(Ecofin Agency) - Last week, the telecommunications operators MTN, Airtel, Glo, 9Mobile and Ntel inaugurated the financial inclusion committee created in Nigeria to improve financial inclusion in the country. This executive body is, in fact, an answer to low adoption of mobile money in the country for five years now.

Indeed, the market share of this service is below 10% and, during their meeting on September 4, 2018, the operators promised to take strong measures to accelerate the development of this segment of the mobile market.

The committee that will operate within the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (Alton) defined a three step action plan. First, within the next three months, it will conduct an awareness-raising campaign in the whole country to develop Nigerians’ financial culture. Next, it is planned to combine the mobile base of telecommunications companies, the different integrated identification systems, and the distribution networks to create a larger network thanks to which an 80% financial inclusion will be reached by 2020.  

In the shorter term, the committee plans to provide financial services to about 35 million Nigerians in the next 12 months and in the long term, it wishes to serve 90 million Nigerians in 773 administrative zones. 

 "The inauguration of this committee is a positive and necessary first step to achieving our goals of improving inclusion and literacy[…] The telecommunications subscribers database is the most comprehensive, our coverage is vast and this speaks to the potential that we have as a group to truly contribute to solving some of the challenges that have been faced so far ", Gbenga Adebayo, president of ALTON said.