The Social Meaning of Mobile Money: Navigating Digital Payments, Savings and Credit in the Global South

by Janaki Srinivasan, PhD, IIIT-Bangalore and IMTFI Fellow

"The Social Meaning of Mobile Money," Chapter 7 of Data-Centric Living: Algorithms, Digitization and Regulation, edited by V. Sridhar; November 30, 2021; Routledge India, 344pp.

ABSTRACT 

Financial transactions have been an integral part of people’s everyday transactions the world over. Whether in the form of cash, credit, plastic cards or today, using digital platforms, these transactions continue to both structure and be shaped by the existing social order . Using a “social meaning of money” framing , this chapter draws on examples from around the world to better understand how people give, receive and save money in the Digital Age. In the process, it attempts three shifts in focus: (1) from the inherent value of monetary technologies to how this value is constituted in practice within specific constellations of norms, values, power relations and resource distribution, (2) from the use of digital platforms to the integration of their use with non-digital artefacts in practice, and (3) from the innovativeness of technology design to the innovativeness of its users. The chapter finds that while mobile financial tools and associated data may well be making the world of financial transactions more inclusive in some ways, they simultaneously risk excluding certain categories of people, practices and geographies from the economy. By alerting us to the promise and perils of newly introduced modes of transacting our finances, this chapter will urge its audience to think more realistically about how to better design such tools and the policies regulating them.

Download full chapter online here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003093442-7/social-meaning-mobile-money-janaki-srinivasan

This chapter is part of the collection: Data-Centric Living: Algorithms, Digitization and Regulation, edited by V. Sridhar and is available online. The book explores how data about our everyday online behaviour are collected and how they are processed in various ways by algorithms powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). The book  investigates the socioeconomic effects of these technologies, and the evolving regulatory landscape that is aiming to nurture the positive effects of these technology evolutions while at the same time curbing possible negative practices. The volume scrutinizes growing concerns on how algorithmic decisions can sometimes be biased and discriminative; how autonomous systems can possibly disrupt and impact the labour markets, resulting in job losses in several traditional sectors while creating unprecedented opportunities in others; the rapid evolution of social media that can be addictive at times resulting in associated mental health issues; and the way digital Identities are evolving around the world and their impact on provisioning of government services. The book also provides an in-depth understanding of regulations around the world to protect privacy of data subjects in the online world; a glimpse of how data is used as a digital public good in combating Covid pandemic; and how ethical standards in autonomous systems are evolving in the digital world.

A timely intervention in this fast-evolving field, this book is useful for scholars and researchers of digital humanities, business and management, internet studies, data sciences, political studies, urban sociology, law, media and cultural studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, and science and technology studies. It is also of immense interest to the general readers seeking insights on daily digital lives.

Loy Loy: The Financial Education Board Game for Everyone

By Mrinalini Tankha, Portland State University on the Consortium of Practicing and Applied Anthropologists

Ethnocharettes, role-playing, simulation games, and other embodied pedagogical strategies are receiving increased attention in the field of anthropology. They are also increasingly being used to teach the basic principles of money and finance. These experiential teaching tools provide learners an opportunity to “switch sides” and take on the role of people facing financial hardships. This creates empathy and a more nuanced and critical understandings of socio-economic problems.

Loy Loy: The Savings Board Game

Loy Loy (“Money Money” in Khmer) is a financial education board game developed by a team of anthropologists and economists at the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at the University of California, Irvine, the Department of Banking and Finance at Monash University, and the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University. Loy Loy is a role-playing game where players take on the roles of Cambodian women workers in a Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA), earning monthly wages while making monthly contributions to their local savings group. Each month a different player gets a turn to take the pot of savings collected by the ROSCA. As players go through the game, they are hit with unforeseen expenses, but also collect windfalls and have a chance to invest in assets. Intended as an antidote to monopoly, the end goal of the game is for players to collectively save enough money to purchase a garment factory together. The game forces players to cooperate and support one another; everyone loses if any one player goes bankrupt!

Expense and Asset Cards

Loy Loy provides a window into the complexity of financial decision making for people living on the edge of poverty. It educates players about alternative and collective forms of finance where community relationships act as safety nets and provide more immediate ways of confronting economic hardship. In a creative and fun environment, the game demonstrates the ways money and financial instruments are socially and culturally embedded in value systems, mutual obligations and negotiations of morality, while also teaching basic savings and money managing skills and financial literacy concepts such as risk management, income smoothing through credit, value return on investment, and liquidity.


