Women access to Digital Financial Services made easier

By ANN ZULU

WHEN it comes to financial inclusion in Zambia, women are financially excluded across both formal and informal services.

Compared to their male counterparts, women in Zambia are at a disadvantage in accessing financial services.

Although women make up 51 percent of the Zambian population, only 58 percent of women have access to formal or informal financial services (this includes banks, mobile money, savings groups combined) as opposed to 61% of men who have access to these same services.

To help address the situation, the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s (UNCDF) , which is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries has launched the Mobile Money for the Poor Programme (MM4P) in Zambia and recently held a workshop.

The UNCDF creates new opportunities for poor people and their communities by increasing access to microfinance and investment capital and the MM4P is a programme launched by agency in partnership with the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The MasterCard Foundation.

MM4P provides support to Digital Financial Services (DFS) in a select group of least developed countries (LDCs) to demonstrate how the correct mix of financial, technical and policy support can build a robust DFS ecosystem that reaches low income people in LDCs.

One of the key objectives of the programme in Zambia is to support DFS providers in the country to adopt a method of service delivery that suits women’s needs and wants.

At the workshop, UNCDF and representatives from various financial organizations including Airtel Money, FINCA Zambia, MTN Mobile Money, Zanaco and Zoona met to discuss one innovative approach, human centric design and iterative testing, that is changing how DFS providers approach product/service design and implementation to improve access of women to their products.

According to UNCDF Zambia Knowledge Management Specialist Uloma Ogba, for financial services, specifically DFS to be accessible and useful to women, they must be designed taking into account the needs, wants and aspirations of women, including low-income and rural women.

“At UNCDF, we believe that by adopting a human centric design approach which elevates the women to the “queen” status, we can promote increased financial inclusion for Zambian women.” said Ms Ogba.

And Airtel Zambia Sales Manager Alfred Phiri emphasised the need for increase in the uptake of digital financial services by women in the country.

Mr Phiri notes that with the support of UNCDF, Airtel Mobile Money has conducted product tests to address issues such as liquidity management and is taking steps to implement the results of these tests in its operations.

During the workshop it was also learnt that other corporations in financial services performed similar tests and research where the prevalent finding was that the process of understanding the customer mostly women was often neglected.

The UNCDF’s programme will not only improve women’s access to financial services, but will also promote financial inclusion for women and bring human-centred design to DFS which will improve the provider’s ability to provide services according the needs and wants of women.