Microfinance, Financial Inclusion and Economic Welfare in Africa: A Panel Investigation

This study explores the relationship between microfinance, financial inclusion, and economic welfare in a sample of 23 African countries for the period of 2004 to 2023 using annual time series data. We measured microfinance with the number of Branches of Microfinance banks, Microfinance Borrowers, Microfinance outstanding deposits, Microfinance outstanding loans; financial inclusion number of registered mobile money accounts per 1,000 adults; the number of mobile money agent outlets par 1,000 adults; and digital card ownership; governance and institutional quality with Rule of law, regulatory quality, and government effectiveness; and economic welfare with household consumption; while we controlled for the inflation rate, interest rate and exchange rate. These variables were estimated using Panel Least Squares, Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS (DOLS), and Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation techniques. The result of the cointegration revealed that cointegration exists between the variables of the model. Findings from the aforesaid estimation techniques show that there is the existence of long-run relationships between microfinance, financial inclusion, and economic welfare since the coefficients of the microfinance and financial inclusion variables are statistically significant. The coefficients of the error correction terms which measure the effects of the short-run dynamics of the model suggest that the speeds of adjustment from the long run to the short run in the models would be 76%, 61%, 83%, 67%, 68%, 34%, and 80% respectively for all the specified models. Following the findings of the study, conclusions were drawn and the study suggests that microfinance institutions should adapt to the digitization of their products and services for wider coverage on one hand; the government should provide digital financial amenities to create a fertile ground for micro-financial institutions to rely on to maximize the welfare of the economy.