Sierra Leone Partners Tech Firm to Boost Financial Inclusion
A San Francisco-based technological nonprofit organisation, Kiva, is using blockchain to create an online ID database in Sierra Leone. This will allow people to get loans by having a credit history, provide Financial Inclusion for them. kiva Source : Kiva.org Kiva and President Julius Maada Bio officially launched the system in the capital Freetown mid-week. President Bio hopes it will bring more Sierra Leoneans into the financial system. Kiva already facilitates small loans in 80 countries, but Sierra Leone is the first country to implement an online credit system designed by the organisation. More than three quarters of Sierra Leone’s population lies outside the formal banking sector, according to data from the central bank. Informal institutions like community banks and microfinance lenders are more common, but they rarely share credit information and often charge extortionate interest rates. The platform will enable l...