Empowering African Financial Inclusion: India's $2 Million Boost through ADFI-UPI Partnership

The Indian government has announced a big step towards aiding digital financial inclusion activities in Africa by providing a $2 million contribution to the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) of the African Development Bank (AfDB). This initiative aims to empower poor communities in Africa by improving access to digital financial services.

It is hoped that the contribution from India would enhance the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India's successful digital payments system, by promoting information sharing between ADFI and UPI. UPI has transformed the financial inclusion and resiliency of millions of Indian citizens. The shared effort intends to harness India's expertise to support changes of a similar nature throughout Africa.

India's commitment to improving digital infrastructure is shown by its vow, which might help underserved and unbanked populations in Africa live better lives. Despite the continent's growing acceptance of technology, recent study reveals that more than half of its more than one billion citizens, especially women, youth, farmers, and those living in rural areas, lack access to digital financial services.

Solomon Quaynor, the AfDB's vice president for the private sector, infrastructure, and industrialisation, thanked India for its support and stressed the role ADFI has played in advancing financial inclusion and digital financial solutions in Africa. Quaynor made the following statement: "We look forward to working together to add learning from India's digital public infrastructure success story within our expanding portfolio of digital financial solutions initiatives to enhance the impact on greater economic empowerment, resilience, and growth across Africa."

Manisha Sinha, a member of India's delegation to the ADFI Governing Council, praised India's achievements and called attention to its innovative strategy for delivering financial services to remote rural areas. According to Sinha's statement, "India's pioneering role in digital financial services, extending financial inclusion to remote rural areas, and creating infrastructure for digitization of financial services opens a significant opportunity for India to work within the ADFI partnership to share learning and expertise on digital public infrastructure to further digital financial inclusion across the continent."

ADFI's mission is to eliminate financial inclusion gaps in Africa:

Under the AfDB's guidance, ADFI aims to bring 332 million more Africans into the formal economy by 2030, with a focus on 60% women. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Indian government, and other partners help the ADFI focus on digital financial infrastructure, regulation, and innovation. Through grants and loans, it aims to fortify alliances and put into action effective digital financial inclusion programmes across Africa. This objective is further supported and financial inclusion in West African countries is encouraged by AfDB's $8 million investment in an interoperable bank ID system.