The Financial Systems in most of the African countries remained unstable compared to other developed economies. Recent survey from the Global Findex database indicates that only ¼ of the adult population in Africa have an account with a formal financial organization and most of the adults use the informal methods to save and borrow. So far across Africa, most of the individuals’ access to finance is limited.
According to the World Bank report, 66 % of the population of the Sub Saharan African Countries are listed as unbanked population. As such, Sub Saharan countries are considered as limited in obtaining access to the basic banking services. For instance, most of the population are unbanked and thus making it difficult for people to save and to face unforeseen financial crisis.
10 Years back the level of Financial Inclusion in Sub- Saharan countries was about 23%. With the digital financial services, financial inclusion has increased up to 43% in 2017. According to Findex, the % of population having mobile money account has almost doubled compared to the % having a bank account. The mobile money industry in the Sub Saharan African countries has shown a rapid growth over the last few years.
For many people, especially those from the rural areas, has been deprived access to the services provided by the banks; i.e. they have been excluded from the traditional banking system. Most of the African users depend more on mobile payments to send and receive money. As such, the increase of mobile money accounts has become more accessible to transformative services including bill payments, healthcare, salary receipts & payments and payments for goods and services.
With the evolution of new technologies and broadening the access to a wider range of banking services, people are now able to do their budgeting for unexpected life events and are better able to manage their day-to- day finances. The innovation in the digital Fintech is creating opportunities for the African non-inclusive population to move up the ‘Financial Services Value Chain’. Africans are now gaining more access to the financial services using technology such as mobile payment, digital wallet and micro lending. The development and growth in technology on the continent also helped in the growth of the economy of Africa overall.
Partnering with NanoBNK
Despite all the great efforts made by the financial institutions in the recent years, only about one third of the population have a proper access to the banking services. Hence, the financial inclusion frontier represents a great opportunity for Africa. To capture this opportunity, Banks can work in partnership with NanoBNK to leverage on our Digital Banking Suite of Applications.
