Digital finance professionals in Zambia have established the Association of Digital Finance Professionals with the support of Digital Frontiers Institute (DFI) and FSD Zambia. Sarah Corley, Community and Professional Development Manager at DFI, explains the reason for...
Many claim that Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), formally known as Digital Fiat Currency, can have many benefits for financial inclusion and has the potential to impact mobile money. But can CBDC overcome the challenges that current mobile money providers and...
In the past five years, we have seen a lot of change in how credit markets are developing, not least because of the rapid growth in digital credit associated with mobile financial services. But how much do we actually know about digital credit? And how does it relate to...
Nearly one in four households in Africa are headed by women, reaching 41% in Zimbabwe, 36% in Kenya and 35% in Liberia according to the World Bank. Female-headed households have been increasing across all countries, globally. So, as well as considering the broader...
The Green Bonds Listing Rules and Guidelines for Kenya were issued last week. These make it clear to issuers of Green Bonds in Kenya what the regulators expect of them by way of disclosure. Regulatory certainty is the bedrock of well-functioning financial markets...
“Africa is the world’s largest untapped growth market for ‘Islamic’ commerce” The Economist Intelligence Unit, ‘Mapping Africa’s Islamic Economy’, 2015. The global Islamic financial services industry reached an overall total value of USD 2.4 trillion at...
Remittances are a pivotal, though often unseen, driver of economic growth across Africa, in particular having a positive pro-poor effect on health, education and human capital development. The continent’s remittance economy has grown quietly and organically, taking up...
“Across the globe a quiet data revolution is underway. The idea that African banking clients could, in the future, have the power to own and share their data to get the best possible deal is an idea we should start to embrace more fully.” So said Joe Huxley,...
If you open the World Bank’s Global Financial Development Database and compare the data on private credit against total population, it is instructive to note the markedly different growth rates. In the developing economies of sub-Saharan Africa, credit extension has...
Setting the scene… Blink and you might have missed it. But as dusk gave way to darkness on a sunny afternoon in Kigali, UNHCR Livelihoods, Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) and FSD Africa received a brief but deeply significant email from Equity Bank Rwanda… “This is...
