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The BOMA Project: Building Resiliency in the Arid Lands

The BOMA Project is a nonprofit and Kenyan NGO that implements a two-year poverty graduation program in Northern Kenya. BOMA’s Rural Entrepreneur Access Project builds the resiliency of arid-land residents, so they can survive drought and adapt to climate change.

Better Than Cash, or Just Better Cash?

Far from replacing cash, mobile money has made cash much more efficient.

More on Why OTC Makes Sense for Kenya

Cashless goals are too focused on designing products that make people want to switch to e-money, even though most still prefer cash.

M-Pesa Usage Data: OTC Makes Sense, Even for Kenya

Even though "cash-lite" is a buzzword in financial inclusion, usage data from M-Pesa suggests that the goal of going "cashless" may not be aligned with the needs of people at the base of the income pyramid.

Mobile Payment Systems:What Can India Adopt From Kenya’s Success?

Despite some initiatives in India, the adoption of mobile payment technology, especially among the low-income population, has been cautious. What can India learn about mobile money services in Kenya?

East And Southern Africa: A Region On The Move

In 2012, the region has made strides in financial inclusion through innovative products such as M-Shwari, as well as creative financial sector regulation and policy.

Market Building Through Financial Sector Deepening In Africa

How do we support a market building approach in practice? The current advice is to either become a market facilitator or fund one. But what is a market facilitator; what do they do?

The Art of Discovery: Incubating Mobile Money Ideas In Uganda

How can we creatively design products that can have a real impact on the mobile money market? This post shares the experience of Grameen App Lab in Uganda.

Who Is Targeted? Financial Pyramid Schemes and the Poor

In Kenya, where the qualitative research provided input to a policy diagnostic on financial consumer protection issues and approaches, at least one person in each of 14 groups was personally affected by a pyramid investment scheme.

What Is Keeping Kenya From Becoming More “Cash Lite”?

A couple of weeks ago, Daryl Collins and her team at BFA introduced granular, intra-day transaction data collected in the summer of 2011 across a sample of 61 urban and rural retail merchants in Kenya. The results starkly showed that cash still dominates the payment transactions in these areas, with mobile money representing being used for not even 1% of transactions. In this blog, they ask the question “What would move more customers and merchants to more cash-lite payment behavior?”

Financial Literacy for Small Farmers in Kenya Via TV

In March of 2012, a new regional television program launched in Kenya which aims to provide information to millions of farmers on how to improve their incomes and livelihoods. Funded by DfID's AECF (the Africa Entrepreneurship Challenge Fund), "Shamba Shape-Up" profiles a farm each week and suggests improvements that demonstrate financial principles and teaches farmers how to grow more food, make more money and build better lives for their families.

Is M-PESA Replacing Cash in Kenya?

How far away is Kenya from the goal of cash-lite? Between July and August 2011, Bankable Frontier Associates (BFA) conducted an intensive field study within an urban and a rural pilot area to study the mode and size of intra-day cash flows at the customer-to-merchant interface and the merchant-to-supplier interface. This research finds that despite Kenya’s reputation for being a leader in mobile money, cash is still king.

Savings and Credit on Mobile: The Jipange KuSave Experiment

The results of an experiment with a lend-to-save model in Kenya, Jipange KuSave, showed that there is demand for financial services which are quite different from those currently offered by mainstream providers.

Financial Inclusion by Design: AppLab Money Incubator Case Study

Grameen Foundation, MTN and CGAP launched the AppLab Money Incubator a year ago, in part, to develop a human-centered design process that shows players with an appetite to go down-market that innovation can be cost-effective and impactful and can also lead to new areas of growth. This is the first part of a case study documenting our experience.

Have You Looked Poverty in the Eye Lately?

Beyond a chance meeting, what are the ethical responsibilities of development professionals when staring poverty in the face?

You Can’t Go Cash-Lite on Empty Accounts: E-money vs. Cash

Getting people to reach for their bank card or mobile phone at the store check-out requires giving them good reasons to store their money electronically.

How to Save Lives and Lower Fuel Consumption: Clean Cookstoves

Exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves and open fires – the primary means of cooking and heating for nearly 3 billion people in the developing world – causes 2 million premature deaths annually, with women and children the most affected.

Can MTOs Accelerate the Adoption of Mobile Remittances?

As our understanding of the factors that lead to customer adoption of branchless banking expands, there is a growing consensus that for international remittances services to reach a significant level of scale, they will require an existing mobile money ecosystem that allows for downstream transactions which give users access to a wider array of cost-effective services and products such as payments and access to savings.

How Does Mobile Money in Kenya Affect Financial Inclusion?

The rapid uptake of mobile money transfer in Kenya has ignited enthusiasm globally over the potential to bank poor people via the platform of mobile phone technology. On the basis of research undertaken for Financial Sector Deepening Kenya, I argue that the evidence suggests an alternative explanation which means that formal service provision for poor people needs to be thought through in a very different way. It means going beyond the expectation that mobile technology can adequately lower transactions costs to produce a revolution in inclusion, to recognising that managing financial resources has important social dimensions.

Bank-led or Mobile-led Financial Inclusion?

Payments are an optimal gateway product for financially underserved households. Unlike credit, insurance, and savings, payments do not require trust by either party.