Enabling, scaling and leveraging digital international remittances to The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda

IFAD is partnering with OnAfriq to harness the development benefits of using digital channels to send and receive remittances in five African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, The Gambia and Uganda. OnAfriq will make digital money transfer operators in European ‘sending’ countries, and mobile network operators in African ‘receiving’ countries interoperable in order for customers to initiate remittance online and terminate remittance directly into the recipient’s mobile wallets, with a particular focus on rural beneficiaries.

Budget:

Financed: €1,086,988
Co-Financed: €636,938

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Duration: 2022 ~ 2025

Project Category Financial Inclusion
Gender
Remittances & Digitalisation

Target Groups:

Remittance senders and recipients in selected EU-Africa corridors and remittance senders and recipients in selected Africa-Africa corridors.
Beneficiaries of the embedded insurance products.
Indirect beneficiaries include African MTOs.

Programme

FFR Strategic Framework

PRIME Africa

Project Goals

To enhance the financial resilience and economic empowerment of remittance recipients through cost-effective digital channeling and safeguarding of remittances flows

Implementing Partners

OnAfriq is a pan-African digital payment and remittance services aggregator which enables interoperable cross-border digital payments. Its mission is to make borders matter less and to make transferring money internationally as easy as making a phone call. Other project partners include Transfast, MTN, Afrimoney Gambia, Inclusivity Solutions, Orange

Geographic Target

Multi-country

Outcomes

The project is ongoing. OnAfriq has been working in partnership with MTN in Rwanda to offer remittance senders (and their families) hospital insurance. By March 2024:
Over 1,000 agents have been trained to provide customers with information on the cross-border service and insurance
Nearly 700,000 people have been reached by ATL and BTL marketing.
Over 16,000 new senders using the Rwanda to Uganda remittance corridor sending over USD11million.
8,600 new insurance policies.
OnAfriq has also been working with AfriMoney in The Gambia to support the uptake of mobile money in the country and awareness around the option to receive international remittances into the wallet. Mobile money is in its infancy in The Gambia and in the lifeline of the project, AfriMoney has seen customers increase by over 100 thousand. This has been acheived through onboarding new agents (885 outside of Banjul), financial education to 17,000 people in rural areas (especially targeting women and their digital Susu savings product) and marketing to over 4 million people.
OnAfriq is also partnered with TransFast in the EU to help to digitise the send-side of the EU to Africa market and with MTN in Ghana and Uganda, Orange in Senegal and mPesa in Kenya.