Loy Loy is intended for a broad audience, from high school and university students to financial literacy advocates, educators, and policymakers in non-profits, banks, businesses, and government engaged in financial education programs. Loy Loy is therefore not only an innovative active learning tool for anthropology students but also an example of anthropology in action that breaks out of the ivory tower to educate a wider public engaged in poverty alleviation and financial inclusion.

Pilot testing Loy Loy at my Cultures of Money & Finance course at Portland State University

Loy Loy is currently in the pilot-testing phase of product development. It has already been tested at several universities, international development conferences, credit unions, community organizations, NGOs and foundations. It was also recently on view at the British Museum as part of an exhibition titled Playing with Money: Currency and Games.

Members of The Cambodian Family Community Center in Orange County playtesting Loy Loy

Please buy the game and join us in playtesting Loy Loy! We would also love to receive your feedback. This contributes to the iterative design process and will enhance the experience and playability of the game.

To purchase the game: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/loy-loy-the-savings-game

 Loy Loy website: http://loyloy.org

For more information, contact: Mrinalini Tankha mtankha@pdx.edu or imtfi@uci.edu.

Read more about Loy Loy at the Geek Anthropologist, Analog Game Studies, LA Times, Medium, and IMTFI.

View original post here: https://www.copaainfo.org/post/loy-loy-the-financial-education-board-game-for-everyone

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JOIN US! Next Friday, November 22nd

12-4pm at the AAAs in Vancouver

For those attending the American Anthropological Association (AAA) conference 
Loy Loy has an installation on

11/22/2019 from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM 
CC EAST | Exhibition Hall A  | East Convention Level

Come by the table, check out Loy Loy, and 

get stamped with IMTFI's very own 3-D Harriet Tubman stamp from Dano Wall!

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Fintech apps: Shaping the future of financial literacy?

UC Irvine researchers conduct study with five popular fintech apps to determine how Americans interact with financial advising apps

UCI students share their experiences with fintech apps in focus group.
Photo credit: Jenny Fan

We all know we should be saving for the future. But what does that mean? Should we be contributing to a retirement plan? And if so, what type of retirement plan?  Or should we just be putting money into a savings account? And how much should we be saving each month? What if there is nothing to save?

As Kristin Wong, personal finance journalist, wrote in the New York Times, “Many of us grow up learning that money is one of a few topics — like politics, sex and religion — that you should avoid in polite company. You don’t brag about your net worth. You don’t share your salary with colleagues. You try not to ask your friends about their rent, even if it helps put your budget in perspective.”

April is Financial Literacy Month, and it so happens researchers in the School of Social Sciences have been asking whether new smartphone apps are actually teaching people about better financial habits.

FINANCIAL ILLITERACY IN AMERICA

Without a trusted resource to learn about financial literacy people often feel overwhelmed by budgeting, debt management, and trying to meet savings goals. The Federal Reserve Board's 2018 Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households found that 40 percent of Americans say they cannot cover a $400 emergency expense, or would do so by borrowing or selling something.

Those who are interested in managing their personal finances often turn to apps and robo-advisors from financial technology companies, commonly called fintechs. Popular apps, such as Mint, claim to help users learn about budgeting and establishing personal financial goals. Since 2008 the number of new fintech companies in the US, and around the world, has soared.

DECIPHERING THE ROLE OF FINTECH

Building on a rich portfolio of research on how people interact with money and financial technology, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) and the Filene Center of Excellence in Emerging Technology at UC Irvine conducted a study to dig deeper into fintech apps, the experiences they offer, and how users respond to them.

“With the unbundling of banks, there are a lot of fintech companies popping up and taking on roles traditionally held by banks. Many are providing personal financial advice through these new technologies, but we know very little about actual user interactions with them,” says Melissa K. Wrapp, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine. “An app on a phone to budget or invest can be tremendously helpful, but you also have to be wary of what other information or sales motives could be imbedded within apps.”

