Indigenous knowledge and digital financial inclusion: a comparison between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa

Emilie Bonhoure

Information Technology for Development, 2025, vol. 31, issue 2, 251-279

Abstract: M-Pesa is one leading example of mobile money services. It reveals the importance of digital financial inclusion (DFI) in countries still largely unbanked, and of institutional factors in shaping DFI. Yet, extant research has not investigated the combined effect of these factors, informal (indigenous knowledge) and formal (regulatory) institutions, on DFI. This study intends to do so leveraging the institutional theory and applying regression techniques to data from 1000 digital-finance users. It reveals different effects of institutional factors across regions. In Europe, strong formal institutions shape DFI. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), weak institutions combined with high indigenous knowledge increase DFI. These findings are crucial for countries’ development, as financial inclusion is considered a key enabler of several SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). They could help adapt financial-inclusion programs by including the indigenous-knowledge component in countries facing weak formal institutions, to maximize their chances of success in fostering development and growth.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02681102.2024.2384716 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:titdxx:v:31:y:2025:i:2:p:251-279

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/titd20

DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2024.2384716

Access Statistics for this article

Information Technology for Development is currently edited by Sajda Qureshi

More articles in Information Technology for Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().