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Opening bank accounts or registering business users in Francophone Africa takes up to two weeks using traditional paper-based methods. Abidjan-based regulatory technology company Danaya automates this process for financial institutions using artificial intelligence to extract document data and run dynamic facial recognition, completing the entire verification in real time while the client waits at the desk.
Danaya is one of the active Know Your Customer and Know Your Business (KYC/KYB) players in Africa, operating alongside Anglophone startups Contactable in South Africa and Youverify in Nigeria, which leverage artificial intelligence for identity verification and biometric solutions.
Danaya initially launched by plugging directly into governmental databases to verify identities. Today, the team is transitioning toward an AI-first product architecture. The platform cross-references user data against 120 global databases, including United States and European Union lists, to screen for politically exposed persons and money laundering risks. An AI-driven adverse media check then generates a comprehensive compliance score. The startup deployed a dynamic liveness face matching that requires users to physically move their head and eyes during registration. “We soon found out that the standard static verification proved entirely insufficient because there was a lot of fraud due to stolen ID cards or passports,” says Gauthier de Gerlache, CEO of Danaya.
Navigating fragmented data, legacy systems, and talent shortages
Scaling digital compliance across fragmented markets presents severe data availability roadblocks. In the Ivory Coast, Danaya connects directly to a central governmental database for instant verification. Other markets, such as Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo, lack digitised public records entirely. "Sometimes they (the government officials) don't want to share it (the digital public records), and sometimes the data doesn't exist," De Gerlache notes. To bridge this gap, the company relies heavily on AI template matching to verify documents independently. Training these models requires vast amounts of local data. The team regularly scours the internet for valid identification specimens to strengthen their verification processes across new borders.
Integrating with existing corporate infrastructure creates additional bottlenecks. Client institutions and external providers frequently lack reliable application programming interfaces. Market resistance compounds these technical roadblocks, as many businesses hesitate to pay for digital software. "Most of the companies still use a pen and a sheet of paper to register people," De Gerlache explains, highlighting the cultural shift required to drive digital compliance adoption. To encourage this shift, Danaya provides an application that automates the entire process directly at the desk. Bank officers simply take pictures of customer identification cards to instantly generate a comprehensive compliance score.
Finding specialised tech talent to manage these systems poses another challenge. Recruiting senior engineering leaders locally proved difficult, prompting the company to hire a repatriate from France for the chief technology officer role. Filling junior roles requires a similar level of adaptability. "Most of the tech talents trained in Côte d'Ivoire are software and data engineers, web and data oriented," De Gerlache explains. To bridge this knowledge gap, Danaya hires Ivorian graduates and builds internal training courses focused specifically on generative AI advancements.
Looking ahead, Danaya plans to transition toward an AI-first product architecture over the next three months. As the startup relies more heavily on AI for tasks like template matching, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and dynamic liveness face matching, it plans to combine these AI capabilities with its existing systems. “Where possible, the AI will serve as a 'double check' alongside Danaya’s direct connections to governmental databases,” De Gerlache notes. Zooming out to the broader ecosystem, De Gerlache sees significant value emerging from new regional data collection initiatives, as focusing on proprietary African datasets will help startups better adapt AI products to local contexts.
