The amount of money transferred via mobile phone during the first quarter this year in Zambia reached $652.1 million, ZMW8.15 billion, the Central Bank revealed.

This volume is the highest ever reached for a first quarter since 2012, and is more than twice the amount in Q1 2018 (ZMW3.68 billion). The Q1 2019 amount is also much more than the total value of the transactions made each year between 2012 and 2017.

This statistics reflects the success of the Zambian government's financial inclusion strategy, at least for the Mobile Money segment. The sector has become the second largest contributor to access to financial services, after banks, with nearly 15% of adults of banking age using it.

Zambia has a large area with a low population density per square kilometer. In this context, the development of Mobile Money was not easy. The country has put in place a financial inclusion strategy and today there is still a lot of room for growth for the operators operating in the country. Of the country's 10 million mobile users, only 2 million were active users of the service, according to a 2018 Central Bank report.

Idriss Linge