Wrapp works as a researcher for Bill Maurer, anthropology and law professor and dean of the School of Social Sciences at UC Irvine. He’s also a Filene Fellow who performs research for the Center for Emerging Technology to look far into the future to connect credit unions with the most impactful technology and drive forward-thinking business decisions.

“It’s important to understand how people use these apps because we just don’t know if they encourage better financial behavior or lead people down the wrong path,” says Maurer. “My hypothesis going in was that these apps are almost like training wheels—and that people would graduate from them after a time and seek financial advice from more traditional sources like a bank or credit union.”

PUTTING FINTECH APPS TO THE TEST

In a pilot study, twenty-seven participants used one of five fintech apps for 30 days and reported their experiences. Some apps were personal budgeting apps and others were for investment management. The group included UC Irvine undergraduates, graduate students, and staff. Several participants were completely new to financial management apps, while others had some previous experience with fintech apps.

"We started the project with preliminary interviews, then held a focus group half way through the study to see how the experience of using the app was going," Wrapp says. "During the exit interviews, many participants mentioned that the focus group conversations were as valuable to them as using the app itself because, for many, it was the first conversation they've ever had with people about how to manage their personal finances."

While many participants indicated that they are now actively seeking out more personal financial education, Maurer and Wrapp will be presenting the complete research results at the Center for Emerging Technology and Filene's Spring i3 "The Future of Trust: How Technology Will Make it or Break it for your Credit Union" meeting in Seattle, WA on May 29-30. Their discussion will examine behavior and patterns of younger consumers’ use of financial apps to manage their money, and how credit unions can identify best practices to shape their own mobile apps.

-Megan Boettcher for UCI School of Social Sciences

See original post at: https://socs.ci/financialliteracy2019

“Capitalism is so much easier!”— Learning savings through playing a board game

By Farah Qureshi and IMTFI/Loy Loy Team at UC Irvine in the Geek Anthropologist

Loy Loy: The Savings Game in Washington D.C.!

Staging of Loy Loy at the AnthropologyCon Salon in Washington DC

Julia had been waiting until the last round to take her pot of money from the others. She was trying to get 50 Loys from every player to buy the coffee cart for extra income. After passing the star square it was savings group meeting day. She bid 50 and each player was obliged to give her the money, but the request was met with resistance. Earlier in the game, Chris had threatened to leave the savings group when Julia did not lend him money to buy a pig. Her high bid was a gamble completely depending on the players’ solidarity, so she held her breath while Chris’ deliberated his options. While playing, they had all learned that trust was crucial to the game, but she also knew he would not survive long alone. In the end, Chris resentfully handed over his 50 Loys to Julia, it was her first asset purchase anyway, and helping her would overall help everyone. 

Welcome to Loy Loy: The Savings Game (loyloy.org) where you play a Cambodian female worker trying to save up money with the other players to purchase a garment factory together.

In November 2017, our team from UC Irvine’s Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) carried a role-playing board game to the American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) annual conference in Washington D.C.. Loy Loy (which means “Money Money” in Khmer) is a financial education tool being developed by IMTFI to teach players how one type of rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA) works. Similar to Monopoly, you receive ‘payday’ money upon each circulation of the board, which represents one month in time. However, unlike Monopoly, all players both move collectively with a single placeholder representing time and save together to win by purchasing the $5000 garment factory before the maximum number of months is up. Your progress depends on random events and expenses (such as medical expenses), with occasional opportunities to purchase income generating assets (for example, a pig) despite the pressure to maintain your personal funds. If any player reaches bankruptcy, the game is over for everyone. All players are challenged to come together and reach the goal collaboratively to win, which you can do through extending loans to one another or paying one another’s bills.

As anthropologists like Clifford Geertz and Shirley Ardener have famously written, and as generations of ROSCA members and development professionals have experienced, ROSCAs are commonly used in low-income communities across the world but can differ dramatically from country to country. In East Africa, for example, members of the ROSCA (or chama) make sure that money is separated and stored in a box. All participants pay an equal amount each month, as payouts are all equal. Mexican and Mexican-American tandas provide a unifying social space, encompassing a form of community as well as consistent sharing of funds. In Cambodia, factory workers form a kind of bidding ROSCA. In this kind of ROSCA, each individual contributes towards a collective savings pot, for which each member of the group then bids by offering to repay at a rate of interest they’re willing to offer to receive the pooled funds. In Loy Loy, ROSCA day falls once each round to award one player funds from the pot, instigating haggling and bidding wars between players. Once a player has ‘won’ the pot, they cannot enter a bid on the next ROSCA day until each player has had a chance at winning.

