Account ownership and the ability to transact digitally mark a meaningful shift away from cash, but they say relatively little about how people manage money over time. (Graphic designed on Canva)
When global leaders met in Davos-Klosters for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in January, discussions were organised around five themes, two of which focused on how to unlock new sources of growth and how to invest more effectively in people. In emerging economies, particularly in Africa, financial inclusion intersects with both imperatives.
Account ownership across sub-Saharan Africa has expanded materially over the past decade. According to the World Bank, roughly half of adults in the region now have some form of account, a share that has more than doubled since 2011. That aggregate figure, however, masks wide divergence at country level. In some economies, account ownership is marginal, while in others it has become near-universal, with rates ranging from as low as single digits in fragile states to well above 90% in more stable and diversified markets.
This variation points to an important reality that often gets lost in regional discussions: there is no single African financial inclusion trajectory. Over the five years to 2022, a subset of economies recorded rapid gains in account ownership, in many cases driven by the spread of mobile money and agent-based models that reduced the cost and distance of entry into the financial system. At the same time, other countries saw little movement, and some experienced outright reversals. As it relates to gender, the account ownership gap is wide, at around 12 percentage points, roughly twice the average seen across developing economies. Here too, progress has been uneven, with some countries closing gaps over time while others have seen disparities persist or widen. Women may enter the financial system, but they are too often locked out of the credit, capital, and wealth-building instruments that determine long-term economic security. Rather than merely calling this social inequity, we need to recognise that it is a missed economic opportunity.
The overall difficulty is that financial inclusion is still most often understood and measured at the entry point.
Account ownership and the ability to transact digitally mark a meaningful shift away from cash, but they say relatively little about how people manage money over time. If inclusion is to be treated as a development concern rather than an access metric, it has to be viewed more holistically, and once you follow the user journey beyond transactions, into saving and protecting against risk, the real scale of the challenge becomes much clearer.
According to Deloitte, insurance penetration across Africa stood at 1.47% in 2022, well below the global average of 5.6%, with South Africa a clear outlier at 11.54%. It is a similar pattern for savings. The OECD found that domestic saving rates across many African economies sit below the global average, with large volumes of saving taking place informally. In the absence of accessible formal mechanisms, households often rely on family and social networks as a primary source of financial support, reflecting both structural gaps in financial markets and deeply embedded relationship-based forms of lending.
This shows that the ability to transact does not, by itself, help households manage income across time or maintain financial stability when disruption hits. If financial inclusion is to translate into lasting economic outcomes, policymakers and financial institutions will need to think beyond access and take a more holistic view of how people build financial security over time. That means paying closer attention to how saving can be made more appealing, particularly for a growing youth population, and working to shift the perception that insurance is reserved for those at the top end of the income spectrum.
What is different now is the role technology can play.
Tools built on machine learning and generative AI are making it possible to engage with financial inclusion in ways that were simply not feasible at scale before. This opens the door to hyperpersonalisation, allowing financial services to move beyond one-size-fits-all models and respond more closely to individual financial realities, which is where the most meaningful gains in financial inclusion are now likely to be made.
Two barriers are often associated with financial inclusion: the cost of holding and using an account, and the requirements tied to know-your-customer and customer due diligence processes, which typically depend on formal identification, documentation, or transaction histories that many individuals and small businesses do not have. Even where accounts can be opened, the way risk is assessed often translates into higher pricing, putting credit and other financial products out of reach.
Predictive analytics and large, diverse data sets analysed through AI offer a different way of understanding financial behaviour, one that relies less on formal records and more on patterns in how people earn, spend, and manage money. Drawing on less traditional sources of information allows risk to be assessed more dynamically, while also creating space for products and services to be developed around individual needs rather than generic categories. Some banks are also beginning to use AI-driven tools to support financial literacy in more practical ways, offering personalised guidance on everyday money management and on how to access and use banking services. Delivered through chatbots, these tools lower the effort required to engage with the system, helping people build confidence and familiarity over time, which can have a meaningful effect on inclusion.
Approached this way, financial services can begin to support customers across their full financial journey, from transactions to saving and protection, using a more holistic and real-time view of what people need and when.
The objective, then, is not just to bring more people into the formal financial system, but to create pathways that support financial resilience and wealth-building over time. In economies like those across Africa, where development outcomes depend so heavily on household stability and long-term investment, that shift matters. It moves financial inclusion from a question of access to one of intergenerational economic participation.
Christine Wu is the interim Co-Chief Executive of Personal and Private Banking (PPB) at Absa Group