#128: Mobile Money in Africa

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2016

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cell phone ownership in Africa has ballooned over the last decade, bringing the benefits of the Internet to developing populations. In particular, mobile finances have taken off in places like Kenya, where the heavily-regulated banking system had long failed to serve entrepreneurs and low-income customers. What makes Kenya such an attractive place for mobile money? Could other countries benefit from adopting this approach? Scott Burns, Mercatus PhD Dissertation Fellow, joins the show to discuss. For more info, see Scott’s post on Alt-M.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm I'm in Schwarzenegger. On today's show,
0:09.2	mobile money in Africa. A cell phone ownership in Africa has risen dramatically over the last
0:14.7	decade. We're seeing more mobile financial resources and they're transforming the continent.
0:20.8	Joining me to discuss this is Scott Burns, a PhD dissertation fellow. more mobile financial resources and they're transforming the continent.
0:27.0	Joining me to discuss this is Scott Burns, a PhD dissertation fellow at Mercatus, a research center based at George Mason University. Scott, thanks for joining the show.
0:30.7	Well, thank you for having me on, Evan.
0:32.0	And I would like to point out that Scott was a fan of the show and reached out to me to be
0:35.2	on the show and here he is. So listeners, if you're a fan of the show and reached out to me to be on the show and here he is. So listeners, if you're a
0:38.0	fan of the show and you have something to say, do not hesitate to reach out because it helps me to
0:42.2	hear from you. But let's talk about mobile money in Africa. So you got a piece in Alt M. We linked to it
0:48.1	in the show notes of today's show called the Mobile Money Revolution in Africa. We talked a bit with
0:53.5	your colleague, Caleb Watney, from Mercatus about Bitcoin in Africa. We talked a bit with your colleague, Caleb Watney, from Mercatus,
0:55.8	about Bitcoin in Africa, but give us a sense of just how much the cell phone landscape in
1:02.7	Africa has changed over the last decade and why that's so important for having financial
1:08.2	resources on your cell phone. Yeah, so that's one of the most fascinating stories, I think, right now,
1:12.9	going on in economic developments in the world,
1:14.7	is just how fast cell phones have proliferated across the African continent
1:18.7	and throughout the developing world.
1:20.6	So if you go back in time to the early 2000s even,
1:23.7	cell phones were hardly ever seen in Africa.
1:26.0	The penetration rate for cell phones was one or two percent,
1:29.3	just vanishingly small compared to the developed world. But what you saw around the early 2000s
	...

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