The Courage to Step Forward: Kenya Central Bank Deputy Governor Sheila M’Mbijjewe

Barefoot Innovation Podcast

My guest today, Sheila M’Mbijjewe, is the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya and is helping lead the way to a new world of financial services and financial regulation.

In our conversation, she describes what it was like for the regulators who faced that cutting edge situation, new terrain that no one had navigated before them. They saw the powerful potential for full financial inclusion. She says there wasn’t much money spent on marketing M-Pesa -- that people just saw immediately what this tool was and they got phones and started using it, and the regulators had to figure out how to enable it, while also managing the risks it could bring. They didn’t have laws in place for it, but, as she says, they were shown a solution by the technology world, and so they watched, and learned, and collaborated to figure it out. Today, 83% of Kenyans are served by the formal financial system. Last year, half of Kenya’s GDP moved on the M-Pesa rails.