Sérgio Santos, the Angolan minister of economy and planning, recently, invited the Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom to invest in the country.
Last week in a video conversation, Santos and Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, the general manager of M-Pesa Africa, alongside, Ogugua Adegbite, director of the strategy and international expansion of M-Pesa Africa discussed how the mobile payment solution( Safaricom) could bring financial inclusion in Angola.
But why M-Pesa? The answer appears to be in the role it could play in advancing financial inclusion.
According to Ecofin Agency, financial inclusion in Angola was estimated at below 30 per cent in 2019 and is still not growing fast enough, despite the granting of a mobile money license to operator Unitel. Nearly 80 per cent of the Angolan economy is said to be in the informal sector. Mobile money could supply a way to bring banking services to this area of the economy.
In addition, the National Bank of Angola, in the national plan for financial inclusion, wants to increase the number of citizens with access to basic financial services to 50 per cent of the population by the end of 2022. Some would argue that mobile money might offer an effective way to make that happen.
This was the reason, Santos invited Safaricom to be a part of a seminar that would be held soon in Angola where it would harness the opportunity and expand in the country.
M-Pesa’s involvement could also help to increase competitiveness in the national mobile money segment and offer a new source of revenue for the public treasury.
How Safaricom has responded to this request – and the investment opportunity it could offer – is as yet unclear.
