Tag Archive for: banking

Photo Credit: The Economist

I participated in a very informative event this week in Washington DC where a researcher was sharing his experience on “Weather-Index based Crop Insurance for Smallholder Farmers in Ethiopia”. As I listened to the discussion as an agricultural information specialist, my concern was what is the role of mobile technologies in this?

According to the researcher, Dr. Shukri Ahmed a Senior Economist, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the concept of crop insurance has a long history from Asia with the leadership of India. However, due to the challenges associated with insurance in general and access to credit to smallholder farmers, the idea somehow waned. But according to Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4), there is overwhelming evidence that uninsured risk can drive people into poverty and destitution, especially those in low-wealth agricultural and pastoralist households. There is therefore a re-emergence of insurance for smallholder farmers across the globe.

The speaker gave a detailed background to the study in Ethiopia and the importance of partnership in the design and implementation of the study. The difference, however, with this new approach to crop insurance for smallholder farmers is the use of index (indices) to support the insurance service, and intervention against emergency situation. But at the same time the study is targeting farmers that are relatively better off and who are already engaged in the market but are not investing in insurance due to the anticipated risks. The outcome of the pilot study is expected to help protect the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, who are vulnerable to severe and catastrophic weather risks particularly drought, enhance their access to agricultural inputs, and enable the development of ex-ante market based risk management mechanism which can be scalable in Ethiopia.

Dr. Shukri Ahmed, Senior Economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Unbanked or Branchless Services

Adding another concept to an already very complex issue that tries to combine weather, insurance, credit/finance, and smallholder farming, should be carefully considered. But the key question is whether mobile technologies can play a catalytic role in this entire complex system?

Among the reasons for choosing a given area for the pilot study, include availability of Nyala Bank branches, the vulnerability of yields to drought, the availability of nearby weather stations, and the willingness of cooperatives in the area to purchase the new product. As the pilot study progresses, the possibility of scaling the project across the country is high. But what will be the implications for the absence of banks in the rural farming communities in a country that has an approximately one bank loan per 1000 adults? Can Mobile Banking help understand why smallholder farmers under-investment in agriculture?

A success story of mobile banking by  the Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) in Bangladesh was recently highlighted by the GSMA Mobile Money for the Unbanked. Interestingly, the story pointed out how DBBL learnt from Kenya’s famous mobile money program M-PESA. Kilimo Salama (KS) is an innovative index-based insurance product that insures farmers’ inputs (seeds, fertilizer, pesticides), and outputs (crop harvests), in the event of drought or excessive rainfall. It uses weather stations to collect data and implements SMS-based mobile technologies to administer and distribute the payouts. Mobile technologies will not only help with the financial transactions such as seen in Kilimo Salama’s case but also in support of the weather stations for timely and accurate decision making for pay-outs.

My conversation with Dr Shukri about the possibility of integrating mobile money into the project to address the challenge of absence of banks in rural Ethiopia, revealed the huge untapped market for Mobile Banking in that country. However, the success of such services depends on a convincing business case for both the banks and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Most importantly, however, is the state of telecommunication infrastructure and regulation in the country. These need to be in place for services and applications to thrive. With this huge investment

Outside Ethiopia, I believe it is time for African countries to take advantage of the increasing mobile phone penetrations in the continent beyond social networking to general development applications such as for agriculture, health, education, and rural development.

To listen to the audio recording of the event, visit Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The UK Guardian’s Killian Fox recently described the rapid rate at which cellphones became ubiquitous (and are used) in Africa as a “mobile economic revolution”.

Some people easily dismissed this assertion as another hyperbolic pronouncement, but there’s truth to it. The expansion of mobile telephony services and access over the last decade did more than merely open up avenues for efficient social inter-action among Africans. It reinvigorated, structured and even cultivated a more efficient culture of enterprise, across banking, agriculture, healthcare, education and governance, in some countries.

But, if this “mobile economic revolution” is to be fully realized, much more ought to be done. Deeper integration of technology into commerce, and greater expansion of telephony access and service provision are two things to consider, among others like financing and marketing that I have looked at in other blogs. The fact is, a half of all Africans still do not have access to a cellphone, despite the rapid expansion observed. This means the enormous economic benefits mobile phones bring to less developed parts of the world is still untapped in much of Africa. According to the London Business School, “for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people in a developing country, GDP rises by 0.5%”. So, the expansion in GDP experienced on the continent in the last decade, due to telephony expansion, is, at the very least, half of what it could be.

Furthermore, the depth to which the instrument (cellphone) has been leveraged for commerce is still limited, which means the economic potential is much greater than what obtains. The success of Safaricom’s M-Pesa in bringing banking services to the previously unbanked, for instance, is still limited to a minority of Africans. Further to that, global mobile money transactions is slated to exceed a trillion dollars by 2015. African economies are likely to benefit from cheaper transfer of remittances, and reduced transaction costs across borders, but those benefits will be much greater if more people have access to mobiles. Therefore, boosting the number of people on the continent with access to mobile banking must be a priority for policymakers, to safeguard the “mobile economic revolution”.

The deepening of the “mobile economic revolution” should be contextual. The provision of mobile-enabled financial services such as micro-credit is great, but it doesn’t always function in the poor’s economic interest. The use of mobile phones to offer traditional options, such as layaways, to help the poor improve their entrepreneurial endeavors is negligible. KickStart, a nonprofit that sells human-powered irrigation systems to entrepreneurial farmers, seems to be an exceptional case. The organization introduced an SMS powered layaway program in Kenya that allows buyers to set aside tiny increments via M-Pesa.

KickStart‘s approach to aiding farmers to finance their entrepreneurial endeavors seems much more sustainable, compared to existing micro-finance options, although the time factor is a drawback. However, the main point here is that, the “mobile economic revolution” must never leave the poor behind. The ways in which the individual’s long term economic livelihood is affected is key, if the larger objective remains that of sustainable development.

 

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