Uganda MobiMOOC - Financial Literacy

Majority of Uganda’s population poor live in rural areas with no or limited access to financial services. Consequently, farmers come together and set up village savings and credit groups to save and borrow amongst themselves. These groups have been found to lead to an improvement in household business outcomes and women’s empowerment (Ksoll, Lilleør, Lønborg, & Rasmussen, 2016). They have a huge potential to bring financial services to the millions of Ugandans that remain unbanked and excluded from the formal financial services sector. However, their potential is limited by a host of challenges including but not limited to – low loan repayment rates, lack of management skills and conflict. Moreover, saving and investing responsibly is still a challenge to a bulk of Uganda’s populations especially in rural areas. Figures indicate that the ratio of financial savings to GDP in Uganda – a measure of financial literacy – is about 13.5 percent compared to Kenya’s average of 16 percent and Tanzania’s 21.6 percent (World Bank, 2016). There is an urgent need to nurture and strengthen community based financial systems to “…increase access to and use of financial services by the rural poor population”. This course leverages the ubiquitous presence of mobile phones to improve the capacity of farmers in Uganda especially those under the Life Long Learning for Farmers initiative in financial literacy and business management. It is intended improve farmers knowledge of proper decision-making pertaining to certain personal finance areas like, financial planning, loans and credit management, savings, investment, etc.