The Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution has released its 2016 Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) Report: Advancing Equitable Financial Ecosystems. FDIP evaluates commitment to and progress toward financial inclusion across a set of 26 geographically, politically, and economically diverse countries, including Malawi.
As authors John D. Villasenor, Darrell M. West, and Robin J. Lewis write, “Evaluating progress toward adoption of affordable formal financial services matters because financial inclusion is a key ingredient in promoting household welfare and broader economic development.” And with approximately two billion adults around the world lacking access to formal financial services, there is room for a great deal of improvement globally.
This year’s report, the second in an annual series, measures countries on four “dimensions” of financial inclusion: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and the adoption of traditional and digital financial services. Malawi received 61% of the total possible points across all four dimensions, meaning it ranked 21st out of 26 countries on overall score. Other interesting findings pertaining to the country include:
- While adoption of electronic payments in particular is low, the government of Malawi has made concerted efforts to advance financial inclusion, including through the development of its payments systems infrastructure.
- Malawi has the lowest GDP per capita (in USD) of the 2016 FDIP countries, and financial inclusion growth has been limited to date.
- Malawi has been recognized for developing a national financial inclusion strategy that provides a quantifiable goal relating to women in particular: specifically, to “[i]ncrease the number of women clients in the sector to a level of 60 percent.”
- Malawi’s financial inclusion strategy also includes several objectives related to financial literacy, including conducting a baseline survey on financial literacy, developing a financial literacy strategy, and establishing a national financial literacy network.