This is, however, a particularly challenging area of policy formulation and one that means different things to different people. At a superficial level, financial inclusion is often simply seen as having access to a bank account and consequently to the national payment system. Mobile banking has brought banking services to the rural areas in a number of African countries.
In South Africa, the low-cost Mzansi accounts have given easy and cheap access to rudimentary banking services to a broader segment of the population. I would, however, argue that financial inclusion entails much more than this and that, from a political economy perspective, it is a complex matter, particularly due to the broad range of opinions on how best to achieve this policy objective.