Mobile Money Penetration and Financial Inclusion Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Multi-Country Panel Analysis

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between mobile money penetration and financial inclusion outcomes across 45 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2013 to 2023, using an unbalanced panel dataset constructed from the IMF Financial Access Survey, World Development Indicators, and Worldwide Governance Indicators. Three distinct dimensions of mobile money penetration are examined: registered account ownership, active account usage, and transaction value as a share of GDP. Financial inclusion is operationalised across four outcome variables: ATM density, bank branch density, deposits to GDP, and loans to GDP. Two-way fixed effects estimation with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors is employed to address heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, and cross-sectional dependence. The Hausman test strongly favours fixed effects over random effects (χ² = 454.73, p < 0.001). The results indicate that registered account ownership and transaction value produce no statistically significant effects on any financial inclusion outcome. Active account usage, by contrast, is positively associated with ATM density (β = 0.0038, p = 0.031) and loans to GDP (β = 0.0042, p = 0.031), with a marginally significant positive effect on deposits to GDP (β = 0.0056, p = 0.084). These findings hold under Driscoll-Kraay correction. The evidence suggests that the usage dimension of mobile money, rather than account ownership or transaction intensity, is the operationally relevant mechanism through which mobile money contributes to financial sector development in Sub-Saharan Africa.