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2 min readBy Sega Diarrah

OHADA and SYSCOHADA: what every fintech must comply with

The 17 OHADA countries share a unified accounting framework (revised SYSCOHADA), corporate-law uniform acts, and specific FX rules. What you need to know before operating.

The OHADA framework in two minutes

OHADA (Organisation for the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa) covers 17 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, CAR, Comoros, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Niger, DRC, Senegal, Chad, Togo. That's ~250 million people and roughly USD 800 bn aggregate GDP.

Across this perimeter, the following apply uniformly:

  • 9 Uniform Acts (commercial companies, securities, debt collection, insolvency, etc.)
  • The revised SYSCOHADA accounting framework (in force since 2018)
  • A CFA franc zone in 14 of 17 countries (XOF in UEMOA, XAF in CEMAC)
  • A CCJA (Common Court of Justice and Arbitration) in Abidjan unifying OHADA legal interpretation

Key SYSCOHADA accounting requirements

Every company must produce:

  • Balance sheet, P&L, cash-flow statement, notes in SYSCOHADA format
  • Normalised chart of accounts with 9 classes (different from French PCG)
  • Financial statements in CFA francs (XOF/XAF), with general journal, ledger, trial balance
  • Annual DSF (Statistical and Fiscal Declaration) filed with local tax authorities
  • Country-specific tax filings: each country's DGI may differ slightly

Tauraco natively handles these formats: DSF generation, SYSCOHADA financial statements, and country-compliant journals.

The "factoring" specificity in OHADA

The Uniform Act on Securities (revised 2010) recognises the assignment of trade receivables similarly to French law. However factoring in OHADA remains underused by incumbents:

  • No capillary network of factors (3-4 players across the entire region)
  • High and opaque pricing
  • No structured marketplace until recently

Tauraco positions itself as the first OHADA-native marketplace, operating across all 17 jurisdictions with a framework compliant with the Uniform Acts (securities, debt collection) and BCEAO/BEAC FX regulation.

The FX question

In the CFA zone:

  • Convertibility guaranteed against the EUR by the French Treasury (1 EUR = XOF/XAF 655.957, fixed peg)
  • But BCEAO/BEAC authorisation required for certain extra-zone transfers
  • Strict supervision of inbound and outbound foreign investment

Tauraco operates either under DFS (Decentralised Financial Systems) status or through local banking partnerships depending on the country, to stay aligned with regulation.

What it means for you

If you're an OHADA SMB: you get access to international financing (EUR investors) without FX complexity — Tauraco bridges the gap. Your Tauraco accounting outputs are SYSCOHADA-compliant out of the box.

If you're an investor: you access an asset class uncorrelated with European markets, with sovereign risk mitigated by the French Treasury's convertibility guarantee on the CFA zone.

Going deeper