By Rosemary Kimaku, Business Development Manager, Mobile Financial Services at Ericsson, and Mohit Bhargava, Mobile Money Marketing Lead

The World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2021 shows that the world has made considerable progress toward female financial inclusion in the last 10 years. The gender gap in formal financial account ownership across developing countries has fallen from 9% to 6%, highlighting that women are getting closer to financial equality.

Growth in account ownership by women is much faster than men and 68% of adult women in developing countries are now included in formal financial systems. In many developing countries, this growth in account ownership amongst women is mainly driven by mobile money.

Mobile money accounts have a simple registration process that requires less documentation and better affordability with zero fees and no minimum balance requirements. Consequently, in many developing countries mobile money services have become a leading alternative to banking systems. Data from Global Findex and FinScope studies corroborates this with reports showing that in at least 20 low- and middle-income countries more women have mobile money accounts than bank accounts. In 10 of these 20 countries, the leading mobile money service is powered by Ericsson Wallet Platform, our global fintech platform. In three of these countries, Rwanda, Uganda, and Ghana, more than half of the adult female population has a mobile money account. Furthermore, in six of 10 countries, 30% to 40% of the female adult population has a mobile money account.

Unsurprisingly, in most of these countries, less than 20% of the female adult population has a bank account. The numbers indicate that in these countries mobile money has contributed substantially to increasing the financial inclusion of women.

Mobile money helps to narrow the gender gap in financial access in some countries. For example, in Liberia the gender gap in mobile money account ownership is 8 percentage points, compared to bank or financial accounts where it is 19 percentage points. In Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon, and Liberia, more women than men have only a mobile money account.  For example, in Ghana 31% of women have only a mobile money account compared to 27% of men.

Service providers encourage the adoption of mobile money amongst women by offering services focused on women. Examples include grant distribution for girls’ education into their mother’s mobile money account, insurance and monetary support for healthcare, subsidy disbursement to women for shifting to clean cooking fuels, micro-loans for women entrepreneurs running small and medium-sized businesses, and many more. Mobile money also digitizes traditional financial tools mainly used by women like savings clubs, burial societies, and village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) making them more secure, transparent, and easy to use. In some countries, female merchants make up a considerable part of local markets. Mobile money enables these low-income merchants to go digital, accept mobile payments, and modernize their businesses at low-cost.

There are a few other steps required to increase mobile money adoption by women:

• All stakeholders including governments, NGOs, regulators, industry bodies, and mobile money providers should work collectively to roll out digital and financial literacy programs for women and create more awareness about the benefits and use of mobile money services.

• Raise the participation of women in the entire mobile money ecosystem. Mobile money providers should increase the proportion of female mobile money agents, enable more female merchants to accept mobile money, feature women in mobile money marketing campaigns, and have more female employees at all levels of mobile money organizations from technology to leadership roles. This will create a more female-focused and female-friendly environment and generate more trust and comfort amongst women consumers.

• Governments and mobile money providers should enable a collection of more detailed gender-disaggregated data. High-quality gender-disaggregated data can be a very useful tool to develop baseline targets, policies, and programs to reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion.

It is encouraging to see that mobile money enables equal access to financial services and works towards increasing the financial inclusion of women in many countries. However, this is just the beginning, and we need to increase the efforts multifold to fully close the gender gap in financial access. Ericsson Wallet Platform along with the mobile financial services it powers will continue focusing on leveraging and enhancing mobile money as a tool to drive full financial inclusion for women.

Wema Bank Plc has opened application entries for the fourth edition of its tech talent discovery and nurturing project among university students called Hackaholics 4.0.

Announcing the commencement of entries for Hackaholics 4.0 at a press conference on Tuesday in Lagos, the bank’s Executive Director, Digital Services. Mr. Tunde Mabawonku said just as the bank is innovating, it is also helping individuals and organisations to innovate to make the country better.

“Just as we redefined experiential banking with ALAT, Hackaholics is at the heart of our innovative project for start-ups. We are poised to host the largest campus hackathon this year.

“As we plan the next eight decades of Wema Bank, we need to innovate and help encourage others to innovate. We try to get the best and brightest and give the country ideas on how to transform our organisations to become world-class”, he said.

This year’s Hackaholics which is focusing on building finance beyond technology will be looking for entries with innovative solutions on how to solve gender violence and promote entertainment, among others.

Left-Right: Chief Digital Officer, Wema Bank, Olusegun Adeniyi; Divisional Head, Brand People, and Culture, Wema Bank, Ololade Ogungbenro; Executive Director, Digital and Retail Directorate Wema Bank, Tunde Mabawonku; Head Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility, Wema Bank, Abimbola Agbejule and Head Of Innovation, Wema Bank, Solomon Ayodele; at the launch of ALAT Hackaholics 4.0 press conference held yesterday in Ilupeju, Lagos.

Mabawonku said the bank, through the project, would be engaging 10000 tech entrepreneurs, producing 5000 solutions, creating 6 pitch centres, and having almost I million footfalls during the campaign

Also speaking, the bank’s Chief Digital Officer, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi said the bank has successfully disrupted the digital banking ecosystem by producing the first digital bank and creating unique experiential banking with ALAT.

“We have been driving with the mindset of innovation. We are looking to be an ecosystem of platforms, a hub for fintech and other players. We are moving to the next phase of digital unbundling”, Adeniyi said.

The Chief Transformation Officer of the bank. Mr. Babatunde mini, going down memory lane, said the Hackaholics program began in 2019 and its scope and teaching had since been expanded.

Mumini said the bank has been involved in creating solutions that solve society’s problems, just as it is leveraging the skills of young people to drive innovation.

The Banks’ Head of Innovation, Solomon Ayodele, said six universities would be covered this year as against three last year. The universities are Babcock University and Lagos State University. The University of Abuja. The University of Benin, the Federal University of Tech, Akure, and the University of Lagos.

Written by Rashidat Olushola Okunlade

Access Bank’s W Initiative has announced plans to celebrate the 2023 International Women’s Day to challenge gender stereotypes, call out discrimination, draw attention to bias, and foster women’s inclusion.

On yearly basis, W-Initiative by Access Bank is committed to inspiring, connecting, and empowering women to attain their full potential, Access Bank Plc will be hosting a conference in commemoration of the annual International Women’s Day (IWD) 2023.

The conference which will take place at the Eko Hotels, Victoria Island, Lagos on Thursday, March 23, 2023, 10:00 am is aimed at strengthening discussions around how women across all life stages can thrive through stereotypes to attain their full potential.

Participants will learn from vibrant and amazing thought leaders on the role they must play towards achieving gender parity by #Embracing Equity from a personal, sectorial, and industry-led perspective.

The International Award-Winning W-Initiative is Access Bank’s strategic pillar to foster the achievement of SDGs 5 by providing bespoke gender-friendly programs that inspire, connect, and empower women. The ‘W’ is a global movement and home to financial and lifestyle solutions for women across 5 segments- Women Professionals, Women, and Family, Women in Business, Female GenZ’s, and Quintessential Women.

Register here to join https://www.accessbankplc.com/women