Africa's mobile credit revolution
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will the roll out of online lending stimulate economic boom or just a credit binge in Africa?
Ed Butler speaks to many of the businesspeople providing the continent with much needed banking services via mobile phones. They are optimistic that financial inclusion for small businesses, farmers and rural consumers could stimulate much faster economic growth. But is there a dark side to the sudden availability of east loans?
The programme includes interviews with Matthew Davie, chief strategy officer at the US micro-lending fin-tech Kiva; Omotade Odunowo, chief executive of the Nigerian digital wallet service Fets; Joshua Oigara, chief executive of Kenya's biggest commercial bank KCB; and Kevin Njiraini, regional director for southern Africa and Nigeria at the International Finance Corporation.
(Picture: Young African woman using a mobile phone; Credit: wilpunt/Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:06.2 | Today, the promise of a microlending boom in Africa. |
| 0:10.6 | We are extremely excited about this. |
| 0:13.2 | When you think about more than 75% of the continents, people are under 35 years. |
| 0:20.5 | They're the ones who are more likely to welcome |
| 0:23.2 | the use of financial services. Yep, how much easier lending could be boosting Africa's economies, |
| 0:30.1 | but could it also destabilise them? That's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:42.8 | On the BBC, indeed on this programme, we're sometimes accused of focusing too much on Africa's problems, the poverty, the hardship, the corruption. It is a tough place |
| 0:47.9 | economically, of course, the world's poorest continent by some margin, but maybe there's also |
| 0:52.6 | a positive tale that we're missing, a story of change |
| 0:55.7 | and rapid development brought about by something called financial inclusion. It's a term that |
| 1:01.6 | refers to getting bank services, getting affordable credit for ordinary citizens. Millions of poor |
| 1:07.8 | individuals, some two-thirds of Africa's population, have up to now been excluded. |
| 1:12.9 | The problems in just getting a loan to grow your business have been enormous. |
| 1:17.2 | And they still persist, even in developed economies like South Africa. |
| 1:21.0 | Take this lady, To Me Rabarji. |
| 1:22.9 | She runs a small printing shop in Johannesburg. |
| 1:25.4 | She wants to expand her firm to employ more people, |
| 1:28.3 | but she says the inability to get quick and affordable finance is holding her back. |
| 1:35.9 | Right now we need the large format printer, which does banners, stickers, corrects boards, |
| 1:42.6 | different types of boards. It prints, different types of boards. |
| 1:45.8 | It prints on different types of material. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.