With the support of
This report focuses on a series of “learning advances” identified throughout the first year of the Mastercard Foundation Partnership for Finance in a Digital Africa. It introduces two key concepts to frame the challenge of financial inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa: meaningful financial inclusion (involving not only access, but also the effective use of a suite of financial services products), and the pursuit of these goals against the backdrop of an ongoing “shift to digital” both in financial services and in the broader economy.
Digital is not simply an opportunity to pursue existing business models—at better or lower costs—but an opportunity and an imperative to reexamine the critical role of financial services in enabling participation in the broader economy. To illustrate and explain these points, the report offers client-level insights on “effective use,” institutional-level business models, and the growth of open APIs in the ecosystem.
Contributors Marissa Dean, Dr. Jonathan Donner, Jessica Osborn, Annabel Schiff
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This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
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