An empirical investigation of remittances and financial inclusion nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The scope of financial development has been expanding and moving gradually towards a more inclusive development thus attention is gradually shifting to financial inclusion. It is against this background that this study investigates the role of migrants’ remittances on financial inclusion in selected SSA countries. Pooled Mean Group (PMG) form of panel ARDL was employed but cross-sectional dependent characteristics of the data required the use of cross-sectional methods that cater for such properties. Consequently, XTDCCE: Dynamic Common Correlated Effects and XTCCE Common Correlated Effects estimator were used as robustness checks. For the purpose of this empirical investigation, we collected data on Remittances, Account Ownership and Income Per Capita for 27 SSA countries based on data availability. The conclusion is that remittances have no significant effect on financial inclusion in SSA. However, the variable demonstrates the potential to positively influence financial inclusion. Thus, there should be concrete policy efforts in the SSA to make remittances count for inclusive growth. The study contributes substantially by moving attention from a broad concept of financial development to Financial Inclusion and employed a more recent panel estimating techniques to investigate the nexus between remittances and Inclusion.