Sub-Saharan Africans boosted their savings at the fastest pace in more than a decade, driven by the growing impact of mobile money accounts across the continent.

The share of adults in sub-Saharan Africa who saved through formal channels surged by 12 percentage points to 35% in 2024, the second-highest regional rate after East Asia and the Pacific, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2025.

Four in 10 adults in sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account as of 2024, up from 27% three years ago, with the share of those using them to save increasing by more than 10 percentage points to 23%.

“Higher personal saving — through banks or other formal institutions — fuels national financial systems, making more funds available for investment, innovation and economic growth,” the report said.

Africa’s young, tech-savvy population is increasingly using mobile phones to bridge gaps in services including banking. This has opened a lucrative and fast-growing space in the fintech sector for wireless carriers, such as MTN Group, Orange, Vodacom Group, Airtel Africa and Safaricom.

About 60% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa now have savings in either formal or informal channels, compared with just above 50% in 2021, it said. The region also has the largest share of banked adults with only mobile money accounts, it found.

Borrowing

Economies with some of the highest rates of mobile money account ownership in the region also had the highest rates of people borrowing from their mobile money providers, according to the report.

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“In Kenya, the region’s pioneer in mobile money, 32% of adults — or 86% of formal borrowers — borrowed from their mobile money providers, including 25% of adults who borrowed only in this way.” — (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP

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