Presentation at the IFZ FinTech Symposium 2025

This week Kulondwa Safari presented his new research paper at the IFZ FinTech Symposium at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts “Factors driving entrepreneurship in Mobile Money Agent (MMA) business in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Mobile money agents play a key role in the delivery of fintech services, facilitating cash-in and cash-out transactions. Despite being one of the fastest-growing fintech markets in the world, Sub-Saharan Africa is also one of the most underserved regions. Mr. Safari’s research responds to the need to expand access to financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa and helps investigate how fintech companies can expand their network of agents. His study is grounded in agency theory, institutional theory, and social network theory. Empirically, he conducted a discrete choice experiment with 196 prospective entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The key findings are that the most important factors driving prospective entrepreneurs' intention to venture into the Mobile Money Agent business are: a high commission rates, high frequency of bonuses, low cost of an agent SIM card, and a reduced number of days required for business registration. Moreover, young individuals show a higher intention to enter the mobile money agents business.