ladiposamuel/financial-inclusion-in-africa

# Financial Inclusion in Africa 🌍 ## Project Overview 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 14% of adults) 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 enable households to save and make payments while also helping businesses build up their credit-worthiness and improve their access to loans, insurance, and related services. Therefore, access to bank accounts is an essential contributor to long-term economic growth. Access to financial services is crucial for economic development and poverty reduction. This project explores financial inclusion in Africa, focusing on predicting whether an individual has access to a bank account. By leveraging data, this project aims to uncover insights and build a predictive machine learning model to address the challenges of financial accessibility. ## Objectives - Perform **Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)** to identify trends and insights about financial inclusion. - Build and evaluate a **Machine Learning Model** to predict the likelihood of a user having a bank account. - Provide actionable recommendations based on data-driven insights. --- ## Project Workflow 1. **Data Understanding and Cleaning:** - Inspect the dataset for missing values, outliers, and inconsistencies. - Preprocess the data for effective analysis and modeling. 2. **Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA):** - Analyze patterns in demographics, income, and geographical data. - Visualize key trends using Python libraries like `matplotlib` and `seaborn`. 3. **Feature Engineering:** - Select and create relevant features to im …