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Simple Messages Help Consumers Understand Big Data

After experimenting with SMS messages with Tanzanian microfinance loan applicants, First Access determined that customers can learn a lot about data and their privacy from simple forms of communication.

Providing Last Mile Customer Service for Solar Home Systems

Off Grid Electric (OGE) is a solar company in Tanzania that provides low-cost energy services to households without energy access. The company is focused on breaking new ground in last-mile service.

Is Tanzania Ready for Interoperability in Mobile Money?

Even though interoperability could potentially benefit the mobile financial services market, thus far there have been few attempts to get mobile money systems to work together. It may be too early for interoperability in some areas, Tanzania seems ready.

Preparing to Spend a Year with Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania

The preparations for the smallholder farmer household financial diaries continue in Tanzania, Pakistan and Mozambique. Here we discuss the site selection process in Tanzania, which we completed in advance of the sampling and recruiting of households.

Why Financial Diaries to Understand the Needs of Smallholders?

CGAP is working with Bankable Frontier Associates to conduct a financial diaries project on 90 families in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Pakistan.

Does Outpatient Care Through Microinsurance Offer Value?

Is there a business case for microinsurance? Does it provide value for clients? In Tanzania, The MicroInsurance Centre's MILK Project found two clear benefits to clients: getting them to a doctor sooner and efficiently financing health shocks.

Mobile Money Agents in Tanzania: How Busy, How Exclusive?

The Financial Sector Deepening Trust of Tanzania (FSDT) undertook a census of cash outlets in the country, and discovered that half of all agents do more than 30 transactions per month and nearly two-thirds of agents are exclusive to M-PESA.

Where’s The Cash? The Geography Of Cash Points In Tanzania

Places where one can exchange cash for transferable or storable electronic value is an essential component of financial access. Given the paucity of financial infrastructure in Tanzania, we wanted to know how deeply mobile money agents have penetrated rural areas.

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.

Rural vs Urban Mobile Money Use: Insights From Demand-Side Data

The second post in our series described the importance of demand-side data for understanding consumers and their financial habits and needs. Various organizations are contributing to the global pool of demand-side data in branchless banking and in this post we’ll focus on two of the main sources. The Financial Inclusion Tracking Surveys (FITS) are annual household panel surveys in Uganda, Tanzania, and Pakistan while the Tanzania Mobile Money Tracker Study (TMMT) uses quarterly surveys to track market trends. Both are being carried out by InterMedia and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In this post, we’ll highlight some of the analysis on rural and urban households to demonstrate the actionable insights that can be gathered from such datasets.

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.

Scaling Climate Smart Agriculture by Financing Small and Growing Businesses

Excluded from formal markets and unable to access agricultural inputs, market information and credit, many rural poor adopt survival techniques such as illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture that degrade the environment and contribute to global warming.

Why Distributing Mobile Money Is Harder than Airtime for MNOs

It’s often said mobile network operators (MNOs) have the advantage over banks in creating agent networks from their dense carpet of prepaid airtime sellers. But is this true?

Does Branchless Banking Reach Poor People? The Evidence from Pakistan

In this mini-series we explore new evidence from three countries on whether branchless banking is reaching poor people starting today with Pakistan.

Islamic Microfinance in Tanzania

Tanzania eco-Volunteerism’s (TeV) honey project is a community development program providing rural poor communities of Tanzania with an innovative microfinance model that is in complete compliance with Islamic guidelines for business and finance.

Branchless Banking Has a Volume Problem

CGAP’s Branchless Banking Database synthesizes a mass of data into a short 12-image “story” about what branchless banking is and the key hurdles we face in 2011. We’ve converted that into a three-part series, which we continue today.

How Agent Network Managers Have Fueled M-PESA’s Success

As CGAP’s new Agent Management Toolkit emphasizes, managing an agent network is complicated. There are a lot of different pieces of the puzzle to get right.

Highlights from the CGAP Technology Blog – October 2010

The launch of TigoPesa in Tanzania was the headline on our blog starting in October.

Branchless Banking 2010: Is the Hype Justified?

After several years of very high profile attention on mobile money and other branchless banking schemes, we think it’s time to test the hype. Or more accurately, we’ve wanted to for awhile.

Count Them…4 Mobile Money Services Now Live in Tanzania

TigoPesa, created by Tanzania’s fastest-growing mobile network operator, Tigo, is the fourth mobile money service offered in Tanzania. Vodacom Tanzania, a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group, is the leading mobile network operator with a 37% market share.