Can Mobile Money Facilitate Cash Transfers to Farmers and the Rural Poor in the COVID-19 Context?

Abstract

Mobile money is widespread across Africa. The GSMA reports that around half of the 1 billion mobile money accounts worldwide were registered in Africa in 2019. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) alone, mobile money transactions exceeded 456 bn USD in 2019, two thirds of the global total. With the COVID-19 pandemic limiting options for providing relief to the world’s poor, development organizations are looking to mobile money as a way to disburse aid. Besides offering a fast and costeffective way to transfer money, mobile money can offer benefits to women and farmers, and may also serve as a path to connect the “unbanked” to formal financial institutions. At the same time, mobile money cannot bethe only solution: its adoption varies across countries and it is limited to those with mobile phone access.