The idea for the board game developed during a closed-door workshop for IMTFI fellows, "Getting Beyond the Survey: Ethnography and the Art of Seeing," where participants convened to share their in-progress research and discuss methodology. A creative group exercise materialized issues found in observations of payment practices in different field sites around the world. You can see the inception video here:

Games are recognized as a valuable tool to communicate complex social dynamics. Allowing students to participate, interconnect and play creates an immediate and ongoing feedback mechanism where failure is reframed as iteration so that learning happens by doing. In this case the game teaches you about your own interactions and relations with money even as it offers a window into the everyday economic challenges and financial practices of people like the Cambodian garment workers who inspired it. As a player, you’re responsible for both negotiating and preparing for expenses that turn out to be impossible to cover using the regular wage income that you’ll receive. Most players realize this within a few turns and begin to develop their strategies while playing, either forming as many close social connections as possible or bidding large on ROSCA days to receive loans and trying to hoard.

The game is engrossing: players are absorbed into a virtual reality constructed through their characters and ROSCA community. In both groups, players passionately embodied their characters while forming new friendships. Unique and surprising banter always appears as each player justifies their reasoning for deserving the money. The game encourages very particular creative thought and debating skills! We ran two testing sessions for interested gamers while at the AAAs, one in the lobby of the hotel where the conference was being held, and the second as invited guests at the AnthropologyCon salon for gaming and games at the conference. Sharing Loy Loy at the AAAs was a fun experience. I found it immensely valuable to receive feedback from anthropologists before and after each session, and in what follows, in the full blogpost I offer just a few reflections on what we learned.

For detailed reflections from the AAAs and background of Loy Loy, read the full blogpost in The Geek Anthropologist here: https://thegeekanthropologist.com/2018/01/26/capitalism-is-so-much-easier-learning-savings-through-playing-a-board-game/.

Interested in keeping up to date, learning more or helping us distribute Loy Loy? Please join us on LoyLoy.org. To purchase Loy Loy, follow this link to the Game Crafter site.

Comics help women become super savers in India: see the pages

Research by IMTFI fellows Deepti KC and Mudita Tiwari part 2 featured in The Guardian Visa Partner Zone 

Deepti KC and Mudita Tiwari's  comic books to help women from low-income communities to save money features eight illustrated tales document the financial problems – based on real life in Mumbai – that the female characters face, and how they resolve crises through managing and modifying behaviors.

Comic books about characters like themselves help women in India and other developing economies learn about personal finances. Photograph: IMTFI and IFMR LEAD

"From the slums of India, two comic book heroines have sprung."
Researchers found that any tool meant to educate women about the power of a safe, informal banking channel must appeal to children and women, be respectful, and show the challenges that female entrepreneurs face when managing their income without access to convenient financial services. 

A comic book and illustrated characters mirroring these women provides the perfect, immersive vehicle. So Tiwari and KC worked with worked with Creative Rats, a design and illustration company based in Baroda, India. With its creative director, Ritesh Gohil as illustrator, the comics tell stories of two relatable characters – Saraswati, a vegetable vendor, and Radha who works at a factory making thin, crisp wafers called “papad”. Both work in a big urban slum."

View pages of the comics in Part 2 of this blogpost from The Guardian please visit:

http://www.theguardian.com/visa-partner-zone/2016/feb/03/comics-women-financial-saving-banking-education-literacy

View Part 1, "See you in the funny papers: women love comics about financial literacy" 

Full report of their research can be found here. 

Financial Literacy through Comic Books in Dharavi & Bihar with Deepti KC

In March of 2015 IMTFI arranged for a comprehensive visit to India to gather updates on four of their sponsored research projects, introduction can be found here. Developed with research in the Dharavi slums of Delhi, this second of four case studies takes a look at financial literacy and rural women in Bihar with Vanya Mehta and Deepti KC. 

