Opinion: Mobile Money Changed How Kenyans Access Money; Managing It Remains a Problem

‍Kenya’s next financial challenge is not access, it is understanding.

Kenya is largely considered a global success story in financial inclusion. With the rise of mobile money services such as M-PESA, the country has shown how technology can bring millions of people into the formal financial system, many for the first time. By 2024, 84.8 per cent of Kenyan adults had access to formal financial services, up from 26.7 per cent in 2006.

But access, impressive as it is, should not be confused with understanding. Kenya has largely solved the problem of financial access. The next challenge is ensuring people know how to use the financial tools now at their fingertips.

For many young Kenyans, financial tools are arriving earlier and faster than the knowledge required to use them well. Young people, including teenagers, are growing up in a world of mobile money, digital banking, instant transactions and increasingly sophisticated financial products. 

They are financially connected long before many of them are financially prepared. The wider data also suggests that financial engagement remains relatively shallow: only 44.1 per cent of adults use more than one formal financial product, just 36 per cent regularly save with formal institutions, and insurance usage, including public health insurance, stands at 22 per cent.

That gap matters.

Being able to send or receive money on a phone is not the same as understanding how to budget, how to distinguish saving from investing, how to assess risk, or how to make decisions that support long-term financial stability. Familiarity with digital finance can create an illusion of competence. In practice, access without understanding may expose young people to a different set of risks: poor spending habits, vulnerability to scams, confusion about debt, and unrealistic ideas about wealth creation. The national strategy notes that only 42.1 per cent of adults are financially literate, measured against interest-rate computation, inflation and risk diversification, while only 18.3 per cent are considered financially healthy, down from 39.4 per cent in 2016.

This is where schools ought to enter the conversation more seriously. Financial literacy is often treated as an optional life skill rather than a core part of education. In Kenya, that view is becoming harder to defend. If young people are expected to navigate an increasingly digitised financial system, then the ability to make sound financial decisions deserves to be seen as part of education for adulthood, not as an extracurricular add-on. That case looks stronger still when one considers that 23.1 per cent of 18–25-year-olds were totally excluded from financial services in 2024, with exclusion especially pronounced among rural youth.

That is the thinking behind initiatives such as Jubilee Asset Management Limited's AngazaCash Financial Literacy Programme. The programme, which targets high school students, aims to introduce basic concepts such as budgeting, saving, investing and planning for the future before students leave school.

The impulse behind such programmes is difficult to dispute. Kenya's young people clearly need more practical preparation for the financial realities they will face. The more interesting question is whether these efforts are being framed with enough realism.

Too often, the language around financial literacy is well-meaning but vague. Students are encouraged to "save", "plan ahead" and "invest in their future" — all sensible ideas, but not yet a sufficient response to the actual financial environment they inhabit. In Kenya, financial education for teenagers should be rooted less in abstraction and more in the specifics of daily life: mobile money habits, digital fraud, informal saving culture, family obligations, peer pressure, side-hustle economics, betting, short-term borrowing and the social performance of consumption.

This is not a theoretical concern. The Kenya National Financial Inclusion Strategy by the Central Bank of Kenya explicitly identifies over-indebtedness, gambling and weak consumer protection as threats to financial health, especially for young people and low-income households.

In other words, the challenge is not simply to teach students about money. It is to teach them how money behaves in the world they already know.

That distinction matters because Kenya's financial system has evolved quickly. The country has become a model of innovation in access, but capability has not necessarily kept pace. The next phase of the inclusion story is therefore less about opening the door and more about equipping people to walk through it wisely.

High school may be the most important point at which to begin. It is the stage when attitudes toward money, risk and aspiration start to form. It is also the point just before many young people gain greater autonomy without necessarily gaining better judgement. By then, financial behaviour is already being shaped by what they see at home, among peers and online. Leaving financial literacy until adulthood may simply be too late.

Still, programmes led by financial institutions should invite scrutiny as well as praise. There is always a need to distinguish genuine education from subtle brand positioning. If companies are entering classrooms to talk about financial wellbeing, they should also be prepared to support balanced teaching, including the dangers of debt, the limits of investing, the risks of speculation and the importance of consumer protection. Otherwise, financial education risks becoming too polished and not sufficiently independent.

Kenya has already shown the world what broad financial access can look like. The harder task now is to ensure that access is matched by judgement, discipline and understanding. For young people especially, the issue is no longer whether they can participate in the financial system. It is whether they can do so in ways that improve their resilience rather than deepen their vulnerability.

That is why financial literacy should go hand in hand with financial inclusion—not because every student needs to become an investor or entrepreneur, but because in a country where financial tools are becoming ubiquitous, the ability to make informed decisions is no longer a specialist skill. It is a civic and economic necessity.

Christine Wachira is the Senior Manager, Marketing and Corporate Communications at Jubilee Insurance. This article represents the author's views and does not necessarily reflect those of Money254. We welcome submissions from professionals and thought leaders on issues that matter to our readers. 

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