| dc.description.abstract | The study assessed the effectiveness of the mobile money model regarding its ability to help
the coffee smallholder farmers of Tingey County, Kapchorwa District of Uganda saving
money. The explorative study gleaned quantitative and qualitative data through face-to-face
interviews with 159 farmers using semi/structured interviews and key informants as well as
analysed data using SPSS version 21.
The study registered some significant results: firstly, all of the respondents studied owned MTN
customer mobile money account; moreover, 46% of them owned MoKash accounts.
Additionally, 39% of the respondents saved in the MoKash accounts as evidenced by the high
frequency of deposits, withdrawals, volume of transactions and duration the funds stayed in
the MoKash accounts before withdrawals. Equally, significant, the free accounts registration
and the low amount or value (50UGX) required to start saving money in MoKash account
among other saving strategies that enthused the respondents to start or increase saving money
in MoKash accounts.
Despite these noteworthy results, the study also recorded some challenges the respondents
encountered in saving money through a MoKash account. This included the sparsely populated
agent points, the high tariffs charged on the products and services, poor connectivity,
insufficient money to save and the availability of other MMS use cases confronted savings.
Regardless of the challenges, the Financial Service Providers - FSP is not an antidote to help
overcome all obstacles that the respondents encountered. However, the study recommended
areas for improvement to further increase amounts of money saved in the MoKash account.
These include improving marketing communication strategies to promote its adoption and
usage more widely and to offer promotional packages (incentives) and SMS to the MoKash
savers (users) to advance the users awareness on innovation beyond the promotional period.
Furthermore, it recommended, piloting deductions for savings at the payment sources of the
respondents and encourage respondents to set saving targets that limit or attaching penalties
for excessive withdrawals, encourage access and financial usage by reducing withdrawal tariff
(fees and taxes), increase agent points and strengthen the network.
Those recommendations will facilitate to increase the frequency of deposits and volume of
saving and minimise the number of withdrawals, thus enabling the respondents to save more
and better respond to shocks or emergencies, and subsequently, increase the country's GDP
accrued from interests earned on savings of MMS industry | en_US |
