Africa-Press – Lesotho. Mobile money was hailed high for significantly contributing to the economy of Lesotho and even acknowledged as a key factor towards the country’s digital
economic growth. This was revealed during one of the Money Week celebration meeting last week. Despite the Global Money Week (GMW) celebrated from March 22 to 28, Lesotho is
observing it through a series of fora where leaders from insurance companies, banking industry and development partners will engage in financial related
matters from April 19 to May 30. Vodacom Lesotho Acting Managing Director Commercial Travis Goate said as a mobile financial provider, they are committed to participating in all financial
literacy initiatives to help increase public awareness on the benefits of financial inclusion as well as financial education. Goate further said over the
last decade, mobile money has been disrupting traditional financial services in transforming the lives of hundreds of millions of people across Africa.
He said today mobile money has evolved into broader payment platforms and solutions and it has enhanced services such as health care, employment, education, transportation and many more.
He said at a micro level, mobile money fills economic growth by facilitating savings, investments, creating employment, business productivity and entrepreneurship.
“It is becoming a gate way to the digital economy as a nation such as Lesotho is becoming dependent on digital technology,” he said.
He said mobile money continues to be used for payment to people living in hard to reach areas and many businesses depend on it for payments. Econet Telecom Lesotho (ETL) Acting General Manager Econet Services ‘Makatleho
Raphoolo stated that mobile money is significant in financial inclusion since it is easily accessible. She said the advent of mobile money has brought
positive impact to Basotho in regard to financial inclusion. “All that is needed to use mobile money is a smart phone,” she added. Mobile money is key towards Lesotho’s digital economy journey since it facilitates
payments of e-government services and other utilities, there are services where a person pays for spotfine with mobile money. She said mobile money makes
access to financial services possible which is what all the countries are working towards making sure that the nation gets financially included and ensure
digital transformation for the whole country. Raphoolo said mobile money service was introduced to increase the level of financial inclusion through accessible and affordable solutions.
“This was brought on by the challenges in the market that were identified where sending money to anyone
was really through unreliable channels. For instance taxi drivers would be given money to drop off and this introduced security challenges especially while carrying a lot of money,” she said.
Raphoolo added that the turnaround time was also an issue as a person had to travel from one place to another thus incurring traveling expenses. She said mobile money is efficient, reliable and with instant transactions. “It is also cheaper than the banks,” she added.
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