In his delivery of the 4th FSD Kenya annual lecture on financial inclusion internationally recognised entrepreneur and business leader, Julian Kyula, discusses the world of fintech from an African continent perspective and the journey we must embark on to participate in how the digital world is changing.

With its launch in 2007, M-PESA changed the way Kenyans transact with each other. In doing so, impact studies found that it significantly improved the ability of social networks to help people manage shocks

In countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, India, and Mexico, there is momentum to increase consumers’ ability to access, manage, and control their digital identity and history.

Up until now studies concerning mobile money and financial inclusion have focused largely on aggregate adoption rates and usage trends. Few have shed light on the ways in which women, men and young adults (men and women ages 18-25), use mobile money differently.

Kenya’s more successful mass market financial solutions have demonstrated the importance of social values by enabling poor Kenyans to manage their money in ways that cultivate their visions of well being.

This study was originally published by GSMA on their wesbite.

FSD Kenya commissioned Oxford Policy Management (OPM) to conduct an in-depth impact assessment of their savings groups programmes which were undertaken in collaboration with two international non-governmental organisations, CARE and Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

FSD Kenya invested substantially in supporting savings groups (SGs) based on the hypothesis that these kinds of informal services are more accessible to underserved markets.

2016 marked the first year of FSD’s strategy for the period 2016 to 2021. The financial landscape in Kenya has evolved in ways far beyong the vision of FSD Kenya at our inception in 2005.

This report outlines the findings from a two-year study by FSD Kenya to understand the costs for banking services in Kenya. Two rounds of mystery shopping surveys were completed in October and November of 2015 and 2016
to build a database and measure the costs for basic bundles of transactions such as opening, running and closing bank accounts.

Financial services associations (FSAs) are rural community-level member based semi-informal financial institutions, that are a hybrid of savings and credit cooperative organizations (SACCOs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs).

The report gives an overview of FSD Kenya’s proposed programme of activities and major issues surrounding financial inclusion during 2016 and highlights of our initiatives.

Sending money to Africa is more expensive than anywhere else in the world, according to new research due to be published at this week’s Global Remittance Conference in New York. The report argues that existing technology – like regional automated clearing houses, remittance payment processing hubs and aggregators – could all make sending money from the UK to Africa much, much cheaper.

Across Africa, business leaders increasingly point to the importance of attracting and retaining top talent to compete and win in the marketplace. In Kenya especially, organizations struggle to recruit efficiently and effectively when they post a job online, they are often inundated with a high volume of applications from mostly low-quality candidates, and picking candidates feels like a subjective process prone to bias and inconsistency.

FSD Kenya and CARE Kenya jointly designed a project for implementation in Laisamis, Marsabit county, applying the graduation approach. The objective of the project is to test use of market based approaches to building the livelihoods of poor households.

This paper lays out a framework for measuring access to digital financial services (DFS) provided via cash-in/cash-out agent networks in an ecosystem.

Rafe Mazer was the speaker at the 2nd FSD Kenya annual lecture on financial inclusion. His presentation shared how we can develop our own “test and learn” – the way in which financial service providers and regulators collaborate to allow for new solutions – for consumer protection.

The research is based on a long-term series of five surveys undertaken on M-Pesa in Kenya supported by FSD Kenya and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Policymakers, academics, industry players, donors and other stakeholders gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Thursday 8th December for the 2nd FSD Kenya annual lecture on financial inclusion.

The financial services sector’s attitude towards small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), is changing. SMEs form a significant part of the potential finance market in most countries, including Kenya.

M-Shwari (meaning ‘calm’ in Kiswahili) is a combined savings and loans product launched through a collabo­ration between the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) and Safaricom.

One of the key reasons why banks are challenged in serving SMEs appropriately, is that they lack an understanding of the evolving needs of fast growing SMEs.

How exactly do financial services impact low income Kenyans? In this note, we extract the stories of eight respondent households from the Financial Diaries.

Self-employment is a major source of income for low income Kenyans, and Financial Diaries respondents are no exception. When we talked to respondents in 2015, two years after the close of the original Diaries, those whose economic lives were improving pointed to business returns as one of the main drivers of their success.

Credit information sharing arrangements (‘CIS’) have emerged worldwide as an effective mechanism to improve access to credit by reducing information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders and improving the quality of credit assessments made by lenders. Since 2009, Credit Information Sharing Association of Kenya (‘CIS Kenya’) has been developing the system of credit information sharing in Kenya.

In late 2015, we followed up with Financial Diaries households to check in on their economic lives two years after the initial Diaries study ended. We wanted to know how they are doing now, the factors driving changes in their economic lives, and the role that financial services and financial choices were playing in their economic trajectories.

This report draws on Financial Diaries data from India, Kenya, and Mexico to enhance the field’s understanding of women’s financial lives, and to highlight provider-led opportunities to better serve this important market segment.

Enthusiasm around the once-popular “Africa Rising” narrative is abating in the face of slower-than-expected growth, macro volatility deriving from continued reliance on raw material exports in many countries, and the reality of persistently high inequality.

23% of sub-Saharan Africans are living in “cusper” households that get by on $2-$5 per person per day. This map shows their total percentage per country (relative to the overall country population) and size in millions