Innovations target South Africa’s Unbanked

by Joseph Bornstein, NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Microfinance on Jul 23, 2008

In the higgledy-piggledy streets of Bethelsdorp, a sprawling South African township once designated for people of mixed race, what at first glance appears to be a colourful new youth movement is gathering strength. Adherents sport blue T-shirts and baseball caps and lug brimming satchels. They roam the streets, knocking on the doors of the township's shacks and simple bungalow homes.

In the anarchic days of the apartheid era such youths might have been "comrades" rallying local morale against the police. More recently they might have been members of a nattily dressed new gang. But they are not. They are salespeople for a mobile-telephone-based community-banking scheme.

"We are telling people how easy it is to have a bank account," says Antonio Loots, the community banker for Standard Bank, South Africa's largest bank, who cruises around the township in his ancient BMW overseeing the salespeople. "Places like Bethelsdorp are very remote from traditional banking structures. For an initiative like this to work it must have local input."

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