Mobile Phone (Kenya)

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In 2007, Kenya’s Safaricom launched M-Pesa, a simple mobile phone service that allows credit to be directly transferred between phone users. M-Pesa has since spread throughout East Africa and India to become an international phenomenon. In Kenya, around 30 million people (from a population of 54 million) were using their phones for online banking or peer-to-peer payments in 2021. This has revolutionized life for local individuals and businesses:

Revolutionized for businesses

The equivalent of around one-third of the country’s GDP is now sent through the M-Pesa system annually.

▪ Some people in towns and cities use mobiles to make payments for utility bills and school fees.

▪ In some rural areas, fishermen and farmers use mobiles to check market prices before selling produce.

▪ Women in rural areas are able to secure microloans from development banks by using their M-Pesa bills as proof that they have a good credit record. This new ability to borrow is playing a vital role in lifting rural families out of poverty.

As the proportion of mobile users with internet access (rather than simply text messaging) grows, the population is gaining access to apps for healthcare, education, finance, agriculture, retail and government services.

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