Tag: West Africa

Measures such as social distancing to curb the spread of Coronavirus have handicapped people used to cash-to-cash transactions. Migrants and their families have not been spared. This blog focuses on the extent to which digital channels provide attractive alternatives and opportunities for partnerships between money transfer services, governments and FinTechs to ease this challenge.

The activities of many entrepreneurs in Senegal require financial flexibility that banks and microfinance institutions find difficult to provide. Life would be much easier for people like Abdoulaye, if financial institutions were to partner with money transfer companies to create digital profiles and develop an alternative credit history to extend them credit. Read Abdoulaye’s story.

In this video, Brian Richardson – Managing Director, WIZZIT, South Africa, shares his views on the scope of m-banking in South Africa along with the challenges ahead for this model of banking. Highlighting the basic advantages m-banking brings to the unbanked: accessibility, affordability and availability, Brian talks about WIZZIT’s mission to provide not only transactional […]

This paper looks at how poor people use informal, semi-formal and formal sector savings systems and services to better manage their household income and expenditure flows.

This paper compares user-owned or ”common-bond” MFIs in West and East Africa with special emphasis on the savings services they provide.