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Cocoa Producers in Côte d’Ivoire: Cash vs. Digital

Branchless banking presents an enormous opportunity for smallholder cocoa producers in Côte d’Ivoire, a client segment that contributes to up to 10% of the countries GDP.

Agent Network Expansion: What Can We Learn from Cote d’Ivoire?

The mobile money market in Cote d’Ivoire has boasted impressive acceleration in terms of registered customers, but the number of transaction points in the distribution networks has also seen tremendous growth.

Digital Finance in Cote d’Ivoire: Ready, Set, Go!

On the surface, Cote d’Ivoire may seem like an unlikely contender to challenge the digital financial success in East Africa. However, the country has great potential to be the next digital finance success story.

Is Digital Finance Hitting its Stride in WAEMU?

Digital finance is advancing in WAEMU, but within the region there are eight countries all with unique markets facing disparate challenges. When it comes to mobile money and financial inclusion, the question for some is "where do you start?"

Learning from Smallholder Supply Chains in Côte d’Ivoire

IFC and Ecom, a global commodity trading company, interviewed more than 2,000 cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire about their income levels, food security, and other qualitative aspects of their farming lives. The results highlight some key challenges facing smallholder farmers.

Savers Deserve More Attention and Protection

Access to finance in the West African Economic Monetary Union and Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa grew significantly from 2001 to 2011. However, more attention must be paid to savings and savers.

How do Low-Income People in Cote d’Ivoire Manage their Money?

A survey of 1,000 low-income people in Côte d'Ivoire revealed interesting patterns around how Ivorians manage and approach money.

Mobile Money: Even Data Analytics Has Limitations

While quantitative data analysis is a useful first step in understanding active mobile customers, it is even more insightful when providers actually go and talk with their customers directly.

Deepening Financial Inclusion In West Africa

A few weeks ago the Central Bank of the eight countries of the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), BCEAO, shared the good news that in the last five years the banked population in the region increased by more than 5% from 9% in 2006 to 14.3% at the end of 2011. Postal banks and microfinance institutions that have a specific legal status in the region are now serving close to 9% of the population. The other 5% is served by commercial banks.

Côte d’Ivoire: A Perfect Time for Mobile Money?

Côte d’Ivoire has seen its mobile money industry make significant progress in recent years. The latest results from the sector suggest good prospects moving forward. At the end of Q3 2012, there were 2.6 million registered mobile money clients across all providers in the market. This post explores the recent market dynamic in this west African country.

Wari: A Local Platform Heads to the Global Market

This post is the second of a three-part series this week on the CGAP and the Mobile Money for the Unbanked blogs on the topic of mobile financial services in francophone West Africa. Partnerships in new markets have been critical to the success of their strategy and so far, it seems to be working. Wari conducts around 1.5 million transactions per day or 40 million transactions per month, the vast majority of which is occurring outside of Senegal.

Branchless Banking Country Notes

Over the past several months, we have taken a close look at the branchless banking industry in our focus countries.

The Last Frontier for Branchless Banking: State of Play in WAEMU

Access to finance in WAEMU is very low, even by comparison to other regions of Africa. The rate of bancarization announced by the BCEAO in December 2010 was 9.5% and 12.7% of the population had an account with an MFI.

An Alternative to M-PESA? Orange and Equity Bank Launch Iko Pesa

There’s been news of several new mobile money launches over the last few weeks. Digicel in Haiti has just launched its TchoTcho Mobile service. Its main competitor Voila has launched its service for use by relief organizations throughout the country.

West Africa Switches on Mobile Money: Headlines for June 22, 2010

We’ve been saying for awhile that mobile money will be less compelling in places where good alternatives to cash already exist, for example, in developed markets such as North America. Despite that, the folks who look after how payments get cleared has opened a door for mobile.