According to a Statista Report of 2022, the percentage of Africa’s population with access to banking and financial services was some 23% in 2012. This percentage rose to 35% in 2017 and 48% in 2022. Statista notes it obtained the information from an African Digital Banking Transformation Report in 2023, which indicates that more than half of the continent’s population remain unbanked and use cash services to make or receive payments for their wares and/or services.
The growth of accessibility to banking and financial services was mostly due to mobile banking, which originally started as a facility for transferring airtime between mobile accounts. The lack of developed banking services in many parts of the continent such as the Horn of Africa States, East Africa and even West Africa, soon led this facility to become a money transfer system, that expanded over time. This eventually expanded to other markets as well, including the developed markets.
In Africa and especially Sub-Saharan Africa, due to the lack of fixed communication infrastructures for wired internet access, most digital banking takes the form of mobile banking, as Africa Business reports. According to a GSM Association report in 2022, Sub-Saharan Africa remains a world leader in mobile banking in terms of live services, subscribers and transactions. The GSM Association noted that as of 2022, the global live services stood at 315 of which Sub-Saharan Africa contributed 154, registered accounts globally stood at 1.6 billion of which Sub-Saharan Africa stood at 763 million, and global active (30-day) accounts, transaction volumes and transaction values stood at 401 million, 65 billion and US$ 1.26 trillion, respectively. Sub-Saharan Africa contributed 218 million, 45 billion and US$ 822 billion respectively, which makes the region a leader in mobile banking.
Africa as a whole including North Africa, was responsible for nearly half of the world’s ..
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