• What we do
  • The People
  • About Us
  • Why Innovation Africa
  • Contact Us
Innovation AfricaCreating the Future Today
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
Menu
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
  • Quotable: Mobile financial services won’t reach scale without women

    March 9, 2013 Editor 0

     

    With the right business training and equipped with a mobile phone as well as financing options, women can become financially independent and feel much safer. Mobile technology can be a vehicle for savings, insurance, payments and a way to obtain credit.”

    – Henriette KolbCEO, Cherie Blair Foundation for Women

    But, she says, it’s not enough. “Efforts need to span from improving the regulatory environment to better educating clients on their financial rights and enabling them to fully understand the choices available.”

    “The majority of individuals around the world without formal bank accounts are women. In the developing world, 63 percent of women lack accounts, versus 54 percent of men, writes Jeffrey Riecke of the Center for Financial Inclusion. “Mobile financial services offer a path to inclusion given that 1.7 of the 2.5 billion unbanked own mobile phones. However, the path is longer for women, as the majority of mobile phone owners are men.”

    This disparity between how men and women can access financial services is why Visa, GSMA’s mWomen program, and Bankable Frontier Associates presented collective, research that prescribes how best to design mobile financial services to reach the poorest women at last month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Their joint report, “Unlocking the Potential: Women and Mobile Financial Services in Emerging Markets,” highlights how women, who often manage a household’s finances, are consistently overlooked by groups deploying mobile financial services. Their need for mobile banking to help manage the large number of small family transactions made every day, as well as their potential to be a very large client base for mobile money services, make them important stakeholders.

    The research team has been working with women in Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania over the past several months to better understand what it takes for these women to organize their family’s finances and how mobile financial services can make those responsibilities easier.

    One of the research partners, the GSMA mWomen Program, has a big goal: to “reduce the mobile phone gender gap by 50 percent by 2014, bringing mobile connectivity and services to more than 150 million women in emerging markets. This will be achieved through a combination of research, grants for mobile operators and NGOs, toolkits, and knowledge sharing through the mWomen online community, seminars, and the mWomen Working Group, which includes more than 30 members from the mobile industry.”

    If mobile operators carefully consider women’s needs in their product design and distribution plans, they might just reach the scale and stability they seek, while linking women to the formal financial services they need.

    One way to reduce the gender gap for the unbanked is to get more women using mobile financial services. Photo: F. Coupet/Mercy Corps.
    Related articles:
    Three ways digital cash helps the poor
    Five poverty-fighting women to watch
    Incubating women’s businesses in Palestine
    Resources:
    Portraits: A Glimpse Into the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid
    Unlocking the Potential: Women and Mobile Financial Services in Emerging Markets
    Secondary Department:
    Financial Inclusion

     

    Go to Source

    Related Posts

    • International Women’s Day 2016: What issues are central to agricultural development for women?International Women’s Day 2016: What issues are central to agricultural development for women?
    • Economic opportunity for women: It’s good businessEconomic opportunity for women: It’s good business
    • The rise of women and their impact on firms’ performanceThe rise of women and their impact on firms’ performance
    • Shutting doors on women: How countries are legally preventing half their population from reaching their full economic potentialShutting doors on women: How countries are legally preventing half their population from reaching their full economic potential
    • Cultivating a psychological sense of communityCultivating a psychological sense of community
    • 8 Considerations for Better Mobile Learning Solutions for Women8 Considerations for Better Mobile Learning Solutions for Women
    Sovrn
    Share

    Categories: Feature Articles

    Tags: GSMA mWomen, Mobile Financial Services in Emerging, women

    Interview: D-Rev’s Krista Donaldson on designing health products for the world’s poor Meet Your New R&D Team: Social Entrepreneurs

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    You must be logged in to post a comment.

Subscribe to our stories


 

Recent Posts

  • Entrepreneurial Alertness, Innovation Modes, And Business Models in Small- And Medium-Sized Enterprises December 30, 2021
  • The Strategic Role of Design in Driving Digital Innovation June 10, 2021
  • Correction to: Hybrid mosquitoes? Evidence from rural Tanzania on how local communities conceptualize and respond to modified mosquitoes as a tool for malaria control June 10, 2021
  • BRIEF FOCUS: Optimal spacing for groundnuts in smallholder farming systems June 9, 2021
  • COVID-19 pandemic: impacts on the achievements of Sustainable Development Goals in Africa June 9, 2021

Categories

Archives

Popular Post-All time

  • A review on biomass-based... 1k views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Y... 798 views
  • Can blockchain disrupt ge... 797 views
  • Test Your Value Propositi... 749 views
  • Prize-winning projects pr... 722 views

Recent Posts

  • Entrepreneurial Alertness, Innovation Modes, And Business Models in Small- And Medium-Sized Enterprises
  • The Strategic Role of Design in Driving Digital Innovation
  • Correction to: Hybrid mosquitoes? Evidence from rural Tanzania on how local communities conceptualize and respond to modified mosquitoes as a tool for malaria control
  • BRIEF FOCUS: Optimal spacing for groundnuts in smallholder farming systems
  • COVID-19 pandemic: impacts on the achievements of Sustainable Development Goals in Africa
  • Explicit knowledge networks and their relationship with productivity in SMEs
  • Intellectual property issues in artificial intelligence: specific reference to the service sector
  • Africa RISING publishes a livestock feed and forage production manual for Ethiopia
  • Transforming crop residues into a precious feed resource for small ruminants in northern Ghana
  • Photo report: West Africa project partners cap off 2020 with farmers field day events in Northern Ghana and Southern Mali

Tag Cloud

    africa African Agriculture Business Business model Business_Finance Company Crowdsourcing data Development East Africa economics Education Entrepreneur entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship ethiopia ghana Health_Medical_Pharma ict Information technology Innovation kenya knowledge Knowledge Management Leadership marketing mobile Mobile phone nigeria Open innovation Organization Research rwanda science Science and technology studies social enterprise social entrepreneurship south africa Strategic management strategy tanzania Technology Technology_Internet uganda

Categories

Archives

  • A review on biomass-based hydrogen production for renewable energy supply 1k views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Your Big Data Innovations in Agriculture 798 views
  • Can blockchain disrupt gender inequality? 797 views
  • Test Your Value Proposition: Supercharge Lean Startup and CustDev Principles 749 views
  • Prize-winning projects promote healthier eating, smarter crop investments 722 views

Copyright © 2005-2020 Innovation Africa Theme created by PWT. Powered by WordPress.org