Financial inclusion with live accountability in Burundi

In Bujumbura, Burundi, Unbox and Enabel piloted a cashless digital transaction ecosystem to test how secure digital payments could support local businesses, economic resilience, and financial transparency.

The pilot launched in January 2025 in an emerging-market context where reliance on cash can limit security, reduce visibility, and make it harder for programme teams and funders to understand how value is moving through a local economy.

For many development programmes, the issue is not simply whether money can be transferred. It is whether programme owners can understand how that value is used once it reaches the local economy, and whether the resulting activity supports the intended development objective.

In Burundi, that made the transaction layer part of the programme evidence. Merchant adoption, consumer use, payment reliability, and transaction visibility all became signals about whether a more digital ecosystem could support financial inclusion in practice.

The project was not only about moving funds digitally. It was about making programme activity visible as it happened: which merchants were onboarded, whether payments were being used, where transaction volumes were growing, and what the data suggested about adoption.

The model supported instant secure transactions, financial inclusion for businesses and individuals, real-time transparency and tracking, and a deployment path that did not require heavy custom development.

Those details matter because development accountability is often slow. Reports can describe progress, but by the time they are written, the operational moment has already passed. A live digital transaction ecosystem creates a more immediate view of what is being adopted and where support is actually flowing.

The pilot also helped reduce the gap between funder intent and field reality. If the objective is to support financial inclusion and local business activity, programme teams need evidence about the daily mechanics of that activity, not only a final narrative about completion.

Unbox provided the plug-and-play transaction layer and Real-time dashboards for funders needed to onboard merchants, process payments in conditions with inconsistent connectivity, and give funders a clearer view of financial flows.

Within the first month, merchants had integrated into the ecosystem and transaction volumes were growing steadily. For Enabel, that meant the pilot could generate evidence while the programme was still live rather than waiting for a slow end-of-cycle reporting exercise.

Ease of deployment was central: merchant onboarding, built-in training, reliable payments, and a configurable platform that could be replicated without extensive new development. In a development context, those are not just technical conveniences; they determine whether a pilot can be adopted by real users.

A dashboard view also changes the accountability relationship. Instead of asking partners and funders to trust that a digital transaction ecosystem is working, the programme can show adoption, payment activity, and operational friction as evidence accumulates.

The Burundi story also points toward a wider development use case: connecting financial inclusion to outcome evidence. Where funding supports locally relevant products or sustainability goals, such as improved stoves or other household-level interventions, a live transaction layer can help show distribution, adoption, and usage patterns.

That is the current Unbox position in practice. The value is not just that money moves more efficiently; it is that programme teams can see where value was distributed, what it supported, and what evidence exists for partners and funders.

The sustainability angle is important because development funding often aims to change behaviour, not merely complete transactions. If a programme supports green stoves, cleaner household energy, or other practical interventions, the question becomes whether people can access the product, whether merchants can serve them, and whether programme teams can see adoption in time to learn from it.

Unbox helps connect those questions. Financial inclusion becomes more than a payment story; it becomes a live accountability system that can show what was distributed, what was purchased, where activity clustered, and where additional support may be needed.