To promote financial literacy, the Sparkassenstiftung successfully introduced the World Savings Day in Mozambique in the years 2014-2015. Yet, Mozambique’s financial sector has to cope with many challenges.
During a two-week fact-finding mission in February 2016, Sparkassenstiftung investigated these challenges in order to find out which tasks need to be mastered to improve the financial sector of Mozambique. With the aim to work on possible approaches for new cooperation projects, Sparkassenstiftung’s experts exchanged views with representatives of the financial sector’s macro, meso and micro levels as well as with other experts of development cooperation.
World Savings Day – a story of success: Promotion of financial literacy in Mozambique started in 2014
On 31 October 2014, Sparkassenstiftung introduced the first-ever World Savings Day in Mozambique’s capital of Maputo. Already one year later, the efforts to promote financial literacy of children and young people were extended to all eleven provinces of this Southeast African country. Supported by 15 local banks, the measures and activities around the World Savings Day reached some 100 schools. Thus, more than 30,000 pupils were familiarised with basic financial education.
A huge success, but Mozambique’s financial sector still holds many challenges. Only one fifth of the adult population actually saves – although in most of the cases, excess funds are not safely deposited at a bank, but informally managed or kept at home. How important it is to save and generate some funds for rainy days is not an issue, many people in Mozambique are yet aware of. In addition to that, the access to financial services is often limited and imbalanced: Whereas in the capital of Maputo there is almost excess supply, the rural areas of Mozambique lack adequate financial services. Informal financial offers, such as “xitique”, which are rotating savings and credit cooperatives, are still made strong use of. As a result, a significant portion of savings deposits is missing in the economic cycle and not accessible for investments of private enterprises. This, in turn, has negative effects on the general economic development of the country. In many discussions on site, the level of financial literacy of the population and also the specialist knowledge and level of education of the staff working in the financial sector were criticised, too.
Sparkassenstiftung now plans to launch a long-term partnership project in Mozambique at the end of 2016. Possible key areas of the project will then focus on promoting the financial literacy of the population and in particular of micro-entrepreneurs, enhancing the training and further education of bank staff and improving the access to financial services in rural regions.
Contact partners:
Inka Rank / Carina Lau
Sparkassenstiftung für internationale Kooperation
Simrockstraße 4
53113 Bonn / Germany
Phone: +49 228 9703-6631 / -6608
Fax: +49 228 9703-6613