Mobile Money in the Era of Crypto

We study the evolution of Mobile Money on the African continent since its implementation in the early 2000s pioneered through M-Pesa in Kenya, and we investigate its potential to become a digital currency. This is an interesting area to explore for the conduct of monetary policy in a world dominated by cryptocurrencies and the debates surrounding Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Aggregate data obtained from GSMA allowed us to draw rough conclusions to help us consolidate our priors. The next step involves partnering with the mobile operator Orange to obtain more disaggregated and significantly rich data which we intend to analyse on multiple fronts. That includes - but not limited to - a panel data analysis and a geospatial analysis that will give us a bird’s eye view of the evolution of the transactions using Mobile Money through time.

This project is part of an international network of researchers with the goal of investigating digital currencies in central banks. The Laboratoire d'Economie Rouen Normandie LERN of the University of Rouen leads the initiative.