NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Basis) – Cell phone expertise might help to deliver monetary providers to the 80 p.c of African girls who don’t have a checking account and bolster the expansion of the world’s poorest continent, Nigeria’s finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, mentioned on Monday.
Okonjo-Iweala was considered one of a dozen authorities, finance and enterprise leaders who met in Nairobi on Monday to roll out a plan to deliver monetary providers to extra poor African girls.
“It’s not nearly empowering girls, it’s about financial development,” mentioned Okonjo-Iweala, honorary co-chair of the newly-formed Africa Advisory Council of the U.S.-based charity Girls’s World Banking.
“Except we are able to make entry to finance simpler for ladies of their companies, we will likely be lacking out on a good portion of development inside our economies.”
She cited a research by accounting agency Ernst & Younger which exhibits that 75 p.c of shopper spending energy will likely be within the arms of ladies by 2028.
Girls are additionally identified to be higher than males at repaying loans and saving cash, the consultants mentioned.
In Nigeria, 73 p.c of ladies have by no means used a monetary product, in response to Girls’s World Banking. As an alternative, they depend on in conventional financial savings teams, the place a collector comes to gather their each day earnings.
Girls’s World Banking labored with Nigeria’s Diamond Financial institution to develop a pilot financial savings account, referred to as Beta (pidgin English for ‘good’) to succeed in this huge, untapped market.
Sale representatives go to the open-air markets of Lagos every day, reasonably than ready for patrons to return to the financial institution. Utilizing their cellphones, they open financial savings accounts for busy merchants in a couple of minutes.
Additionally they come to their clients’ market stalls to gather cash that they want to deposit of their accounts, the identical method those that run casual financial savings teams go to their members.
The deposits are confirmed by SMS textual content message.
In its first yr, greater than 132,000 individuals who had by no means had a checking account opened Beta accounts.
“I feel expertise goes to assist us go to scale,” mentioned Okonjo-Iweala.
Kenya is considered one of Africa’s leaders due to cell phone-based monetary providers, resembling Safaricom’s Mpesa.
However there may be nonetheless a giant gender hole right here, with 53 p.c of ladies in comparison with 71 p.c of males utilizing formal monetary providers, the consultants mentioned.
One problem with cell banking is that poor households usually share one cellphone – and that’s managed by the person.
“Girls in Africa don’t want charity,” mentioned Jennifer Riria, chief government of Kenya Girls Holding, the biggest microfinance community in Kenya.
“Entry (to finance) is the difficulty. Management of the sources that they create is the difficulty. And respect within the monetary sector is the difficulty.”
Her financial institution plans to supply girls loans to purchase cellphones in order that they will maintain their monetary transactions confidential.
“It’s essential for empowering girls and offering management,” she mentioned.
(Reporting by Katy Migiro; Modifying by Katie Nguyen)
