Introducing Tavonga Edson Masendeken – our Fourth CDFP Graduate

Tavonga Edson Masendeken was our fourth CDFP graduate. We had the pleasure of getting to know him during this process and we wanted to share with our community more about his journey into this exclusive CDFP membership club!

 

Tavonga is a digital transformation and fintech expert, with over 8 years’ experience in the field. He has a passion for operational excellence and has been involved financial inclusion initiatives, electronic and mobile payments (issuing and acquiring), card business strategy, business development, product development strategy, telecommunication technologies and project management. He has also consulted with several DFS ecosystem players, regulators, government entities, banks and MFIs regarding DFS implementation, partnerships and product development.

Tavonga started his journey with the Certificate in Digital Money course in 2017 and continued with his journey as the courses increased his skills & knowledge and gave the opportunity to learn and network with the best in the industry. “The depth and richness of the courses content, case studies & insights from other markets and the hunger to want to learn more enticed me to desire to become a CDFP graduate.”

He’s been using the skills and knowledge gained in his role, including product & channels development and advocating for policy change around mobile money, consumer protection and collaboration through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s stakeholder collaboration framework (TPPSP). This led to Tavonga’s Financial Institution becoming the preferred partner of bank of choice. They also sponsor and have a relationship with several fintechs/start-ups, and lead on open banking due to understanding the importance of collaboration, beneficiation and how to manage risk.

He is engaged with the DFI Alumni Community of Practice (COP) within Zimbabwe and plans to share his knowledge here and at every opportunity he can! He believes the COP is a great space to share insights and market developments and come up with solutions.

Tavonga completed his interview with us with this piece of advice: “To all the students contemplating on taking the CDPF journey, I say to you don’t think twice, this is a very good opportunity for you to sharpen your skills and grow your knowledge base of the subject. You are spoilt for choice in terms of the courses you may want to specialise in from regulation, to technology enablement and customer use cases.”