Mobile money adoption in rural Rwanda: A domestication perspective
Marthe Uwamariya, Claudia Loebbecke, Stefan Cremer · Africa Journal of Management · 2021
With this explorative research, we investigate if and how farmers in Rwanda adopt mobile money, or m-money, and integrate it into their everyday life to foster their economic development and social well-being. To this end, we adapt a domestication perspective and base our research on qualitative evidence from 72 semi-structured interviews with farmers in rural Rwanda. Our findings reveal that – where available – Rwandan farmers continuously domesticate m-money. While they acknowledge the convenience of using m-money, they experience three major inhibitors that particularly affect its use for business: (1) limited opportunities for learning about m-money, (2) high and non-transparent costs, and (3) barely accessible network agents with insufficient liquidity. Based on our findings, we discuss how policymakers and service providers can increase the adoption of m-money among farmers, thereby reducing social exclusion of the unbanked and fostering economic growth in Rwanda and other emerging economies.