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    Promoting Womens Financial Inclusion through Mobile Money Enterprises in Ghana

    Jun 14, 2024

    5 min read

    Access to Justice Gender & Social Inclusion Human Rights Africa
    Promoting Womens Financial Inclusion through Mobile Money Enterprises in Ghana

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    Fuseini lives in rural Ghana–far away from the nearest brick-and-mortar bank–and makes a living as a trader, processing rice while her husband farms. She is 40 years old and has five children, three of whom are living. And she is a typical client of Grameen’s Community Agent Network in Ghana.

    Like many in her community, she visits mobile money Community Agents regularly to withdraw funds and access business resources. She knows that Agents can be a source of digital financial information too, advising on how to conduct transactions or take out loans.

    But recently, she switched from having a male mobile money Agent to working with her neighbor Ayisha, a WE GAIN DFS+ Agent, and it’s been a game changer. She can disclose things with her that she couldn’t with a male agent–and feels comfortable discussing her children’s school fees and health issues. While it seems like a simple shift, this gender dynamic is important–not just when it comes for women to discuss mobile money transactions, but in other areas, too.

    The Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) initiative, Women Entrepreneurs in Northern Ghana Gain Access to Integrated Services via Agent Networks  (WE GAIN) program in Ghana,—which is led by Grameen in partnership with the American Bar Association Rule of Law initiative (ABA ROLI)—aims to train 90 female mobile agents, known as digital financial services plus agents (WE GAIN DFS+ agents) who can collectively reach 9,000 clients like Fuseini. As they are trained on and provide both digital financial services like mobile banking, and also health and gender-based violence reduction resources, the WE GAIN DFS+ Agents can build trust with other women in the community—and particularly, those who experience gender-based violence (GBV), which affects about a third of all women in that region.

    As part of our work in international development, we have a responsibility to dig into the gender norms and barriers that exist in a given region. What may be a steep barrier in one country may not exist in another. So Grameen, ABA ROLI, and its local partners–RISE Ghana, Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), MTN Ghana, and HealthKeepers Network–conducted a gender analysis to gain a sense of what our WE GAIN DFS+ Agents and their clients experience on a daily basis, and how we can adapt our services to accommodate gender norms and barriers.

    We found that:

    • There are laws and policies in place that support women’s equality and empowerment, as well as to access financial and GBV referral services, but there is limited availability of legal support and knowledge in the rural regions of Ghana.
    • Customary laws, which are upheld by local leaders and elders, continue to place women in subordinate roles to men. This affects rates of land ownership, income generation, and access to financial services.
    • Women in Ghana are often savers, and will pay others to save their money for them. Digital financial services enable women to protect and save their money without carrying it around or leaving their village.
    • Female merchants who can support customers to make digital financial service transactions, such as saving or withdrawing savings, earn commissions on the transactions, which increase their own revenue and income.

    Read the Gender and Inclusion Analysis:

    We also conducted a rapid needs assessment, which assessed challenges and opportunities for the people we serve and further used this information to inform project design. We found that:

    • Women are able to sign a contract, register a business, and open a bank account in the same way as men, creating a supportive policy environment.
    • Often, they seek out women’s savings groups, which are well known as a powerful way to bring women together and build their leadership skills.
    • Affordability, digital and financial illiteracy, trust of mobile money agents, and concerns about safety of their money and interacting with an agent of the opposite sex limit use of mobile money.
    • Limited access to business inputs and technical know-how, digital and alphanumeric illiteracy, reliance upon business credit by customers, shocks to the business, such as health, and limited family planning options and crime which narrows the work-day window, are challenges to starting and growing women’s businesses.
    • There is positive support for male engagement, such as including them in activities that mitigate GBV and provide support for victims.

    Read the Rapid Needs Assessment

    In September, Grameen held a virtual event—with representatives from ABA ROLI, MTN Ghana, GDCA, RISE-Ghana, and HKN, as well as from S/GWI—to go over these findings and discuss the project in-depth. If you’d like to know more about the project, you can find the recording here and below.

    *Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Government.

    The Women Entrepreneurs in Northern Ghana Gain Access to Integrated services via Agent Networks (WE GAIN) is a Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) consortium initiative. It is led by Grameen Foundation in partnership with the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative, private-sector network operator MTN, and three civil society organizations: Ghana HealthKeepers Network (HKN), Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), and Rural Initiatives for Self-Empowerment Ghana (RISE Ghana).

    Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) is a global consortium to advance the status of women and girls, led by the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) in close partnership with the Center for International Private Enterprise, Grameen Foundation, and Search for Common Ground. WAGE works to strengthen the capacity of private sector organizations (PSOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) in target countries to improve the prevention of and response to gender-based violence (GBV); advance the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda; and support women’s economic empowerment (WEE). In this context, WAGE provides direct assistance to women and girls, including information, resources, and services they need to succeed as active and equal participants in the global economy. WAGE also engages in collaborative research and learning to build a body of evidence on relevant promising practices in these thematic areas. To account for the deeply interconnected nature of women’s and girls’ experiences, WAGE’s initiatives employ approaches that are highly collaborative, integrated, and inclusive. WAGE is funded by the U.S. Department of State Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. ​

    The materials contained herein represent the opinions of the authors and editors and should not be construed to be those of either the American Bar Association unless adopted pursuant to the bylaws of the Association. Nothing contained herein is to be considered as the rendering of legal advice for specific cases, and readers are responsible for obtaining such advice from their own legal counsel. These materials and any forms and agreements herein are intended for educational and informational purposes only.