Research reveals that Kenyans have poor financial health

“Most Kenyans have bank accounts that do not have money; they have access to Digital financial services; and they have mobile money loans.”

This was revealed by Mr. Simon Gaitho, Head External, Fiscal and Financial Statistics, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics at the opening ceremony of a four-day Financial inclusion conference that was held at the UoN Confucius Institute on Tuesday, 8th November, 2022. The Conference was organized by Central Bank of Kenya in partnership with KNBS, FSD and the University of Nairobi, Department of Economics.

On his part, Prof. Robert Mudida, Director Research, CBK, emphasized on the timeliness of the conference citing that, ‘It’s about time local researchers researched and consumed research solutions locally on Financial inclusion and #Finaccess; He lamented, ‘This is a culmination of a 9-months journey since we put out a call for papers and we only got 11 research papers in response all over the country.”

He urged the Industry, academia and the Private sector to closely work together and for universities to rightfully continue researching and sharing their research data wiith industry for local solutions to local challenges.

He concluded by saying that Universities are important in the policy making process. The four papers that were presented were the only papers that came close to what the Central Bank put out.

UoN Staff and Student win USD 1000

The winner from the paper presentations announced at the end of the conference was Dr. Dickson Wandeda, Lecturer UoN & Kefa Simiyu, Master’s Student UoN,  who presented on ‘Explaining gambling behaviour among the youth in Kenya.’

‘Financial health in Kenya, beyond financial Inclusion’ was presented by Juneweenex Mbuthia, a UoN PhD student, ‘Financial health and nexus with digital financial services: Deconstructing the gender gap’ by Dr. Davis Bundi Ntwiga, Dept. of Mathematics, UoN, ‘Utilization of mobile money services and financial inclusion in kenya (evidence from 2021 finaccess survey data)’  by Florence Nelima Simiyu, PhD student UoN and Milimo E G Davis, Master’s Student UoN were the other research papers that were presented at the Conference.

From all the papers presented, it was clear that, Kenyans are yet to experience #Inclusivefinance even with all the Digital Financial Services available and accessible.

The Conference that culminated at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies (KSMS) saw the FSD Kenya launch the FinAccess Household Survey County Perspective Report.