Serena Natile discusses financial inclusion, as an instrument for sustainable growth and stability while achieving social goals such as poverty reduction and gender equality. The development agenda presents financial inclusion to women as a precondition for securing their own, their families’ and their communities’ autonomy and future well-being. Serena Natile investigates this claim, the assumptions on which it is based, the institutions and narratives that underpin it, and the limits, as well as the potential, of financial inclusion regarding gender equality in the case of mobile money, and in particular of M-Pesa in Kenya.

Image courtesy of interviewee. June 4, 2019