AN Information and Communication Technology (ICT) expert, Mr Ahmed Ogundimu, has said limited network coverage and low literacy levels are among factors hindering mobile money penetration in rural areas.
Ogundimu, who is a Senior Product Manager with Amazon, said another challenge was scepticism about digital financial services.
He said infrastructural deficit, which included inadequate internet access, remains a major plague faced by operators in the mobile money market in the country.
Ogundimu said coupled with these were other logistical issues that worsened the operation of mobile money in Nigeria, adding that these challenges had further widened the financial inclusion gap.
“Nigeria does not have adequate access points to financial services, making only about 23 percent of poor Nigerians living in rural areas within three miles of such access points.
“Also, low quality of mobile phone service in Nigeria makes users complain constantly of low quality of services, such as glitches in transactions and the issue of recurring network interruptions,” he said.
Ogundimu noted that a lot of people in the rural areas were excluded financially because they do not have adequate knowledge about mobile money.
To resolve these challenges, Ogundimu said it was necessary for mobile money providers to expand their rural agent networks and offer more localised and user-friendly services.
He explained that to sell mobile money services to people in rural communities, operators needed to consider the necessity of advertising these products in the local languages of the different communities they intended to operate in.
He added that to aid non-literate users, services could be sold to them using familiar images.
“Government and non-governmental initiatives aimed at promoting financial literacy and digital inclusion should be organised to contribute to the gradual penetration of mobile money services in these regions.
“The Nigerian government can also play a key role in expanding financial inclusion in rural areas. This can be done by providing incentives to financial institutions to establish and operate branches in rural areas,” Ogundimu said.
The ICT expert urged the government to invest more in telecommunications infrastructure for seamless transactions, saying it would go a long way in improving network issues.
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