(Left to Right: Vanya Mehta and Deepti KC)

Deepti KC of of IFMR has had a long-standing interest in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai where she has studied both site-specific cash economies (and the feasibility of introducing mobile or electronic payments) and the impact factor of financial knowledge, including knowledge derived from specially designed financial literacy comic books for male migrant workers and for female proprietors of small businesses. She has now teamed up with human rights activist and journalist Vanya Mehta to continue and refine an effective approach for disseminating financial knowledge tailored to specific populations. As Deepti has argued in a blog post, mobile money in India still lacks the brand recognition that it has in Kenya and there is a greater need for "knowledge platforms" in the country. Deepti has also worked with her fellow IMTFI fellow Mudita Tiwari to develop simple and engaging materials for raising awareness about digital money management and general financial literacy. According to Deepti, Mudita asked, "Shall we create a comic book and test if we can encourage women to save more?" and then "the rest is the history!"

In sitting down for an interview for this blog post, Deepti emphasized how much she had learned from her IMTFI mentoring and how the anthropological perspective in considering multiple points of engagement has been invaluable to her. "IMTFI has been very useful; it really taught us about the ethnographic approach, so before going in and just data collecting, we can find more than we might in a regular structured questionnaire." People can "communicate more about their lifestyles" when a research methodology is used for "mixing qualitative and quantitative," as she first did when working with IMTFI colleague Mani Nandhi. (See more about Mani's research on rickshaw pullers in another blog posting in this series). "I would not have scheduled five visits for these financial literacy tools with a more conventional survey."  

Deepti affirms that "making multiple trips to build trust" needs to be prioritized. The kind of information you get is totally different. Yes, the same budget can collect data from thousands of women, but let’s not get greedy about the numbers." She has made an effective case for getting to know subjects in deeper and more nuanced ways and has also received funding for her projects from The Ford Foundation.

According to Deepti, this mixed methods approach has been particularly important for not thinking about "access" to financial literacy tools too narrowly, particularly when barriers to financial inclusion are not constituted merely by straightforward inabilities to open accounts or push buttons on a cell phone. "At first I thought the problem was access. Now I understand that access is not the issue; the problems are cultural. It's about a lack of other kinds of information, a lack of handholding support. Funding from IMTFI allowed me to work at the interhousehold level and to notice that when we are pushing these financial products to women, we may be disturbing their position in the household and causing domestic disputes."

Deepti has focused on a fundamental question: "How should we empower women?" To do so, she argues that it is important not to ignore "how their husbands behave" and acknowledge unintended consequences of development work that could even be correlated to incidents of domestic conflict. Analyzing dynamics on the intrahousehold level can also be important for customizing requirements for financial literacy products more effectively. "I would also like to understand the role of daughters in motivating mothers to save, because the more we know about what is going on inside, the more we know about what is going on outside."

Deepti also shared a more existential reason in which IMTFI support has been transformative for her. "It has made me more compassionate. Anthropology teaches you about seeing them as people, not just data. When you are giving that respect and trying to understand why that person is trusting, you are gaining trust and opening up. When you achieve that comfort level, they will tell you where they are hiding money. But you have to be very human and respectful." But building this "personal connection" isn't always easy, because "as a researcher you are not supposed to have emotions."

Vanya explained how her research interests grew out of her interest in Dalit politics. In the interview she characterized herself as a relative newcomer: "I just joined in January to help run these projects on the ground. I had worked as a journalist and had conducted my own project with 216 households, in Hyderabad, working on public policies with scheduled castes. There are 37 or 38 different scheduled castes in Andhra Pradesh. By looking at four different scheduled caste neighborhoods, I could see community level differences that went beyond any questions about access to government benefits. It's about what kinds of jobs are they getting." (For more about scheduled castes, which are official designations given to various groups of historically disadvantaged people in India, such as the Dalit people who have been subject to discrimination as  "untouchables," see this site from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment).

During elections, Vanya worked for the website TwoCircles.net. "It was founded by a Muslim guy for giving more space to Muslim issues. I was the first non-Muslim staff, and I chose to look at lower caste experience in India with long-form pieces."

On a bright Monday morning in a small village in Bihar Deepti K.C. and Vayna Mehta were checking in with the financial literacy team of surveyors and trainers who were organizing storytelling activities designed to cover a wide range of formal and informal money management practices. Small ruminants wandered around nearby. (See the work of other IMTFI researchers for the importance of goats  for financial well-being). Unlike printed matter that is merely disseminated to provide basic information through visual communication, the special comic books in plastic sheaths that the trainers used were designed to actively engage unbanked people.

