Digital Financial Inclusion and Market Development in East African Community Economies

This volume draws together several papers addressing current issues in financial inclusion and market development in East African Community economies. The papers were written as part of a collaborative research project led by the African Economic Research Consortium through the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This collaborative volume is not only of policy relevance, but also timely as the papers study and detail financial inclusion and market development in the East African region that can be used to advance knowledge base and policy drive for suba-Saharan Africa (SSA) economies. The papers also explore how digitization fundamentally changed the nature of how financial services are delivered, with new financial sector actors, the development of digital ecosystems, and how they interoperate. In line with its mandate of strengthening local capacity for conducting independent and rigorous inquiry into problems facing the management of economies in subSaharan Africa, AERC, therefore, utilizes its collaborative research model to ring together important research contributions bearing on the question of financial inclusion and market development in East African Community (EAC) economies. These contributions shed light on the rapid evolution and the changing nature of financial services, that has raised significant issues for policy makers to address related to innovation, regulation, competition, privacy, taxation, exclusion, and monetary policy. The chapters in this volume, written by economic experts in the discipline of financial inclusion and market development, characterize financial market developments as well as electronic payments interoperability for lessons that can guide policy drive.