Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

While mobile phones are making significant inroads in many developing countries, little remains known about thepolicy and infrastructure constraints that affect their use for growth of micro enterprises. We address this gap in theliterature. The uniqueness of our study also lies in the focus on women micro entrepreneurs in a remote Pacific islandcountry. To obtain both the demand-side and supply-side perspectives, we conducted semi-structured interviews of74 women micro entrepreneurs and ten key informants from the Fijian Government, mobile network operators(MNOs), and financial institutions. We found that appropriate policy framework, supporting infrastructure andappropriate ecosystem are required for rapid uptake of mobile value added services by women owned microenterprises in Fiji. A significant number of women micro entrepreneurs were willing to embrace mobile value addedservices if these were made available with adequate security and at reasonable cost.