ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 argues that mobile money is premised on a narrative of social entrepreneurship, promoting the idea that digital financial inclusion can both address social problems and produce profit. It analyses the articulations of this narrative in relation to digital financial inclusion and traces the shift from social entrepreneurship to philanthrocapitalism, a type of philanthropy that emulates for-profit business in the capitalist world. The chapter then illustrates the gendered implications of these narratives within the M-Pesa system by looking at mobile-money-enabled products and services and mobile-money agents. It shows how M-Pesa has contributed to reconceptualising access to basic resources and services as entrepreneurial opportunities, increasing gendered responsibilities for transforming these opportunities into improved livelihood. The profits and public and private funding deriving from the development of the mobile money market are not redistributed among the ‘financially excluded’ or used to provide the resources and social infrastructure necessary to address the gendered socio-economic disadvantages that cause financial exclusion.
