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数字金融是疫情后复苏的关键

Aug 21, 2020 Patrick Njoroge

内罗毕——联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯在最近的一次讲话中指出：“我们正在经历自1870年以来最严重的人均收入下降危机，”他警告说，2019冠状病毒病疫情危机已让七千万至一亿人口面临极度贫困的危险。需要各国协调发展，全方位采取措施，以可持续、包容的方式重启全球经济，才能防止这一悲剧的发生。技术——尤其是新的数字金融工具——可以在这一过程中发挥重要作用。

在新冠疫情大流行期间，远程医疗、远程办公和在线学习等数字服务对数百万接受居家隔离和封锁令的人来说，已经成为了一条“生命线”。数字金融在其中许多环节都至关重要，它使人们能够为商品和服务付账，获得工作报酬和社会救助金，数字金融还为陷入困境的企业获取银行贷款等金融支持。

甚至在疫情爆发之前，人们就已经越发认识到，为了整个地球和人类的利益，我们需要利用数字金融。事实上，这是联合国可持续发展目标数字融资特别工作组的中心目标，我在过去18个月里一直致力于达成这个目标。

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Josea Cheruiyot Nov 27, 2020

Great Insights on Kenya's digital finance space.
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milford bateman Aug 29, 2020

Digitalisation can be a great thing when operated as a public service. However, the commercial applications known as ‘fintech’ are huge in Kenya, but destroying the country not assisting it. I am at a loss as to why there is no mention of these issues at all. The ability to very quickly access a microloan through M-Pesa and M-Schwari ‘at the touch of five buttons on your mobile’ has created huge over-indebtedness problems for Kenya’s poor. Second, the huge wealth being extracted and taken out of Kenya by fintech applications and put into the hands of wealthy corporations and investors mainly located abroad (often located in ‘tax efficient/low regulation’ jurisdictions too) is simply staggering. Thanks not least to M-Pesa, its parent company, Safaricom, has made huge profits in recent years ($US747 million profit in 2019-20), the bulk of which was quickly transferred out of the country as dividends and ‘special dividends’. This represents a massive loss of demand and wealth for a poor country hoping to develop through reinvestment. It is far and away worse then the extractive/exploitative colonial era mining arrangements that back in the 1800s the British used to develop and grow rich from their African holdings. As it stands, commercial fintech is likely to be the great ‘extractive’ mechanism that further impoverishes and under-develops Africa in the 21st century.
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