WHY NOW ?

It is now well known that financial illiteracy afflicts both developing and developed countries although in different measures. Several surveys in countries like UK, Australia, etc. have found out that many people are taking on financial risks without realising or understanding it, and in fact are very poor managers of money. The scale of the problem of financial ignorance afflicts both developed and emerging economies alike but the case for Africa cannot be overemphasized. An African-style financial crisis will be humanitarian disaster we cannot wait to react to but to be proactive towards.

Dr KC Chakrabarty (Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India) puts this in context:

“2.5 billion adults, just over half of world’s adult population of 4.7 billion, do not use formal financial services to save or borrow. 2.2 billion of these unserved adults live in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.. Of the remaining 2.2 billion adults who are financially served, a little more than 800 million live on less than US$ 5 per day.  With such estimates of the dimensions of the financial exclusion problem, and the understanding that achieving financial inclusion is not possible without financial literacy, the promotion of financial literacy requires an even greater urgency”