The number of unbanked adults in Nigeria continues to decline as the Federal Government through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) intensified financial inclusion efforts.
The percentage of adults with a bank account in Nigeria rose to 45% from 30%, according to the latest World Bank report titled ‘The Global Findex Database 2021’ obtained by Investors King.
The number includes all accounts with regulated financial institutions in Nigeria.
In part, the report reads, “Individual economies saw different rates of growth over the past decade. Between 2011 and 2021, economies such as Peru, South Africa, and Uganda drove up the average with account ownership increases of 25 percentage points or more.
“Uganda, in fact, saw its rate more than triple, from 20 per cent to 66 per cent. In India, account ownership more than doubled in the past decade, from 35 per cent in 2011 to 78 per cent in 2021. This outcome stemmed in part from an Indian government policy launched in 2014 that leveraged biometric identification cards to boost account ownership among unbanked adults.
“Other economies saw much smaller increases over longer periods. Pakistan, for example, grew by just 10 percentage points over the past decade, from 10 per cent in 2011 to 21 per cent in 2021. The Arab Republic of Egypt and Nigeria increased ownership by 18 percentage points and 16 percentage points, respectively—from 10 per cent to 27 per cent in Egypt, and from 30 per cent to 45 per cent in Nigeria.”
The Washington-based bank attributed the increase in account ownership in Nigeria and other African nations to growing mobile payment adoption.
It stated, “In Sub-Saharan Africa in 2021, 55 per cent of adults had an account, including 33 per cent of adults who had a mobile money account—the largest share of any region in the world and more than three times larger than the 10 per cent global average of mobile money account ownership.
“Sub-Saharan Africa is home to all 11 economies in which a larger share of adults only had a mobile money account rather than a bank or other financial institution account. The spread of mobile money accounts has created new opportunities to better serve women, poor people, and other groups who traditionally have been excluded from the formal financial system.”
