Over the past two decades, developing countries, especially in Africa, have trailed other regions of the world in both financial inclusion and gender equity in financial access. Using a staggered difference-in-difference approach on panel data from 50 African countries over the period of 2004-2020, I investigated the average treatment effect of adopting mobile money on financial inclusion levels and different dimensions of female empowerment.
The reported results indicate that adopting mobile money has, on average, been successful in providing greater access to formal savings and credit and increasing a country’s level of financial inclusion. For female economic empowerment, the results are also positive in that they show that adopting mobile money has empowered women to increase participation in the total labour force through traditional labour channels, specifically through entrepreneurial activities.
Further, it is shown that after adopting mobile money, women embrace the choice of occupation and move into different market sectors. I observed that women primarily move from the industrial to the service sector and deduced that this is most likely a result of the range of employment opportunities offered and the growth of the service compared to the industrial sector. Female household empowerment was also found to be positively impacted by adopting mobile money as children’s education enrolment rates were observed to increase.
The robust findings of this study indicated that sub-Saharan Africa had greater effects for formal savings and female labour force participation whereas Northern Africa had greater effects for female self-employment. Both regions had positive effects for education enrolment. Overall, this study contributes to the advancement of the recent literature on the economic and social impact of mobile money in the context of financial system digitalisation.
07 91´óÉñ 2024