Financial Inclusion in South Africa

In Decemeber 2011, FinMark Trust launched the FinScope 2011 survey - for the past five years the finscope survey has been released annually. The FinScope survey is a research tool that was developed by FinMark Trust. It is a nationally representative survey of how individuals source their incomes, and how they manage their financial lives. It also provides insight into attitudes and perceptions regarding financial products and services. To date, FinScope surveys have been conducted or initiated in 17 countries.

Some of the highlights of the survey include:

In 2011, 27% of South Africans are financially excluded, an increase from 23.4% in 2010

34% of South Africans (16 years and older) have/use savings products

61% South Africans (16 years and older)  do not use any form of credit products

14% of South African adults have credit/loan products offered by a bank

26% of adult South Africans are either sending (5.2 million) or receiving (5.3 million) money to or from family members, parents and children

42% of individuals who remitted in the 12 months prior to the survey did so through a bank account or banking product such as MPesa, eWallet or CashSend

For more information about the 2011 survey, visit www.finscope.co.za

Data: World AIDS Day

Data published in the UNAIDS World AIDS Day Report 2011 show that:

• An estimated 34 million (between 31.6 million and 35.2 million) people were living with HIV worldwide at the end of 2010 – up 17% over 2001.
• In 2010, 2.7 million (between 2.4 million and 2.9 million) people were newly infected with HIV - this is about 21% less than the annual number of new infections at the peak of the epidemic in 1997.
• The number of people dying of AIDS-related causes fell to 1.8 million [1.6 million–1.9 million] in 2010, down from a peak of 2.2 million in the mid-2000s.
• A total of 2.5 million deaths have been averted in low- and middle-income countries since 1995 due to antiretroviral therapy being introduced.
• The proportion of women living with HIV has remained stable at 50% globally, although women are more affected in sub-Saharan Africa (59% of all people living with HIV) and the Caribbean (53%).
• An estimated 6.6 million people are now receiving antiretroviral treatment in low- and middle-income countries, covering nearly half of those who are eligible for treatment.
• Eliminating new HIV infections in children is within our grasp. In 2010, nearly 50 percent of pregnant women living with HIV received antiretroviral therapy to prevent transmitting the virus to their child.

Estimated number of people living with HIV/AIDS in each region (2010) :

Caribbean	200,000
East Asia and Pacific	790,000
East Europe and Central Asia	1,500,000
Latin America	1,500,000
Middle East and North Africa	470,000
North America	1,300,000
Oceania	54,000
South and South-East Asia	4,000,000
Sub-Saharan Africa	22,900,000
Western and Central Europe	840,000

Source: UNAIDS World AIDS Day Report 2011 and the World Bank

The 2011 Mo Ibrahim Governance Index

The 2011 Ibrahim Index of African Governance was released recently by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The top five countries on the index in descending order are Mauritius, Cape Verde, Botswana, Seychelles, and South Africa, while the last five countries on the index in descending order are Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Somalia.

The index is based on four main indicators:

• Human Development: This indicator deals with the following areas – welfare; education; and health. According to the 2011 index, while there has been a general improvement in this indicator through increased investments, there is a greater need to focus on the youth population especially in areas of education and healthcare. It was also observed that regardless of the increased investment, inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the way investments are made still prevails
• Stable Economic Opportunity: This indicator deals with the following areas – public management; business environment; infrastructure; and rural sector. Across the continent, majority of the countries improved in this indicator.
• Participation and Human Rights: This indicator deals with the following areas - participation; rights; and gender
• Safety and Rule of Law: This indicator deals with the following areas – national security; personal safety; accountability; and state of law

Some of the highlights in the report include:

• Sierra Leone: Sierra Leone is the second country that demonstrates statistically significant improvement in overall governance quality over the past five years. The country also gained in all the four indicators
• Liberia: Liberia is one of the two countries to show statistically significant improvement in overall governance quality over the past five years. This has been achieved through improvements in all four categories of the Index and 13 out of 14 sub-categories.
• Libya: Libya was one of the countries that showed a disconnect between performance in the various categories/indicators. Libya is ranked in the bottom half of the Index in 2010. Libya shows imbalance in performance between Human Development and Participation and Human Rights. In Libya’s case the imbalance is extreme with the country ranking in the top ten for Human Development and in the bottom three for Participation and Human Rights. Libya’s performances in Safety and Rule of Law and Sustainable Economic Opportunity are also weak in relation to Human Development.

Africa needs more access to data, in order to benchmark its progress and performance, more importantly as it’s a developmental state, the usefulness and acclaim of this index amidst its weakness in data attests to this fact. There is need to applaud the work of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation which has dedicated its work to the progress of governance in this country, it is with this we look forward to a continent with increased access to information and data, as well as good governance.

Good luck to the Democratic Republic of Congo, as they prepare towards their election (The country ranked 50^th out of 53 countries), we hope the elections are peaceful.

You can assess the Index by using the following link

The promising frontier of banking in sub-Saharan Africa

The Economic Intelligence Unit recently released a report titled Banking in sub-Saharan Africa to 2020: A promising frontier. There have been lots of reports that have suggested the positive growth trajectory in the continent, looking at the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, as they indicate the outputs. However, lots have ignored the mechanisms that are needed to ‘oil the prospective machine’. Thus, this report comes at no better time, anchored with helpful data to come to grips with how effective the banking sector will be to help manage the growth expected on the continent.

The report looks at two scenarios: a scenario that is driven exclusively by economic expansion, while the other scenario looks into economic growth and financial deepening. With the former scenario, it is projected that 16 key African countries will boost its financial assets by 178% to US$980bn by 2020, while with the latter scenario, which is seen as the more likely scenario will be driven by both economic growth and financial deepening, we foresee assets expanding by 248% to US$1.37trn.

Some key findings from the report include:

·          

• The expected boom is largely dependent on the expected high economic growth as well as the application of innovation in communications and the financial sector.
• The growth of continent’s banking sector is not expected to be uniform across countries. It is expected that the current poorly served countries will experience the strongest growth as they greatly tap into the new resource boom. Some of these countries include Angola, Uganda and Tanzania.
• South Africa which currently has the largest banking sector in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to stay the same come 2020. However the country’s financial sector is expected to experience the slowest growth trajectory. Other countries that might experience this include Botswana and Namibia
• A current trend in policy decisions, which have been deemed positive, by several experts are expected to support the growth in the sector. An example of these trends include a new wave of issuance of benchmark-setting sovereign bonds  as well as the construction of national and regional markets for stocks and bonds.