Across Africa more and more people — from urban start-ups to hard-up villagers — are now spending, saving and planning for the future through banking services offered by mobile phone companies. "The only means of receiving money from Monrovia is through mobile money," the farmer told AFP. Africans are "leading in the world" in their uptake of mobile banking services, Mitsuhiro Furusawa, Deputy Managing Director of the IMF told AFP at a recent conference on promoting access to financial services in Dakar, Senegal. Around 11 per cent of Africans now have a mobile banking account, according to the IMF, rising to 60 per cent in Kenya. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has described mobile money fraud as "a huge problem," citing a Kenyan Central Bank study that showed 37 per cent of mobile money transactions were fraudulent compared with 10 per cent by banking agents.

Source: Daily Nation September 28, 2016 15:28 UTC