On the contradictions of Africa’s fintech boom: evidence from Ghana

Abstract

Since the pioneering role of Kenya’s mobile money service – M-PESA, a consortium of international development agencies, philanthropists, academics, tech corporations and governments – have led an optimistic account of a poverty-eradicating, prosperity-spreading power of financial technology (fintech) in the global South. In contrast, a growing critical IPE literature has demonstrated that the optimistic accounts are broad-brush and misleading. Drawing from recent theorization on digital financialisation and Marxian conceptualization of capital accumulation, this article shifts the focus of the Kenya-centered critical response to Ghana, the second largest mobile money market in Africa. Relying on quantitative data from the Bank of Ghana, and qualitative data from 42 semi-structured interviews, the article provides evidence to show that the mobile money boom in Ghana is underpinned by (1) customer indebtedness from digital microloans, (2) high transaction costs, (3) excessive taxation, and (4) a prevalence of dormant accounts. Collectively, the findings confirm the wider critical literature suggesting that, far from ending poverty and inspiring prosperity, the fintech-financial-inclusion agenda in Africa is opening new frontiers for a sustained and intensified capitalist exploitation of working-class labor in the continent.