Mobile Banking to Enhance Agriculture in Africa

Mobile banking, or m-banking, is one in an array of ICT tools that financial institutions are using to extend financial services to current and existing customers to increase convenience and reduce transaction costs for the financial institutions. It is one of several approaches to “branchless banking,” which includes other tools such as ATMs, POS (point of sale) terminals, and electronic bank cards. Given how dramatically mobile money services are growing in sub-Saharan Africa, they offer an unprecedented opportunity to significantly increase access to financial services and ease the flows of financial transactions within agriculture value chains. The challenge is to harness these services to increase the success of USAID funded agriculture development projects.

This is the fourth in a series of briefing papers produced by the USAID-funded Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) project under the FIELD-Support LWA.