Through the comic books, Deepti hopes that women with limited literacy can still get the message that "everyone should save" and be able to prepare for unexpected events through "saving small amounts on a daily basis." Trainer Rekha was a lively interlocutor with an expressive face and voice who tried to bring the story to life. She says that she has also changed her own financial behavior as a result of being part of the team and now herself uses a financial diary to budget herself.

We began at the home of a woman in "Group E," the group of subjects who were randomly assigned to receive all the services that the field team provided to rural women: financial diaries, lock boxes, and literacy training with the comic book. She had received a machine from the government to start a tailoring business with her husband. A sign on the door warned that activities were being videorecorded, as we waited in her sitting area while she completed her puja, the prayer ritual of devout Hindus. Mehta explained, because of the design of the project, the most needy people weren't necessarily the ones targeted with the most interventions. At the end of each unit, the trainer tested comprehension of major story points and encouraged conversation about applicability and recorded responses on a laptop. Later a surveyor would come and ask the same questions to ensure that the data collected was not impacted by the biases of the trainer. Deepti noted how a one-time survey would have generated much less disclosure.

During the training, other members of the family periodically listened in, and the woman explained that her five-year-old son was now saving for a bicycle based on lessons learned from the comic book. There was money in her lockbox for this purpose, and her financial diaries indicated regular updating, although she had taken a four-day hiatus from her scrupulous record-keeping during the recent festival of Holi.

The training section on informal savings was clearly a message she applied to her life. She was animated in responding about the usefulness of the stories related to storing cash securely and tracking daily financial expenses. These were areas in which she could clearly express her agency, while formal banking was obviously appeared to be a domain of her husband, who was in charge of both their bank account and the mobile phone. She also shared how as a daughter-in-law of the household, she had many limitations and commitments that curtailed her movements like being able to attend the local cooperative society meetings. But she added that she did not really miss them as the issues taken up in those meetings were less interesting to her since they had begun to only focus on the financial inclusion message while leaving out other ways that women could help other women.

The next woman we visited was also in Group E. She was resistant to the educators' message and was very vocal and lamented on the futility of offering financial literacy training to people who didn't have any money.

She was a barber's wife struggling with medical expenses and her financial diary had no entries. She told us that her pen had been stolen and then laughingly added that she was illiterate. She used her lockbox for a single gold piece of jewelry. (For more about the significance of gold, see the blog posting about IMTFI researcher Nithya Joseph who has a forthcoming post in this series.)

The third woman we visited was in a group that received only the financial diary. She had five children and had opened a small shop in her home. Although she was illiterate, her diary was filled with neat entries penned by her son. This included basic provisions (potatoes, lentils, etc.) and expenditures for her children's education (school fees, exam fees, etc.).

Deepti believes that it is very important to engage with questions about the informal sector, because it is often in these spaces that the disadvantaged actually are found to act and express their financial agency more comfortably. She recalled from her last project in Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai that is the largest slum in Asia, "we were trying to understand the business transactions among small entrepreneurs: 100 business owners and 25 women entrepreneurs." (For images of Dharavi, you can see this National Geographic coverage). "They had access to finance, ATMs and bank branches close by. They were using mobile phones, and their employers opened bank accounts for them." These kinds of "direct transactions" are often privileged in financial inclusion work. However, she explained that in these areas "people relied more on informal mechanisms. They always opted for cash transactions. There were behavioral biases."

Deepti thinks that one must not stop here and blame the subjects but instead focuses on embracing the human element. She learned by watching the gaps in effectiveness that emerged when "some sort of information about banking services and financial modules easily available online" without considering why people "could not relate" to the message. These financial literacy pitches "talk about someone coming and telling you what to do, but they don’t talk about lifestyle or choices. They are very preachy with one character doing exactly what they are expected to do, rather than saying there might be another option."

Deepti emphasized the importance of using rigorous experimental methods, even if randomization and the use of control groups might sometimes lead to delayed or displaced reward systems for those most in need. "We could look at only budget and actually create such financial literacy modules and test them." The stories in the comic books were "all based on our research findings about how women save." We even gave pictures from visits to field sites to the designers. "People can relate to comic books. The goal was to ensure that women understand what we are saying by using a character very similar to them."

