Leveraging the pandemic digital finance dividend for better access in Sub-Saharan Africa

The global mass of unbanked people —that is, they do not have an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money provider — declined from 2.5 billion in 2011 to 1.7 billion in 2017 reaching about 1.4 billion in 2021. Given the importance of financial development for growth and poverty reduction, it is imperative that financial inclusion, a critical piece in this relationship is deepened. In 2019, the World Bank estimated that roughly 648 million people around the world languished in extreme poverty, that is, they survived on “less than $2.15 per person per day”. The global distribution of the poor is uneven concentrating in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, in 2015, most of the extreme poor lived in five countries — India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. The COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the poverty-reduction gains made globally since 1990 by increasing the number of people in extreme poverty by about 70 million. As if this blow was not enough, the effects of climate change and the war in Ukraine continue to exacerbate the plight of the poor through energy and food crises. Worse still, the pandemic has not been gender blind because increased care work for women and their higher participation sectors that suffered the most increased their exposure to job losses than their male counterparts due to.