Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

In some parts of rural Uganda, a whole village will use one or two phones to bank, to contact relatives, to share money amongst themselves, to access loans, and simply to check weather reports. Low teledensity does not imply lack of mobile money use and spread. Freed from the expense of ownership and maintenance, an individual of a particular group or community will spend longer periods of time per use on the available gadget(s), hence generating more revenue not just for the individual or group involved, but for the whole village. Such collective use by a community makes the dream for financial inclusion plausible—even a reality—for rural life.

In this 2-part blog post series I present vignettes organized around three themes—life, identity, and community—through which mobile money and rurality is re-imagined. Mobile money inclusion is providing new tools to maintain existing practices and values, reshaping but also reinvigorating rural-urban ties, and along with these, new understandings of the rural. This is Part 1.