Financial Inclusion Strategy Focus in Kenya

Abstract

Inclusive financing strategy is the delivery of financial services at affordable costs to sections of disadvantaged and low-income segments members of the society. Previously, the main stream Commercial Banks had left out low income earners who constitute a big percentage of the Kenyan population. Development through Financial Inclusion in Kenya aims at improving the standard of living of the people. Improvement in living standards has not been confined to economic gains, or increments in per capita income. It has certainly involved improvements of people to social, cultural and political spheres of life. Rural development involves the transformation of the economic, social, cultural and political conditions of the rural people for the better in order to enable them actively participate, consciously bring about their development, take their own share of benefits and sustain such benefits for long. Surprisingly, however, two notable issues remain constant across the foregoing half-a century in attempts to address poverty and equal opportunity. About one billion people globally earn per capita income of less than one dollar per day. Increasingly poverty worsens the problems of the poor in the world today. Particularly in Sub Saharan Africa, a sharp contrast of increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, men and women or urban and rural people. Financial inclusion Strategy is the delivery of financial services at affordable costs to sections of disadvantaged and low-income segments members of the society. As a result, companies in India have developed m-payment systems on the lines of M-PESA, a mobilebased financial service, in Kenya, to increase financial inclusion by providing deposit and withdrawal services to customers in remote areas. These have increased mobilization of money in form of capital for investment to rural areas which is inaccessible by big commercial banks.