Leaving No Woman Behind? Interrogating Financial Inclusion Strategies for Women in South Africa and Kenya

Abstract

South Arica and Kenya have some of the highest levels of financial inclusion among women in Africa. While South Africa has primarily relaxed constrictions in its traditional banking system to advance financial inclusion, Kenya has leveraged novel digital channels to offer a range of financial services to the unbanked and underbanked. While literature abounds with positive accounts of financial inclusion of women, there exist peculiarities in the way that financial service providers extend their services and in the way that women experience financial services. This chapter thus moves away from the broad-brush approaches in the literature by highlighting nuances in the financial inclusion experience of women in the two countries. Zooming into the financial inclusion strategies employed in South Africa and Kenya, we make the case that their strength is also their Achilles heel. Powerful incumbent banks, popular as the “Big Four,” aided by a rigid regulatory regime beset the financial inclusion of women in South Africa. Similarly, while financial innovation undeniably narrowed the financial inclusion gender gap, “one-size-fits-all” digital products in Kenya have done little to close the gender gap as evidenced by peculiarities in the uptake and usage of the products. We argue that these drawbacks ultimately threaten the ability of digital financial inclusion in bringing financial health to women users.