reserves, transaction volumes between the country and other SADC member states are expected to increase, the southwest African nation’s central bank Governor Manuel Tiago Dias said.
“What we expect, however, is greater speed in executing transactions and lower costs, since we will no longer need to route transactions through third countries or banks that do not participate in this platform,” he said.
The central bank also expects a repeated, steady increase in commercial transactions between Angola and other SADC member states. Angola is already working with neighboring countries such as Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and anticipates that this participation and acceptance of the kwanza will be a very strong signal for deeper integration and cross-border trade, he added.