The African Development Bank (“AfDB” or “the Bank”) in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Agence Française de Développement (AfD) and the Government of Luxembourg (the Initial Donors) has established the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI). Structurally, ADFI comprises a multi-donor trust fund and debt funding from the Bank and has a projected ten-year (10) investment horizon. It was launched in June by the Bank at its annual meetings in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.
Through catalytic and strategic investments in digital financial services (DFS) throughout Africa, ADFI will seek to break down barriers to DFS growth and uptake in order to accelerate financial inclusion in general and reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion in particular. It is important to note that ADFI’s design was informed by a comprehensive continental study which established that catalytic digital financial inclusion interventions will have the potential to impact a total addressable market (TAM) of 332 million financially excluded adults on the continent, 60% of whom would be women.
By 2025, 80% of the adult population in Africa are financially included and served by a network aligned with Level One Project (L1P) principles www.leveloneproject.org. Level One Principles are key design principles for building a pro-poor payment system that is open loop, push-payment, real-time, irrevocable, governed by participants and which offers same day settlement and operates on a cost-recovery basis and a shared fraud detection and management service.
By 2025, 100% of the total addressable market (TAM) of financially excluded adults on the African continent (332 million adults of whom 60% are women) are within reach and financially included as a result of DFS enabling regulatory frameworks and a pro-poor L1P aligned DFS-related infrastructure including fully interoperable digital transaction accounts for adults.
ADFI invites companies, joint ventures, consortiums of companies, associations and public and private sector institutions to share concepts across ADFI’s four primary pillars of intervention that will leverage DFS to increase overall financial inclusion in Africa and reduce the gender gap.