Ghana is making progress in achieving universal financial inclusion as it currently places 1st in West Africa and 5th among 25 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), according to the 2021 World Bank Findex Report.
Data from the World Bank show that 68 percent of adult Ghanaians owned a bank account – whether mobile money or regular banking account – as of December 2021.
Per the report, 41 percent of adult Ghanaians had bank accounts as of 2014 but this shot up to 58 percent in 2017 and subsequently rose by 10 percent to 68 percent in 2021.
The report revealed that Ghana, Cameroon, Liberia, and Senegal were some of the countries that saw at least a 10-percentage point growth in mobile money account ownership since 2017.
However, the share of adults having bank accounts in the country has remained mostly stagnant since 2017.
“In Ghana, the share of adults having an account at a financial institution remained mostly stagnant since 2017, yet mobile money account ownership increased to 60% from 39% in 2017, boosting overall account ownership by 11 percentage points”.
World Bank
In Mauritius, 91% of its population had bank accounts of December last year, making it the first in SSA. South Africa (85%), Namibia (81%) and Kenya (79%) ranked 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, respectively in SSA.
The report further stated that mobile money accounts have become an important method to save money in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 15% of adults use to deposit money—about the same share that saves at a bank or similar financial institution.
Also, over 30% of adults in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda save money in a mobile money account. Meanwhile, about 1 in 3 mobile money account holders say they cannot use their account without help. Women are 5 percentage points more likely than men to need help operating their mobile money accounts, according to the report.
Rise in mobile money adoption in SSA
In Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money adoption continued to rise between 2017 and 2021, such that 33% of adults now have a mobile money account – a share three times larger than the 10% global average of mobile money account ownership, the World Bank stated.
Adoption and usage of mobile money services have spread beyond their origins as a person-to-person payment tool, such that 3 out of 4 mobile account owners in 2021 made or received at least one payment that was not person-to-person and 15% of adults used their mobile money account to save.
The list of countries surveyed in 2021 included: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Rep., Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
In 2021, 76% of adults globally had an account at a bank, other financial institution, or with a mobile money provider, up from 68% in 2017. Importantly, growth in account ownership was evenly distributed across many more countries.
This expansion created new economic opportunities, closing the gender gap in account ownership, and building resilience at the household level to better manage financial shocks, according to the World Bank.
Financial inclusion is a cornerstone of development, and since 2011, the Global Findex Database has been the definitive source of data on global access to financial services from payments to savings and borrowing.
The 2021 edition, based on nationally representative surveys of over 125,000 adults in 123 economies during the COVID-19 pandemic, contained updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services and digital payments, and offers insights into the behaviors that enable financial resilience. The data also identified gaps in access to and usage of financial services by women and poor adults.
