Paper

Enabling Markets of Financial Services for the Rural Youth

Insights and recommendations

The issue of financial exclusion stands at the forefront as one of the core bottlenecks that constrains rural young people from achieving their full economic potential. Rural youth from all backgrounds face considerable challenges when seeking to access and make use of quality financial services from formal financial service providers such as commercial banks, microfinance institutions, and credit unions. The capacity to access and make proper use of quality financial services represents a crucial factor that enables youth to kickstart and expand new business ideas, pursue higher levels of education, build assets over time, and attain socioeconomic independence. It represents, therefore, a critical, foundational element for youth entrepreneurship, empowerment, and resilience. In this sense, the regulatory and sociocultural environment in which youth live and work can play a major role in constraining – or facilitating – their financial inclusion.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the factors that contribute to fostering an environment that is better able to promote the financial inclusion of rural youth, in order to help develop more sustainable and inclusive financial services that can adequately serve the various needs faced by these market actors. This implies developing policies and regulations that help remove the various obstacles to financial inclusion faced by the youth, while providing adequate incentives to develop a solid, sustainable, and inclusive market of financial services. 

About this Publication

By Niclas Benni, Juan Buchenau, Azeta Cungu
Published