Chuck speaks truth.
There are of course all sorts of motivations for northerners coming in and poking in local economies, and there are all sorts of motivations for getting people into the formal financial sector. I don't want to paint everyone with the same brush.
But here's one way to look at Financial Inclusion: European and North American financial markets are saturated and very competitive. If you are a big bank, you have to advertise a lot just to keep the same slice of the pie. Growing your client base is super difficult. So, someone looks at the statistics, and their eyes light up: Africa! Lots of room to grow! But when they look deeper, they see how hard it is grow there. Hm, that's a problem. But here's a solution: get foundation grants and then get INGOs to help you reach al the people they have been organizing! Wow! How to do that? Well, the bankers went to the same schools as the people at the multilaterals and bilaterals. Maybe I could have lunch with my old pal at the World Bank and get them to help me grow my portfolio!
Again, there are lots of drivers here, but making more profit for the richest people who have ever lived is one of those drivers. I find it singularly bizarre that donor money is supporting banks in product development and marketing, and I also find it weird how complicit the INGOs are. Don't these people have memories? There is pitifully little evidence that on net, people are being helped by the rush to financial inclusion, and lots of evidence that when banks misbehave, people get hurt. Why on earth would we expect banks to behave when the people who will get hurt are powerless and practically invisible to the media?
Paul
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Posted by: Paul Rippey <paulrippeypdx@gmail.com>
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