Mobile Money Technology and the Fast Disappearing African Digital Divide

Abstract

Africa had a late start in the race to acquire most technologies and more so the information communication technologies (ICT). This last place in the race, compared to other continents, created the largest and deepest digital divide ever recorded in any technology for Africa. But the wind of change has unexpectedly started blowing across the continent following the rapid developments in digital technologies in the last 20 years. This coupled with the new African quest for technological acquisition driven mostly by an unprecedented indigenous interest in technological development and the numerous and sometimes ambitious initiatives by NGOs, the donor community and African governments themselves who have made comparatively huge investments in human capital development, have all created an environment where, for the first time in the history of Africa, Africans are running abreast with the rest of the world in the development of some technological milestones, including the mobile money payment system technology. The long awaited African technological dawn may be in sight. The article explores this amazing technological transformation of the African landscape and in particular focuses on the role of mobile money payment system in this transformation, one of the technologies that is cutting across the social economic stratification of the complex African societies and invigorate and excite the African elites as well as the rural poor, the unbanked and the unbankable, all in the process of accomplishing what other technologies of the past have failed to do in the last 50 years of African independence, that is to effectively start to narrow the insurmountable digital divide.