Bank Account Ownership: Ghana places 5th in SSA as 68% of Ghanaians own a bank account

Bank Account Ownership: Ghana places 5th in SSA as 68% of Ghanaians own a bank account

About 68 percent of adult Ghanaians own a bank account – whether mobile money or regular banking account – as of December 2021.

This places Ghana at the 5^th position among 25 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, but 1^st in West Africa.

According to the 2021 World Bank Findex Report, 41 percent of adult Ghanaians had bank accounts as of 2014.

This shot up to 58% in 2017 and subsequently by 10% percent to 68 percent in 2021.

The report said Ghana, Cameroon Liberia, and Senegal were some countries that saw at least a 10 percentage point growth in mobile money account ownership since 2017.

However, the share of adults having bank accounts in the country has remained mostly stagnant since 2017.

“In Ghana, the share of adults having an account at a financial institution remained mostly stagnant since 2017, yet mobile money account ownership increased to 60% from 39% in 2017, boosting overall account ownership by 11 percentage points”.

The report further said mobile money accounts have become an important method to save money in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 15% of adults use to deposit money—about the same share that saves at a bank or similar financial institution.

Also, over 30% of adults in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda save money in a mobile money account.

Meanwhile, about 1-in-3 mobile money account holders say they cannot use their account without help. Women are 5 percentage points more likely than men to need help operating their mobile money accounts

In Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money adoption continued to rise between 2017 and 2021, such that 33% of adults now have a mobile money account—a share three times larger than the 10% global average of mobile money account ownership.

Adoption and usage of mobile money services have spread beyond their origins as a person-to-person payment tool, such that 3 out of 4 mobile account owners in 2021 made or received at least one payment that was not person-to-person and 15% of adults use their mobile money account to save.

The list of countries surveyed in 2021 include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Rep., Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

TOP 10 COUNTRIES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA