Mobile money, M-Pesa, and the Sustainable Development Goals

Francesca Giliberto and Diane Holt

Chapter 14 in The Elgar Companion to Social Innovation and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2026, pp 296-313 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter explores how those in poverty contexts utilize more informal ways to manage their access to financial service and the use of M-Pesa, a groundbreaking mobile money transfer and financial services platform. Mobile money innovations such as M-Pesa have transformed financial services (such as remittances, payments, and savings) across sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Kenya. Our chapter offers a novel perspective by mapping and exploring M-Pesa against the backdrop of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a focus on the poorest and most marginalized in subsistence environments. We draw on fieldwork observations in Kenya over the last twelve years to provide insights on how we have seen M-Pesa being used in subsistence environments and in their society more generally. We also examine how M-Pesa has evolved to facilitate a spectrum of socially innovative products and services and the role that diverse contexts can play in such social innovations.

Keywords: Informal Finance; M-Pesa; Kenya; Mobile Money; SDG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035326037
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