According to an unpublished draft report, it looks like this approach is working: among those who received only financial literacy training, their savings increased by 8%, while those who received a lock box along with financial literacy training increased their savings by 42-51%, and 77% of women who received financial literacy training reported that they shared their knowledge with others (friends, and family). As Deepti shared enthusiastically, "we noticed during our field visits too, that there was a ripple effect of the literacy program."

Link to comic book, "Financial Literacy for Women Entrepreneurs"  (148,815KB)
Link to comic book, "Financial Literacy Education of Migrant Workers" (39,931KB)
*please allow time to download larger files, we recommend viewing in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.

Link to project,"Assessing the Impact of Financial Knowledge on Adoption of Mobile Payment Systems among Enterprise Owners in Dharavi, Mumbai"  

[Photo credit: Elizabeth Losh]

Njangi Sociality: New Money Technologies and Financial Inclusion in Cameroon

By IMTFI Researchers Francis B. Nyamnjoh and Divine Fuh

MTN Mobile Money Poster

In Cameroon, where the state has often been distant, indifferent and irrelevant, or present mainly in its extractive capacity, people have cultivated ingenious forms of self-reliance and social networking. Throughout the country, individuals and communities have a long history of investing in networks, solidarity and avenues of accumulation that bypass the state and its encumbrances. The Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) known among Anglophone Cameroonians as njangi and among Francophones as tontine, is an institution based on solidarity or social networking facilitated by individuals or collectivities pooling together financial and other resources to fulfill their needs and dreams – in both normal and difficult times. These groups of individuals have an intimate knowledge of and trust in one another, and relations of reciprocity and interdependency determine the survival and success of these groups. We use njangi as an analytical framework in our project to understand the relationships and practices of obligation and reciprocity that shape the uses and meanings of mobile/electronic money in Cameroon.

Our year-long ethnographic research project investigated the daily practices, transformative value and social implications of mobile money and electronic transfer services amongst poor rural farmers and gardeners in the Cameroon Grassfields. Data collection was done through recorded qualitative interviews; focus group discussions; multi-sited ethnography; photo documentation; and participant observation. Researchers actively participated in everyday activities, rituals, interactions and events as a key method of learning the explicit and tacit aspects of life routines and cultures of mobile money usage. The study mainly targeted male and female farmers (above 25 years of age), associational groups, and mobile money providers. Through this sampling method we were able to target farmers, gardeners, buyers, transporters and other actors involved in mobile money transactions.

The Cameroon Grassfields, located in the northwest region of the country, are characterized by very high unemployment rates due to the lack of industry, resulting in high labor migration of young people to urban centers and across international borders in search of better economic opportunities. Due to this high population mobility, there is increased usage and reliance on mobile and electronic money services for remittances. The main providers of these services in the region are the MTN mobile communication network in collaboration with the Afriland Commercial Bank in Cameroon, Express Union, Moneygram and Western Union. With a predominantly subsistence and cash crop farming population, economists and development advocates identify mobile technologies as tools to enhance market participation amongst poor rural farmers, with aims to increase net returns from investments in agriculture. Our ethnographic fieldwork, however, set out to answer the following questions: 

What perceived and lived transformative value do mobile money transfer services have on the livelihoods of poor rural farmers? What are the daily practices, uses and meanings of mobile money services amongst poor rural farmers in the Cameroon Grassfields? How does mobile money impact the social and economic networks/networking of poor rural farmers?

Njangi groups in Cameroon come together for the purpose of saving some resource – usually money – on a consistent basis. The regularity of the payments or contributions is agreed upon from the outset. Participating members refer to their regular contributions in cash or kind as their njangi and to the act of contributing as playing njangi – emphasizing thus the game-like dimension of this activity. As with every game, each njangi is governed by rules by which participants are expected to abide. The associated meetings usually rotate and the money contributions made at each meeting are made available to one of the members, usually the person hosting the meeting for the day. Many of those we studied depended on remittances (often transmitted electronically) from relatives in cities and abroad, to fulfill their financial obligations in njangis. Our findings show that electronic money technologies are making njangi transactions more secure than before.

