A Contextual Analysis of the Growth of Financial Inclusion in Zambia

This study analyses the spectre of financial inclusion which has seen its drive of embracing several individuals, households and community or citizens of Zambia in general. The issue of poor communities in developing countries such as Zambia has been of concern, where the vast majority of the populations have for a long time been financially excluded. However, the coming of new platforms such as mobile money transactions have made a difference in the livelihoods of so many people in Zambia by bringing them into formal financial systems. By and large, they have for many years depended on informal financial systems such as “Kaloba†and “Cilimba†which attracted huge amounts of sacrifices and were not registered in the formal financial systems. The vast majority of the citizens in Zambia failed to approach formal banking institutions to obtain credit, which they would plough into their businesses, this is because they lack collateral against which to guarantee their loans. And this has been the major reason why the majority of the population resorted to informal banking systems used by private credit lenders of finances who charged them high rates of interest and offered no prospects of future sustainability. The study found that women were more financially excluded than men, the more educated people were, the more they participated in financial inclusion and urban areas were more financially included than rural areas.