Last week Thursday, 7th September, Enterprise Partners hosted a workshop for banks and others involved in Digital Financial Services (DFS). The findings of its Assessment of Transaction Pools for DFS. In this third blog: How to build scale in DFS in Ethiopia? According to the field findings and recommendation of the consultant, Anne Marie van […]
DFS: Promote Digital Savings as an Anchor Product
Last week Thursday, 7th September, Enterprise Partners hosted a workshop for banks and others involved in Digital Financial Services (DFS). The findings of its Assessment of Transaction Pools for DFS. In this second blog: Which Digital Financial Products should be launched in Ethiopia? According to the recommendation of the consultant, Anne Marie van Swinderen. She […]
The Secretive Characteristics of Digital Money
Digital money transactions have worldwide become the custom due to enhanced technologies. This system has seen use in most countries around the world and our nation, Ethiopia, is starting to follow in their footsteps, with the potential to largely enhance the country’s economic growth. In this blog, we will lay the focus on “privacy/secrecy” when […]
Encouraging Encounters With Merchants in Ethiopia
Digital Money is a new phenomenon in Ethiopia. Through my interaction with various individuals, I realized that the majority has either never heard about it or does not really know what it is. Interestingly, the lack of awareness about digital money does not particularly refer to certain segments of the society. From students through to farmers, they […]
Digital Money as a Headache Remedy
Compared to its neighboring countries, the adoption of Mobile Money Services has not yet gotten a strong foothold in Ethiopia. Despite its economic progress, mobile penetration is lagging behind. As of early 2017, there were three main providers of digital services with a combined registered group of around 3 million [1] (which is about 6% of the […]
Savings Groups
Through my field interactions with research respondents, I started wondering how they usually get loans. The first institution, which probably comes to one’s mind, is a bank. However, when I asked Khainza Nuru, a study participant in Mbale, her answer was ‘ekibina’, which means “group” in the local dialect and basically refers to Savings Groups. […]
DFS: Are We at a Historic Moment?
On September 7th, 2017 – Enterprise Partners hosted an event for banks and other stakeholders in Digital Financial Services (DFS): Assessment of Transaction Pools for DFS. The Consultant, Anne Marie van Swinderen, started by taking the audience more than 1000 years back in time, to China where bank notes became widely accepted as money. In […]
Being a Research Participant – An Opportunity to Take Stock of One’s Progress
On April 5th I traveled to Busede sub-county, which is a few miles from Jinja Town, to join field researcher Julius Kimalyo as he carried out the end line interviews, the final field activity of the FEDU research project. After a bumpy 20-minute ride on a “boda boda”, I arrived at the Namaganga trading center and […]
Smoke Signals
During my field visits to rural study participants, a frequent sight was the thick smoke billowing from the respondents’ kitchens. Some of these kitchens were straw-thatched mud houses, others were iron-roofed mud structures or even makeshift structures. The kitchen walls were often soot-coated, blackened by smoke from open fires. This blog is therefore dedicated to […]
Can Diaries Research Change the World?
“Yes, definitely” claims Anne Marie van Swinderen, founder of L-IFT, a company dedicated to exactly that – changing the world through diaries research. “Diaries research” is a bit of a misnomer. It is not, as the name suggests, about people keeping diaries themselves, neither is it a daily thing. In L-IFT’s diaries a field-researcher pays […]