Globally, 74 percent of women are considered financially included. However, in Sierra Leone, the total financial inclusion rate is only 29 percent, and for women, it is even lower at 25 percent, according to the 2021 edition of the Global Findex report. The limited participation of women in the formal financial system, the low level of financial and digital literacy in the country, and the lack of financial products tailored to women are some of the barriers to women’s financial inclusion in Sierra Leone.

To address these barriers, the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) partnered with Orange Mobile Finance Limited (Orange MFSL), Mosabi, an education platform, and Empire Solutions micro-finance in November 2021 to improve the distribution of digital financial services in Sierra Leone, with a focus on women, youth, and low-income segments of the population.

At the start of the project, Orange had 9,000 agents, out of which only 360 were women, representing 4 percent. Increasing the number of women agents and developing digital financial services that cater to women’s needs could improve women’s financial inclusion, as experience and knowledge from other countries, such as Papua New Guinea, have shown.

In most developing countries, women are more comfortable performing financial transactions at access points staffed by fellow women due to social norms and cultural barriers. This use case is, however, yet to be established in Sierra Leone. "We have grown our Mobile Money services in Sierra Leone through many partnerships. With this new one, with UNCDF, Mosabi and Empire Solutions we have worked to create a platform to provide access to digital loans”. To learn more about Orange and the project in Sierra Leone, watch the video of David Mansaray, CEO of Orange Mobile Finance.

A year after the launch, the project reached its targets. Over 2,000 women agents have been recruited and trained across all 16 districts of the country, bringing the percentage of women agents to 15 percent of the total Orange agent database. Hawa Barrie and Hafsatu Wurie Bah are two women recruited during the project to be agents in Sierra Leone; here is how they got recruited and what they think about their new business.

Listen to Hawa Barrie

Listen to Hafsatu Wurie Bah

The project supported women agents in formalizing their businesses, a criterion for agent selection and recruitment. Field officers were also assigned to the agents to provide on-site technical and training support. Agent training modules with graphical interpretations were designed for the agents by Mosabi in the consortium. “Through Mosabi toolkits and gamified learning modules, previously underserved and excluded small businesses are empowered to engage with digital financial literacy training synchronised with their context and the products that can help them. Over the last year, we’ve also tailored our programme to boost agent networks’ productivity for partners like Orange to help increase the number of young women who can envision and realise agent roles as a career path." said Chris Czerwonka-founder and CEO of Mosabi Mosabi about Mosabi’s contribution to the project. For more on Mosabi in Sierra Leone listen to his short interview.

Over 10,000 customers, mostly women who live or do business around the agent locations, were trained in financial and digital literacy. These customers visit agent points within their catchment areas to perform their transactions. Over 500 customers who accessed the financial and digital literacy training also benefited from digital credit from Empire Solution’s digital credit product. The number of clients who could benefit from a loan was lower than initially planned due to hurdles in product deployment. The digital loan product enhancement took longer than planned because of system integration and other technical issues. In the future, digital product design and development should be allotted more time in the project design. Hannifer Appiah Kubi, CEO of Empire Solutions, explains in a short interview how the project benefited from the ongoing collaboration with Orange and Mosabi. “Leveraging, mobile technology, improvements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Empire solutions has developed digital credit products that reach the underserved in Sierra Leone. Empire Solution’s digital credit product, Lajor which runs in partnership with Orange Mobile Money, has served approximately 70,000 clients with over 500,000 loans advanced. Our collaboration with MoSabi also enables us to lend beyond the mobile ecosystem while reducing the risk of default.” For more on Empire, watch the interview of Hannifer Appiah Kubi, CEO of Empire Solutions.

The project also showed how the special commission structure, offered to field officers by Orange, can be a good incentive for recruiting and training women agents while ensuring that these agents are active. The sustainability of the women's agent business depends on several factors, such as assisting them in formalizing their businesses, good relationship management, and monitoring and supporting active women agents with credit to increase their capital float.

In the coming months, the focus will be on examining the hypothesis that women agents increase women's financial inclusion. The impact of women agents will be assessed through monitoring and evaluating agent performance in transaction volumes and values, commissions, customer onboarding, and retention. As Wycliffe Ngwabe, at UNCDF said in a short interview: “Going forward, we are looking at expanding our work in Sierra Leone by supporting the financial sector to improve the distribution of access points for the less privileged at the bottom of the pyramid and supporting them to have access to transformational financial products. We will also look at how we can design products with Village Savings and Loans Associations mimicking exactly how they operate, to reach people in rural areas”. For more about UNCDF in Sierra Leone listen to Wycliffe Ngwabe’s interview here.

Stay tuned for more results from this project.