About the report

Ethiopia has lower levels of formal financial inclusion than its East African neighbours. Less than half of the adult population have an account at a financial institution. The revised National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS 2021–2025) aims to increase financial inclusion from 46% to 70% of all adults by 2025, in part by scaling digital payments through mobile money services. Ethiopia also aims to increase the use of digital payments from 20% of all adults in 2020 to 49% by 2025. Although mobile banking services have been offered by banks and micro-finance institutions since 2015, they have not achieved scale. In 2020, the Ethiopian government moved to liberalise the telecoms sector and adapted regulations to allow non-banks to offer mobile money services. This included mobile network operators (MNOs), which have had phenomenal success in increasing financial inclusion through mobile money in other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.