International Youth Day 2022: The Role of Youth in Promoting Financial Inclusion in Africa

The African Union defines “youth” as a person between the ages of 15 and 35. With 70% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population under the age of 30, Africa has the youngest population in the world. With such a thriving young workforce, the continent’s economy has a chance to grow exponentially, but only if future generations are given the tools they need. It is crucial that young people participate in decision-making processes and are offered many opportunities for employment and innovation.

Depending on their needs and life stage, access to financial services can empower young people and improve their well-being under the right circumstances. According to research, children begin to develop good financial habits as early as age seven.

Research by the OECD for the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion shows that young people are more likely to choose non-traditional financial service providers because they often have weak ties to the formal banking sector, both in sub-Saharan Africa and around the world. It’s no surprise that this generation is driving fintech adoption globally, considering they’ve never known a world without mobile, web, and app-based services.

The study further revealed that; one in three Internet users in the world is under the age of 18 and, worldwide, 71% of young people and only 48% of the general population use the Internet. Many national governments, including those of Costa Rica, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece and Spain, have explicitly recognized Internet access as a human right, because access to online information and services has become so crucial.

To Cellular (www.Cellulant.io), we see fintech collaborations as a way to advance financial inclusion, business expansion, and overall economic development in Africa. We work daily to open up options for people to become financially empowered and self-sufficient by giving global, regional and local businesses the rails they need to take ownership of their financial journeys.

We see collaborations with Fintech companies, especially those founded and led by young people, as a tool to promote financial inclusion and growth for individual businesses as well as the continent of the African economy as a whole. As evidenced by some of our recent partnerships, young African founders in Africa are making significant strides across various sectors to drive financial inclusion;

In the gig economy:

The unique financial platform for the workers of Africa, ImaliPay (www.ImaliPay.com) has partnered with Cellulant for its payment infrastructure and solutions in Kenya and Nigeria. Founded by 2 young Africans, Tatenda Furusa (https://bit.ly/3QoO9tw) & Sanmi Akinmusire (https://bit.ly/3zQi3Q8), ImaliPay promotes financial inclusion by enabling ImaliPay users to access financial services faster through Cellulant’s payment rails while creating an ecosystem where construction workers can create a safety net around their work. through savings, credit and insurance that boost their productivity. and economic empowerment.

Cellulant is also the payment processor for Grey (https://bit.ly/3JNRakz), a fintech startup backed by Y-combinator, which powers its payments to thousands of gray customers. Gray offers a unique international money transfer service that allows its users to quickly send and receive international payments without restrictions. Gray was launched in 2021 by Idorenyin Obong (https://bit.ly/3zK17uE) and Femi Aghedo (https://bit.ly/3zOl1Vr), who wanted to help Nigerians exchange easily in local currency and access foreign currency in their accounts.

In the retail sector:

Leveraging Cellulant’s footprint across the continent, where we are present in 35 countries, Market strength (https://bit.ly/3AhDfzZ) has partnered with Cellulant to provide additional revenue opportunities for informal retailers by allowing them to be agents for key financial services, as well as access payments, savings, investments, insurance and buy-it-now and pay-later products. Founded in 2018 by Tesh Mbaabu (https://bit.ly/3QmKE6O) and Mesongo Sibuti (https://bit.ly/3C3ZJG8), MarketForce is an all-inclusive B2B commerce platform that enables informal traders in Africa to digitally and conveniently source, order and pay for inventory, access finance, collect digital payments and to earn extra money by reselling digital financial services such as airtime, electricity tokens and bill payments through its RejaReja app.

In the remittance sector:

At Cellulant, our goal is to simplify the way payments are made by ensuring that they are made in the most transparent way. This transparency is also required in the remittance space, hence our partnership with Nala (https://www.nala.com) to facilitate seamless cross-border payments and dramatically reduce the cost of sending money from the UK and US to Africa. Nala is a Y-Combinator backed company, founded by Benjamin Fernandes (https://bit.ly/3SGQ7XL), which provides an app for Africans living in the UK and US to send money to the continent seamlessly.

Cellulant continues to power payments across the continent, one transaction at a time, helping businesses explore how evolving digital payment solutions can help create jobs, increase efficiency in service delivery and encourage the financial inclusion of our young people in order to develop payment in Africa. sector and stimulate economic development.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Cellulant.

For more information contact:
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About Cellulant:
Cellulant is a leading pan-African payment technology company providing alternative and locally relevant payment methods for global, regional and local merchants.

We provide a single API payment platform that allows businesses to collect online and offline payments while allowing anyone to pay with their mobile money, local and international cards or directly from their bank.

About Ting:
Tingg is the single payment gateway in Africa, making it easy to receive and execute payments; enabling businesses across Africa and around the world to deliver seamless payment experiences to their customers.