In August 2025, Pebuu Africa presented the first issue of its fresh financial literacy comic book – Naaki: The Chronicles of a Bank Agent. The comic book is a project under the Pebuu Impact Initiative, aiming to boost financial literacy and business planning skills among bank agents, small business owners, and entrepreneurs in an engaging way.
The comic book follows the journey of Naaki, a young woman from a village who moves to Kampala to become a bank agent. Over time, she learns to navigate the challenges of running a small and medium-sized business. Throughout her growth as a businesswoman, Naaki is guided by her uncle Tom and Pebuu Supervisor John, and is accompanied by her new and hilarious Zulu friend Koki. Facing demanding clients like Chike – a Nigerian businessman who often has a short temper, Naaki excels in customer service, financial compliance regulations and banking operations, as well as planning for her business growth and prosperity. To encourage the reader to step into Naaki’s world and connect with the characters, Pebuu partnered with Uganda’s renowned cartoonist Simon Banga, creating vibrant characters from colourful and bustling Kampala life.
“Naaki is more than just a fun comic book,” emphasised John Paul Ssemyalo, the CEO of Pebuu Africa. “It is a financial literacy adventure. In many areas of the country, reading engagement and literacy rates remain low, and a significant part of the population still faces barriers to accessing books online. Naaki’s format will capture the attention of always-on-the-go small business owners who otherwise would not have time and interest to sit down and read complicated financial concepts.”
Naaki: The Chronicles of a Bank Agent will be released in 12 issues – each covering a different financial literacy topic relevant to the industry and offering practical lessons. As a free hard copy published every quarter, it is expected to reach over 30,000 bank agent networks across the country. While primarily targeting bank agents and merchant networks served by Pebuu, Naaki’s engaging and portable format would also reach the bank agents’ family members, especially their children, and circulate in their communities, enhancing people’s financial literacy in the long term. The publication is also free to download from Pebuu’s website to read and be utilised as a financial literacy tool by other organisations working with youth and women entrepreneurs.
Alongside this financial literacy project, Pebuu Africa launched the One Agent, Ten Trees initiative to minimise its negative operational impact on the environment occurring through business activities and programme implementation. Under this initiative, Pebuu pledged to plant 500,000 indigenous trees by 2030 together with the growing bank agent network, their communities, and project partners, promoting community-led climate action while bringing financial literacy closer to communities.
