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The campaign is premised on three pillars – convenience, relevance to communities and choice

Enacy Mapakame recently in LOME, Togo

PAN African banking group, Ecobank has unveiled a plan that aims to boost financial inclusion for those currently unbanked across Africa. The plan mainly targets people in rural areas and emerging small to medium enterprises. Speaking on the sidelines of the launch in Lome last Friday, Ecobank group CEO Mr Ade Ayeyemi said a large percentage of Africans have remained on the periphery, without access to banking facilities yet active in the economy. Now Ecobank’s thrust is to tap into that market through provision of affordable banking services in all countries in which it operates.

“Financial inclusion is something we talk about, not only in Zimbabwe or Kenya today, our responsibility is to find a way to have everyone included.

“This time we are not targetting people with a lot of money but even the smallest amount of money, that is how everyone can be connected to banking. Banking is not about just those in Harare alone, but everyone and our job is to create an opportunity,” he said.

In Zimbabwe and other African countries, the level of financial inclusion is skewed in favor of the urban population as opposed to the rural population despite having larger populations residing in rural areas.

The campaign is premised on three pillars – convenience, relevance to communities and choice.

Mr Ayeyemi emphasized the need for use of POS, ATMs, internet banking and mobile money to enhance efficiency and convenience in banking.

In line with this, the bank is targeting mobile banking to anchor the financial inclusion campaign in all the 36 countries it operates.

“We believe we have a responsibility to be socially relevant to communities we serve. We are also strongly committed to sustainable development of the region,” he said. In Zimbabwe, mobile perpetration is above 100 percent giving more scope for using mobile banking to tap into the unbanked communities. Yet an estimated 70 percent of Zimbabweans are still unbanked according to a Finscope 2014 survey. The survey further shows only 14 percent of micro-small to medium enterprises owners were banked and 1 percent adult population made use of capital markets.

Further, the World Bank consumer protection and financial literacy diagnostic report of 2014 reveals low financial literacy in Zimbabwe despite having a high rate of general literacy.

The Ecobank group is the largest pan African banking group with over 11 million customers and assets worth $23,4 billion. Its total equity is $2,7 billion.