March 6th, 2025

Starting with the good news, the formal financial inclusion gender gap in Kenya has shrunk significantly from 12.7% in 2006 to 1.6% in 2024. This ranks as one of the lowest formal financial inclusion gender gaps in Africa and globally. Access to mobile money and digital financial services has been the most significant driver of this shift.

This good news, however, hides other details of the formal financial inclusion gender gap in Kenya. For example, in 2021, while the formal financial inclusion gender gap had shrunk to 4.2%, the financial health gender gap was only slightly higher at 4.8%.  In 2024, the formal financial inclusion gender gap had shrunk to 1.6% but the financial health gender gap had increased to 7.5%.

The two charts below show how the formal financial inclusion gender gap breaks down across Kenya’s 47 counties by comparing formal financial inclusion on the left and traditional banks accounts on the right. And the different shapes formed by each chart are very telling.  

The shape on the left looks like 2 inverted triangles, one surprise is that 20 of the counties have a higher percentage of women formally included than men. This is an increase from the 4 counties showing this dynamic in 2021. Averages are helpful but also do not tell the whole story. The 1.6% overall formal financial inclusion gender gap averages county results ranging from negative 20.1% in West Pokot to a positive variance of 11.4% in Vihiga. And even the words “positive” and negative” are not helpful as the ideal is that all counties are close to zero so that both men and women benefit from value-adding financial solutions.

The “shape” on the right looks more like a giant hill to climb. It starts at the bottom – 25% gender gap for both Kitui and Nairobi with a steep incline towards the small positive gender gaps in Nyeri and Meru. The average traditional bank account gender gap is -13.1% which is actually higher than the overall gender gap was in finance in 2006 (albeit at much lower rates of only 26.7% formal financial inclusion.)

So where do we go from here? How do we transform both of these “shapes” to form more of a solid line along the axis with balanced inclusion rates for all?

 

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