Under Ansong, African-led Partnership Examines New Benefits and Drivers of Financial Capability in Sub-Saharan Africa

Funded by the U.S. Department of State, this timely 6-year project seeks to drive down the increasing number of people in SSA being coerced or deceived into working in an exploited or abused role, particularly in South Africa and Middle Eastern countries. Having gathered foundational data from interviews, surveys and focus groups, the FCAB Africa team is preparing to use these data to rollout and test tailored financial capability interventions in communities across both countries using a cluster randomized controlled trial.

“Our researcher and stakeholders are both highlighting the urgent need for innovations that shore up the financial resilience of the many people at risk of being labor trafficked,” said Jamal Appiah-Kubi, a postdoctoral research associate on the FCAB Africa team.

Based on initial findings, the FCAB team plans for the intervention to include three core components, including training human service professionals to offer real-time financial guidance, promoting communities’ access to credit through digital savings groups, and entrepreneurship training to help community members create viable businesses.

“We're targeting the structural origins of youth labor trafficking and doing so in a new way: by promoting youth's financial capability where they live,” Ansong said.

For Ansong, this study also sheds yet more light on the myriad effects of financial capability on an individual, family or community’s well-being. For two decades, financial capability researchers have detailed the connections of financial inclusion, financial literacy and asset-building supports to improved economic security, psychosocial well-being and developmental outcomes.

“Our collaborative work in Malawi and Zambia will generate timely and context-relevant evidence to inform financial capability policies and programs that bolster young people’s financial resilience and stability,” Ansong said.

FCAB Africa’s expansive research portfolio is also reasserting social workers’ role as a source of essential financial guidance for clients — a role that, over time, has been ceded to accountants, financial advisors and other professionals. To that end, in schools of social work across Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, the FCAB Africa team and local partners are developing financial capability curricula for future practitioners to systemically address this knowledge gap in their service populations.

“We want to ensure that, across the continent, we have a frontline human service workforce equipped with financial capability competencies so that they can provide financial guidance to people they work with on a day-to-day basis,” Ansong said.

At the same time, to develop a cadre of FCAB African scholars to drive the science undergirding its financial capability programming, the team also brings direct research mentoring and technical support to future researchers at African universities.

“These training programs are strengthening our partnerships with local universities. Already, we are beginning to see how our engagement efforts are opening greater collaborative opportunities for scholars and graduate students in the areas of scholarship and teaching,” said Emmanuel Amoako, an School doctoral student who co-led a three-week training workshop on systematic reviews and meta-analyses at the University of Ghana in summer 2023.

Together, FCAB Africa’s connected initiatives to bring financial capability training to Africa’s human services workforces and develop an African-led research consortium focused on financial capability interventions present ambitious structural solutions to a host of financial issues and related outcomes among vulnerable groups, including youth, women, and mobile or refugee populations.

“I think it’s going to impact millions, ultimately,” Ansong said. “But I’m excited to see what happens in the next five years as we bring just-in-time financial guidance to regular folks in Africa.”