How a tontine works, and how to run one fairly
A tontine is a rotating savings group: relatives, neighbours, colleagues or friends each pay the same amount on a set date, and each time one member receives the full amount, until everyone has had their turn. It is the everyday word across French-speaking West and Central Africa, from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Benin and Togo to Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and among the African and Haitian diaspora in France, Belgium and Canada. In sub-Saharan Africa people also simply call it cotisations (contributions).
In English, “tontine” also names a historical life-annuity scheme, and in France the word also covers a regulated insurance product and a legal clause. This guide is about none of those. It is about the rotating tontine, where members pay each other and nobody earns a return.
Local names vary. In Cameroon a tontine is a njangi in the English-speaking North-West and South-West and a djangui (also spelled ndjangui or njangui) in French-speaking areas, and the group itself is often just called the réunion (meeting). In Kinshasa and Brazzaville it is likelemba, in Lingala. In Senegal it is a natt, in Wolof. In July 2026 a Congolese member of parliament who tabled a bill on tontines said that 70% of Congolese use them.
How does a tontine work?
- An organizer brings the members together and agrees with them the amount of each cotisation, how often everyone pays and how many turns there will be.
- The members agree the order of turns, the tour: who receives first, who second, and so on.
- At each réunion, every member hands over their cotisation, in cash or by mobile money.
- The whole amount goes to the member whose turn it is. The tontine ends when every member has received once, and the group can then start a new cycle.
In a simple rotating tontine nobody pays or receives anything extra. A member with an early turn gets a large sum now and pays it back through their later cotisations; a member with a late turn is simply saving.
How is the order of turns decided?
A study of tontines in the DRC lists the usual methods: the organizers decide, the members agree together, the turn goes to the highest bidder, or the order is drawn by lot. Whatever the method, the fair way is to agree it before the first cotisation and to write down who has which turn.
In a bidding tontine, members who need money urgently offer more to take an earlier turn. The rules differ from group to group, so they should be written down as clearly as the order itself.
What does the organizer do?
The organizer, sometimes with a treasurer, keeps the tontine’s notebook: who has paid this round, who is late, who has already received and who is next. They collect or check the cotisations at each réunion, hand over the amount to the right member and chase anyone who is behind. Their reputation rests on that record. When a member asks, months later, whether a payment was made, the organizer needs to show it, not just remember it.
Many organizers start with a paper notebook, the cahier de tontine, and some move to a spreadsheet. Both work until a page is lost, a figure is crossed out, or two members remember things differently.
What goes wrong in a tontine?
- A member stops paying after receiving. In Côte d’Ivoire people speak of the member who stops once they have “ramassé” (collected). The members with later turns lose out, so organizers only invite people they trust.
- Late cotisations delay the next member’s turn and put pressure on the organizer to cover the gap.
- Arguments about the order. If turns were handed out without a clear method, members with late turns may suspect favouritism.
- Disagreement about who paid. A tontine notebook or a spreadsheet is easy to lose or get wrong, and hard to check months later.
- Tontines run online by strangers. Benin’s national cybercrime centre has warned that online tontines are illegal there, and scams have been reported in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon. A tontine works because its members know each other.
How do you run a tontine with Savings Circle?
- Create the group. Give it your tontine’s own name and pick a name type (“Savings circle” is the neutral choice), then set the currency and the cotisation per round.
- Add members from your contacts. They don’t install anything.
- Set the order. Run a random draw in front of everyone, or enter the order you agreed. A random draw saves its seed, so anyone can check later that it wasn’t changed. Members can ask to swap turns, and the swap is recorded too.
- Record cotisations as they come in, in cash, by bank or by mobile money, with a screenshot as proof if you like. It works offline and syncs later.
- Remind the late ones. One tap opens WhatsApp, SMS or Telegram with a polite message.
- Record each payout. Every entry is dated. A correction is added as a new entry, and the original stays in the history.
- Share the record. Make a receipt or a statement for any member, or open the group on a computer in the web app at app.savingscircle.app.
Savings Circle never holds or moves money. Members pay each other the way they already do; the app is the shared record of who paid, who is next and what is owed.
Other names for the same idea
Across French-speaking Africa it is a tontine, or simply cotisations. In Cameroon it is also njangi, djangui or, in Bamileke, shwa. In the DRC it is likelemba or moziki in Lingala, kitemo in Kikongo, cisangilu in Tshiluba and kinkurimba in Swahili. In Senegal it is natt. In Haiti and its diaspora it is a sòl, where each share is a men (a “hand”), and Moroccan families in France and Belgium call it daret. Elsewhere the same system is a committee in Pakistan and India, a tanda in Mexico, a susu in Ghana, a chama in Kenya, an arisan in Indonesia and a paluwagan in the Philippines. Economists call all of these ROSCAs. Savings Circle works for any of them.
Guides
- South Asia: committee, kameti, chit fund, bhishi, kitty party and samity
- Africa: susu, chama, ajo, adashe, equb, hagbad, stokvel, tontine, mukando and chilimba
- The Americas and the Caribbean: sou-sou, tanda, junta, lending circle and pardner
- Asia and the Pacific: arisan, paluwagan and hụi
- The Arab world: jam’iya