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January 8, 2025

Data From the Global Findex 2021: Progress and Obstacles: Financial Account Ownership and Usage in Africa, 2011–2021

This note is one of a series on financial inclusion in Africa.1 It examines the state of financial account ownership and use in the continent’s five economic regions: Central Africa, East Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa.2 This note highlights data by subregion, and the underlying data for all countries is available here. We are grateful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation for providing financial support to make the collection and dissemination of the Global Findex 2021 data possible. We thank the UNDP Better Than Cash Alliance for their financial support of this note.

The continent has seen significant growth in financial inclusion over the past decade, particularly enabled by digital financial services delivered via mobile money and mobile banking. Yet the rate of growth and the factors driving it differ by region, and by the gender, income, education, and age of the user.3 North Africa, for example, has untapped opportunities when it comes to having access to and using digital financial services; and millions of adults across the continent still receive or make everyday payments in cash. This points to opportunities to increase financial inclusion through continued payment digitalization.

Financial account ownership increased steadily between 2011 and 2021

All five African regions have seen significant account ownership increases over the past decade, though the growth rate varies. Central Africa, which had the lowest average account ownership rate on the continent in 2014, has seen its share of adults with an account more than double to reach 33 percent. The other regions saw more modest but impressive average growth of around 50 percent across East Africa and around 30 percent across North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa (see figure 1).4 Since they all had different starting points, their current account ownership rates range from 33 percent in Central Africa to 66 percent in Southern Africa—all below the low- and middle-income economy (LMIC) average of 71 percent.

Map 1: Account ownership has increased in every African region since 2014

Adults with an account (%), 2021/2022