Digital Literacy and Financial Inclusion Among Smallholder Farmers: Exploring Gender Dichotomy in Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria

Abstract

<p>Despite financial inclusion’s ability to enhance socioeconomic well-being, financial inclusion remains considerably low in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Considering financially excluded individuals/households in SSA, the majority are from rural settings and are mostly peasant farmers or smallholders. Literature on smallholders seldom focuses on their financial inclusion status and how it is influenced by digital literacy. This chapter explores the nature of digital literacy among smallholders and how it affects their financial inclusion prospects in Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria. The study used data extracted from the Smallholder Household Survey for 2016 for each country and applied binary probit and IV-probit models to analyse the data. The findings indicate that digital literacy significantly enhances financial inclusion among smallholders in both countries, with consistent gender differences in favour of male farmers. Also, socioeconomic characteristics such as gender, investment, residence, education, age, marital status, etc. were identified as significant drivers of financial inclusion. Also, smallholders who consider farming as a business tend to be more financially included than their counterparts who do not have such a perception. Policy implications are discussed in the chapter.</p>