Njangi is also a collective activity and an exercise in solidarity. The person who receives njangi money is said to “chop njangi” – which literally means “eat” njangi – although the receiving member is expected to do everything but “eat” the money, as “eating money” usually connotes waste. The person receiving the njangi has the freedom to use the money as s/he pleases but it is generally expected, that they will invest the money wisely and prosper from it. S/he is expected to manage their investments judiciously and contribute to the njangi when the time comes, so that other members may also chop njangi. Thus, one is expected to “eat” only to the extent that one is cognizant of others’ entitlement to their fair share of njangi. Strong communal ties of trust and reciprocity are central to this form of exchange. Belonging to a njangi is also a principal element of social personhood founded on  the internalization of values that prioritize inclusion, honesty, interdependence, and redistribution. Intervention by coercive external agents of law and order to enforce appropriate behavior is therefore considered unnecessary (even though it is not uncommon). Instead, members are expected to embody and reproduce the njangi ethic – an obligation to reciprocate – and years of practice are expected to make this an effortless and instinctive act. As a famous Cameroonian saying goes, life na njangi, which means life itself is a form of njangi or 'give and take.' 

Amongst the farmers we studied, this njangi ethic goes beyond monetary value and includes forms of social labor. Farmers entering a njangi together also assist each other in plowing and sowing crops on the farm of their members. The beneficiary in turn provides food and drinks to the members. Whether the rewards are monetary or in kind, no one enters into njangi with just anyone, as it involves an investment of hard earned money or resources. Intimacy, either in the form of primordial bonds, or solidarities through association and subscription to common values and a shared cosmopolitan belonging, is therefore an important precondition for njangis. While intimacy and familiarity do not guarantee against betrayal and opportunism, they do offer greater protection and minimize risk.

Njangi groups are in some ways comparable to, compete with, and complement banks. Like banks, they save and lend people’s money, often at more reasonable interest rates. However, unlike banks, njangi groups generally provide more flexibility because they are also carriers of social relations. They cement relationships between people who already know each other through other contexts (such as a workplace, church, college, business etc.) and are expected to create, reproduce and ensure continuity for social networks that bind their members in other spheres of life. At key social events, such as marriages, births, baptisms and funerals, members are expected to demonstrate solidarity and inclusion through financial contributions and gifts, as well as personally participating in celebrating members’ achievements or providing comfort during times of hardship and disappointment. Njangi is thus a network of relations and sociality, underpinned by obligations of reciprocity that tie two or more parties together.

Mobile Money Kiosk

Our findings show that mobile money and new digital technologies are able to provide more efficient and secure circulation of money, precisely because there is an already pre-existing culture of solidarity and reciprocity. Mobile phones and new financial technologies and products are redefining the ways in which these socialities are realized without distorting their core values and principles. A climate of trust also allows for easier, affordable and faster access to capital and cost reduction for trade activities and other related expenses. Our research shows that mobile money and financial services offer four major advantages over traditional financial models.

• The cost of digital transactions is very affordable. In-person services and cash transactions account for the majority of routine banking expenses. Mobile-finance allows clients to keep their money in digital form so they can send and receive money often, even with distant counterparts, without creating significant transaction costs for their banks or mobile service providers.

• New money technologies enable wider and broader participation (for e.g. networking farmers across geographical locations) by compressing both time and space, and increasing the aspirations of people previously geographically immobilized in remote areas. These farmers are now able to participate in a ‘global community’ even when acting locally.

• Mobile platforms link banks to clients in real time as observed in the partnership between MTN and Afriland Bank in Bamenda and across the country. This means that banks can instantly relay account information or send reminders and clients can quickly sign up for services on their own.

• Mobile communications generate copious amounts of data, which banks and other providers can use to develop more profitable services and even to substitute for traditional credit scores, which can be hard to obtain for those without formal records or financial histories.

In conclusion, for poor households, while the benefits of credit (credit unions) and savings (njangi) are undeniable, the simple ability to transfer money is also equally important. Mobile money therefore, plays a critical role in complementing and building on the services of njangi groups that provide many people financial security and are also rooted in values and practices of interdependency and conviviality.

Read more in Nyamnjoh and Fuh's Final Report. 

Read a Life history narrative of njangi sociality in the Cameroon Grassfields based on fieldwork conducted by the authors.