Parents lining up to pay school fees in cash, lenders charging extortionate rates, and cash savings held under mattresses—these are some of the things residents in Africa have had to resort to due to financial technology not having yet fully expanded in the developing continent.
Statista estimates that only 48% of Africans will have access to bank services by 2022. Citizens are often forced to use inconvenient, wasteful and sometimes dangerous transactions as their first entry point into formal financial services.
Users can have control over their money by having access to a bank account, rather than just cash. Both governments and companies can use accounts to bring millions of people into the digitalized financial system.
A report by the World Bank states that digitizing agricultural payments would reduce the unbanked goods to the tune of approximately 125,000,000, with 16 million in Nigeria. Over 10% of adult population in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya is digitally enrolled. stillGet agricultural payments
The Global Findex team released a policy note about mobile money that showed huge potential financial gains for Sub-Saharan Africa. The study found that while 350 million adults don’t have an account in their region, 155 million claim to have a mobile phone. 200 million say they can access one at home. Most are located in West Africa, where mobile money has yet to take off, but 40 million live in East Africa, which has one of the world’s highest mobile money account ownership rates.
The Unbanked: Banking
In addition to African citizens’ limited access to their financial crisis, an estimated 494 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no form of legal identification. It is not just that those without connectivity cannot communicate with people outside their immediate area; it can also lead to poor healthcare, low education and general poverty.
In response, officials in the continent are starting to turn to a particular digital technology with transformative potential—the blockchain. By harnessing the power of the decentralized blockchains, the metaverse can give African citizens access to both finances and identifications through biometric digital identification (ID) systems. World Mobile is one company that believes internet access is an individual right.
Taking inspiration from pioneers throughout history, the company’s core mission is to lead a global movement toward digital inclusion. To achieve its goal, it plans to deploy a dynamic hybrid network of mobile assets that includes both aerial and terrestrial assets. It will connect and bank those who are not connected.
“Half the world is still unconnected. Rebooting is needed in the world of telecomms. Traditional networks with legacy systems and archaic business models are doing nothing to tackle the problem,”According to the website,
Future of Mobile Networks
Currently rolling out its technology across Africa and the world, World Mobile’s hybrid network strives to connect those that traditional networks have left offline. “With access to the internet, subscribers will gain a self-sovereign identity and all of the opportunities that connectivity offers, from digital currencies to education and more” the company states.
Access to internet will not only be available for subscribers in Africa, it will also make the service affordable, fair and sustainable. Users can connect to the internet using its decentralized and self-governed technology without compromising their privacy. Subscribers have the ability to own and manage their data, as well as their identity, so that they are able to access certain services such insurance, banking and borrowing.
Africa remains behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to accessing financial technology in 2022. Thanks to the emergence of blockchain technology, companies like World Mobile are pioneering platforms that are liberating African citizens’ access to financial technology through access to affordable, fair, and sustainable services. It won’t be long before the developing continent joins the rest of the world on the path to financial freedom.