Socio-Economic Challenges of Fintech-Driven Financial Inclusion in Southern Africa: A bibliometric analysis

Socioeconomic challenges associated with financial exclusion, digital transformation, and economic sustainability have intensified scholarly interest in the role of financial technology in advancing inclusive development across Southern Africa. Despite the rapidly expanding literature on fintech and financial inclusion, previous studies have provided limited systematic evidence regarding the bibliometric structure, thematic evolution, and collaborative research architecture shaping this field within the context of socioeconomic challenges in Southern Africa. This study aims to examine the intellectual evolution, thematic configuration, and emerging research trajectories of financial technology and financial inclusion studies in Southern Africa through a comprehensive bibliometric investigation. The descriptive corpus comprised 629 English-language publications indexed in Scopus during 2017–2025. Five retracted records were excluded from the thematic and network analyses, yielding 624 documents for those analyses. The study employs bibliometric performance analysis, document-level citation indicators, keyword co-occurrence analysis, thematic mapping, and science visualisation using R/Bibliometrix. The findings reveal an annual publication growth rate of 91.25%. China generated 75 publications (11.92% of descriptive output), South Africa produced 69 (10.97%), and international co-authorship accounted for 33.7% of publications. The thematic and co-occurrence analyses identify three principal knowledge groupings centred on financial inclusion and fintech, sustainable development and economic growth, and digital transformation and artificial intelligence. The word-cloud analysis shows that “financial inclusion” represented 10.8% of keyword occurrences, while “fintech/financial technology” accounted for 5.57%. The bibliometric corpus indicates growing scholarly attention to digital literacy, consumer protection, financial resilience, and sustainable fintech ecosystems and identifies priorities for policymakers, financial institutions, and researchers concerned with inclusive development.