Starting in East Africa and spreading across the continent, mobile money services have played a huge role in allowing people to transfer money and make payments, while agency banking has had a big impact in rural areas in particular. Moreover, both established and neobanks have invested heavily in digital platforms that make it easier for people to access financial services at any time and wherever they have a mobile signal.
Although regulators have not always been quick to support the possibilities offered by new technology, millions of people who had never previously held a bank account have entered the formal financial system for the first time. According to World Bank figures, adults in sub-Saharan Africa are now more than twice as likely to hold a bank account as they were in 2011.
Yet beneath this impressive progress lies a more uncomfortable reality. Across most of Africa, women remain a lot less likely than men to have a bank account, access to formal credit or savings. Banking service penetration rates have improved rapidly, but this success has not been equally shared.
According to the AfricaNenda Foundation, 61% of men had a bank account in sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, in comparison with 49% of women. This gap has actually grown from 7% in 2011 to 12% last year, suggesting that men have been more successfully targeted by financial inclusion efforts.
Originally published by African Business.