This is the 2-page executive summary for the IMTFI Working Paper: Social Networks of Mobile Money in Kenya.

Kenya is one of the few countries in the world where mobile money is a part of everyday life. There are more than 30 million mobile phones in a country of 40 million people and 20 million mobile money accounts. Sibel Kusimba and her team worked with 300 Western Kenyan town and village residents and also involved Kenyans in Chicago who send remittances back to these communities.

Mobile money is often described as “banking.” Yet most unbanked people in Western Kenya consider mobile money a powerful social tool as much as an economic one – an adjunct to their mobile phones, through which they create relationships by sending money and airtime gifts. “Banking” to many in Kenya conveys the opposite idea – that of affluent people putting “out of circulation” large amounts of money.

A mobile money remittance is a way of storing value until it is returned through a reciprocal gift. Though designed for person-to-person transfers, mobile money is used in savings groups, to circulate resources in families, and to amass contributions at ceremonies. “Sent” money contributes to a circulating resource pool that others can draw upon for a variety of needs.