From instant payments to regtech, fintech partnerships and financial inclusion, the summit positioned Ethiopia as East Africa’s rising digital finance hub.

The collaboration brings together two of Ethiopia’s leading financial players to deliver digital credit directly through mobile phones, enabling users to complete transactions even when their wallet balance is insufficient.

This report presents findings on a survey of over 20,000 MSEs with over 4,000 interviews conducted, revealing opportunities for growth and greater efficiencies with use of digital products and services.

The report seeks to inform how the country can accelerate nationwide integration into the formal financial system to enable progress in poverty reduction, equality, and other relevant reforms under the Home-Grown Economic Reform Agenda.

Accion is supporting Dashen Bank to build an innovation hub that aims to expand digital banking services to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) through a range of new products and a focus on women-owned businesses.

The Kulehe project, launched in Addis Ababa, supports 120 youth from refugee and host communities with entrepreneurship training, financial inclusion, and business linkages, promoting decent employment through the ILO Youth-to-Youth Fund.

Dashen is well placed to play a major role in reaching the many small-scale Ethiopian traders that have limited access to financial services. 

These advancements are expected to create over 1 million new jobs and generate an additional ETB 57 billion in tax revenues by 2028.

The training will touch base on microfinance institutions’ diversification of financial products, risk mitigation mechanisms, the importance of selling insurance products for microfinance institutions and how to develop such products.

This study identifies further opportunities and quantifies the economic value of adopting digital technologies across Ethiopia’s economy. It determines how these opportunities can be unlocked through policy reforms, particularly focusing on the key role that the mobile telecommunications sector and mobile money services plays in supporting the process of digitalization.