NAIROBI, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Kenya plans to enlist the private sector to achieve universal mobile financial services coverage, a senior government official said on Monday.
Joe Mucheru, the Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology told a media briefing in Nairobi that currently the coverage for mobile financial services stands at 75 percent of the country's population.
Mucheru added that the government is committed to pursuing aggressive strategies to ensure that existing gaps in the mobile financial services are bridged to enable citizens to reap the benefits of social and economic transformation delivered by these revolutionary mobile financial services.
"The government is also aware that we cannot do this without support from the private sector whom we invite to work with us in this pursuit of achieving universal coverage for mobile financial services," Mucheru said during the launch of the Telkom mobile financial services.
Mucheru said the gap in access to universal mobile financial services is attributed to insufficient infrastructure and lack of a form of identification that hinders potential subscribers to acquire and register a mobile Subscriber Identity Module (SIM).
The Ministry of ICT said that there is still a big segment of the population that lives outside the reach of a mobile broadband enabled network.
Mucheru said the dividends of this mobile financial services in the country are well documented.
"The available platforms have created unimaginable levels of financial inclusion and uplifted many individuals and households out of poverty," he noted.
He said the service has increased diaspora remittances, transformed financial services once reserved for banks and has upset conventional regulatory models as we know them.
