Friday 9 March, noon - 3pm, Milburn House, Room: A.028

Buffet lunch and networking

Chair opening remarks (GRP-ID academic leads)
Introduction: overview of project and institutional partners - PPT presentation by Prof. Franklin Lysk
Panel Discussion: Invited speakers followed by Q&A
Conclusion and next steps re project implementation

Confirmed speakers: Dr Diery Seck, Managing Director, Centre for Research on Political Economy (CREPOL), Dakar; Mr Ismaila Jarju, Director of Research and Statistics, West Africa Monetary Institute (WAMI), Accra [awaiting issuance of UK visa]; Ms Alix Murphy, Director of Mobile Money and Partnerships, WorldRemit, London.

Speakers tbc: Dr Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner, School of Business, Leicester University; Prof Abhinay Muthoo, Dean, Warwick-in-London; Warwick Law

(A Joint Research Proposal by the West African Monetary Institute (WAMI), Accra, Ghana; the Global Research Priority on International Development (GRP-ID) University of Warwick, UK; and Center for Research on Political Economy (CREPOL), Dakar, Senegal)

There are good reasons to believe that Africa should take advantage of the digital revolution sweeping through the continent to promote financial inclusion as a pathway out of poverty for the estimated 330 million “unbanked” Africans of working-age who presently use no formal or informal financial services. The rapid growth of mobile phone use across all countries in continent is paving the way for ‘de-cashing’ of national economies, in the sense of the gradual phasing out of the use of currency in circulation and its replacement by mobile money. Following a presentation of the joint GRP-ID research project involving two external institutional partners in Africa, the discussion will explore how mobile money transactions and digitization can contribute the reduction of poverty and inequality through financial inclusion. The discussion will also see to what extent the drive towards a cashless or ‘cash-lite’ society can curb corruption through reducing the incidence of illicit financial flows and unrecorded ‘black economy’ transactions which depend on cash transactions

Research proposal