Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the lowest levels of infrastructure investment in the world. Merely 29% of roads are paved, barely a quarter of the population has access to electricity, and there are fewer than three landlines available per 100 people (ITU,2009; World Bank, 2009a). Yet access to and use of mobile telephony in sub-Saharan Africa has increased dramatically over the past decade.
There are Ten times as many mobile phones as landlines in Sub-Saharan Africa (ITU, 2009).At the end of 2016, there were 420 million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The region accounts for nearly 10% of the global mobile subscriber base, a share set to rise given that the mobile penetration rate of 43% is significantly lower than the global average penetration rate of 66%. Although annual subscriber growth has now slowed to single digits, Sub-Saharan Africa is still growing faster than any other region and will record a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.2% over the five years to 2020, compared to a global average of 4.2% for the same period. By 2020, there will be just over 500 million unique mobile subscribers in the region and the penetration rate will have risen to 50% (GSMA, 2017).
The rapid adoption of mobile phones has generated a great deal of speculation and optimism regarding its effect on economic development in Africa. Policy makers, newspapers, and mobile companies have all touted the poverty-eradicating potential of mobile phones (Corbett, 2008).Ten years ago, it was quite rare and expensive to send money to friends and family distant apart.
The same could be said for savings, credit, and insurance all financial needs of even the poorest households. While figures on how many people lacked access to formal financial services in the early part of 2000 are scarce, in 2009 the Financial Access
