By Cathy Maulidi:
About 35 percent of Malawians are financially illiterate with no access to financial services, recent figures from the Reserve Bank of Malawi show.
RBM Director of Financial Sector Regulation Sopani Gondwe said this on Monday during training for financial literacy educators from across the country.
According to Gondwe, 35 out of every 100 people do not use services from formal financial institutions.
“The recent financial literacy and capability survey shows that we have slightly improved from 45 percent in terms of those with financial literacy in 2018 to 65 percent now but even at that level we still have 35 percent excluded from the formal financial services sector and it is that number we should work to address,” Gondwe said.
According to Gondwe, people who are not financial literate cannot make wise financial decisions and they make poor investment choices.
“People who are not financially literate do not even know their rights when approaching financial institutions, do not understand their responsibilities and because they do not understand these issues they can economically empower themselves.
“It is for this reason we have brought together the financial literacy educators, to train them so that they can go and train others in their Communities. We want to train them on basic financial products and benefits of the inclusive financial sector,” Gondwe added.
RBM has partnered with the Ministry of Gender to implement the initiative.
Director of Community Development in the Ministry of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare Clotilda Sawasawa said the training of financial literacy educators is in line with aspirations embedded in Malawi 2063.
Sawasawa said with the right financial knowledge, people will make informed decisions.
“If everybody is capacitated on how to manage their resources, it will be very easy for Malawi to achieve the Malawi 2063 aspirations,” Sawasawa said.
Mwanza District Community Development Officer Weasley Saidi described the meeting as very important saying it will expand their understanding on financial matters so that they can share the knowledge with others.
“This training will increase our understanding in terms of knowledge and skills which we will later impart to the rural communities,” he said.
Last year, RBM also trained another set of financial literacy educators and this is a second cohort to be trained.
The central bank is targeting to train two financial literacy educators in every district.
