TY - JOUR
T1 - Is fin-tech the new panacea for poverty alleviation and local development? Contesting Suri and Jack’s M-Pesa findings published in Science
AU - Bateman, Milford
AU - Duvendack, Maren
AU - Loubere, Nicholas
PY - 2019/9
Y1 - 2019/9
N2 - Financial technology, or simply ‘fin-tech’, is increasingly seen as one of the key tools to facilitate poverty reduction and local economic development. One article in particular by Tavneet Suri and William Jack published in the leading publication Science has played a hugely influential role in promoting the fin-tech model in the global South using the example of Kenya’s iconic M-Pesa money transfer platform. The authors’ central claim is that M-Pesa has been instrumental in facilitating a major episode of poverty reduction. Our analysis shows that their analysis and claims are extremely problematic.
AB - Financial technology, or simply ‘fin-tech’, is increasingly seen as one of the key tools to facilitate poverty reduction and local economic development. One article in particular by Tavneet Suri and William Jack published in the leading publication Science has played a hugely influential role in promoting the fin-tech model in the global South using the example of Kenya’s iconic M-Pesa money transfer platform. The authors’ central claim is that M-Pesa has been instrumental in facilitating a major episode of poverty reduction. Our analysis shows that their analysis and claims are extremely problematic.
U2 - 10.1080/03056244.2019.1614552
DO - 10.1080/03056244.2019.1614552
M3 - Article
SN - 0305-6244
VL - 46
SP - 480
EP - 495
JO - Review of African Political Economy
JF - Review of African Political Economy
IS - 161
ER -