Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

In 2009, under the banner of 'dollarization', Zimbabwe adopted a multicurrency system after   socio-economicand political quagmires and a world record hyperinflation exceeding a crescendo of250 million percent in 2008.Under this multicurrency system, Zimbabwe adopted basket of foreign currencies as official currencies. These included the United States Dollar, the South African Rand, the Botswana Pula, the British Pound and the Euro (and later on the Chinese Yuan) – all of which operated simultaneously in the economy. The beginnings of this multicurrency system coincided closely with the adoption and growth of mobile money services. This blog highlights findings from the 12-month long ethnographic research project that examined the socio-economic dynamics of balancing and negotiating the uses of multiple currencies in the wake of mobile money adoption. To gain a nuanced comprehension of the complex rituals involved in these currency conversions, data collection was done using qualitative ethnographic techniques such as participant observation and in-depth interviews with mobile money users and non-users, and key informants. Large and diversified sample from two communities – rural Chivi and urban Harare – allowed us to compare and holistically capture the complexities of mobile money politics as well as the temporalities of foreign currency conversions.