Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

Translated by Sophie Chevalier and Emmanuelle Lallement

À première vue, la scène du marché de Makola n’a rien de vraiment particulier : des milliers, voire des centaines de milliers de personnes déambulent en plein air, parfois épaule contre épaule, dans les rues d’une zone qui couvre plusieurs pâtés de maisons, passant devant des étals de for-tune composés d’un simple carton sur lequel des marchandises sont exposées, ou devant des stands un peu plus élaborés, protégés par un parapluie portant la marque d’une société de télécommunication probablement disparue. À l’intérieur du « nouveau » marché, on suit un labyrinthe de couloirs sur plusieurs étages, certains ouverts à l’air libre, d’autres non ; ici, des vendeurs de poissons, des marchands d’épices installés près d’un conteneur métallique converti en moulin; là, des femmes présentent des tissus empilés jusqu’au plafond, à côté de couturières qui peuvent vous confectionner une chemise sur place. À l’étage, on trouve encore des vêtements, des appareils électro-ménagers, des articles en plastique... Le « vieux » bâtiment du marché se présente à peu près de la même manière...

...Mais si l’on y regarde de plus près, quelque chose de bien particulier se déroule dans cet espace du marché, théâtre d’une activité commerciale si humaine. J’ai déjà mentionné plus haut les fameuses compagnies de télé-communication. On peut en effet apercevoir des antennes-relais de télépho-nie à chaque pâté de maisons, voire à chaque demi-pâté de maisons. Les gens sont littéralement accrochés à leur téléphone portable. Nous sommes après tout au pays de l’argent mobile ; les systèmes de paiement en ligne sont partout présents en Afrique subsaharienne. Inaugurés en 2007 par l’opérateur de réseau mobile du Kenya, Safaricom, avec son service M-Pesa1 qui a fait couler beaucoup d’encre, ils inondent le marché. À Accra, le mot « Momo » (mobile) est sur toutes les lèvres.

Cependant, et c’est le fait remarquable, tout le monde paie ici en espèces.

--- English version available on Supplemental Material tab.

At first glance, the scene at Makola Market seems unremarkable: thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people stroll through the open air, sometimes shoulder to shoulder, in the streets of an area spanning several city blocks, passing makeshift stalls consisting of simple cardboard boxes displaying goods, or slightly more elaborate stands sheltered by umbrellas bearing the logo of a likely defunct telecommunications company. Inside the "new" market, one follows a labyrinth of multi-story corridors, some open to the air, others not; here, fishmongers, spice merchants set up near a metal container converted into a mill; there, women display fabrics piled to the ceiling, next to seamstresses who can make you a shirt on the spot. Upstairs, one finds more clothing, household appliances, and other items...

...On the other hand, however, there is something quite remarkable about this space, this all too human scene of commercial activity. I’d mentioned the telco companies. You can see cell phone towers every block or so, or even every half block. People clutch mobiles. This is the land of mobile money, after all, the mobile phone based payment systems ubiquitous across sub-Saharan Africa, inaugurated in 2007 by Kenya’s mobile network operator, Safaricom, with its much-vaunted M-Pesa service. “Momo” is on the tip of the tongue here in Accra.

Yet everyone is paying with cash.

ABSTRACT Experiments in money often recapitulate long‐standing human concerns over finality and fixity, despite money's reference points in political authority, trust, and the memorialization of relationships of credit and debt. From the point of view of the primary set of infrastructures facilitating the movement of money in 2050, those concerns are misplaced. Recounting the history of those infrastructures, this love letter from a future intelligence is addressed to those humans who would reimagine money so that they will recognize the human and technical infrastructures on which it has always depended.

Crowdfunding to support personal and medical needs has risen in popularity in recent years. Many sociologists are critical of needy individuals’ turn to online fundraising, seeing it as a response to deficits in health care and social protection, and arguing that it may widen social inequalities. Most of these studies have taken place in the United States, China, and Great Britain. This paper explores crowdfunding in sub-Saharan Africa, offering us an opportunity to rethink the context and value of crowdfunding and its relationship to family and friend networks, philanthropy, and charity. It also examines how online crowdfunding relates to cultural ideas about dependency and care. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork at the Nairobi crowdfunding platform M-Changa conducted from 2016 to 2021, I describe how social entrepreneurs, women, and NGO representatives raise money for philanthropic initiatives, medical and education costs, family rituals, and COVID-19 relief. The paper reveals the diverse financial relationships, identities and goals emerging on the platform. Reflecting on this diversity of caring finance, this paper then explores the ambiguous commercial, social, and political potentials of crowdfunding as peer-based digital finance in the Global South.

Abstract Drawing on anthropological perspectives, this paper argues that the fungibility of objects and the ability to exchange them for money is a defining characteristic of capitalist markets. In contrast, other systems of reckoning value emphasize the unique relationships within which objects are embedded and their inability to stand for just any other thing. This paper further highlights the role of slavery in the origins and continued dominance of capitalism and the existence of alternative systems such as cooperativism and sharing that are often overlooked. This paper then examines the Saussurean and Peircean semiotics underlying the concept of money as an abstract sign and argues that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in blockchain technology contradict these theories by emphasizing pure uniqueness and rendering objects non-transformable or inconvertible. This paper concludes by warning against the dangers of a future where fungibility is absent, as it is necessary for life and the generation of new and different possibilities.

We test if 3534 beneficiaries of PROSPERA, Mexico’s cash transfer program, smooth food consumption before and after the date of the transfer receipt, and if consumption smoothing is costly. The transfer is an anticipated and transitory income shock and, thus, the PIH predicts that consumption should be smooth before and after its receipt. We find that food consumption does not change the days before and after the transfer date and we find no evidence that households bear costs to smooth consumption. The transfer’s cost of access, which encompasses participants’ distaste for using debit cards and costly ATM withdrawals, may help time-inconsistent and less experienced debit card holders smooth consumption.

There are a thousand more silly ideas for every utopian blockchain project to heal the planet, foster financial justice, transform cultural production or democratize practically anything and everything. Non‐fungible tokens (NFTs) are one of them. The funny thing is that the more you pick at them, the more they harmonize with certain longstanding anthropological arguments. Non‐fungibility lurks in the anthropological imagination of non‐capitalist economies. This article uses the common law of fungibility to explore the elevation of the very idea of non‐fungibility presumed in many NFTs. This idea might have more in common with saints’ incorruptible flesh or the Crown Jewels than the standard fictions of capitalist finance. They cut social ties by insisting on their singularity and immutability. In doing so, they crowd out other blockchain conversations about regeneration and ways to reckon the debts we owe any number of possible futures.

Financial transactions have been an integral part of people’s everyday transactions the world over. Whether in the form of cash, credit, plastic cards or today, using digital platforms, these transactions continue to both structure and be shaped by the existing social order . Using a “social meaning of money” framing , this chapter draws on examples from around the world to better understand how people give, receive and save money in the Digital Age. In the process, it attempts three shifts in focus: (1) from the inherent value of monetary technologies to how this value is constituted in practice within specific constellations of norms, values, power relations and resource distribution, (2) from the use of digital platforms to the integration of their use with non-digital artefacts in practice, and (3) from the innovativeness of technology design to the innovativeness of its users. The chapter finds that while mobile financial tools and associated data may well be making the world of financial transactions more inclusive in some ways, they simultaneously risk excluding certain categories of people, practices and geographies from the economy. By alerting us to the promise and perils of newly introduced modes of transacting our finances, this chapter will urge its audience to think more realistically about how to better design such tools and the policies regulating them.