Jenn-mawia/State-of-Financial-Inclusion-in-East-Africa

# State-of-Financial-Inclusion-in-East-Africa # Name of contributors Jenipher Mawia # Description Financial Inclusion remains one of the main obstacles to economic and human development in Africa. For example, across Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda only 9.1 million adults (or 13.9% of the adult population) have access to or use a commercial bank account. Traditionally, access to bank accounts has been regarded as an indicator of financial inclusion. Despite the proliferation of mobile money in Africa and the growth of innovative fintech solutions, banks still play a pivotal role in facilitating access to financial services. Access to bank accounts enables households to save and facilitate payments while also helping businesses build up their credit-worthiness and improve their access to other financial services. Therefore, access to bank accounts is an essential contributor to long-term economic growth. This study provides an African perspective to an individuals financial outcomes specifically in East Africa, by examining the influence of demographic variables such as - area of residence, household size, age, gender, relationship with the head of the household, accessibility to a cell phone, marital status, level of education and the type of job an individual holds and also predict which individuals are most likely to have or use a bank account. A total of 23524 individuals were interviewed and univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis was done on the respective demographic factors on the data thereof. # Analysis Although all the nine demographic factors were analyzed, only household size, age, gender, relationship with head of household, marital status, level of education, accessibility to a cell phone and type of job showed significant ability to influence an individual towards owning or using a bank account. The study therefore concludes these factors are the major demographic factors that drive the regions' individual financial outcomes. It i …