Mobile money and the impact of mobile phone regulatory enforcement among the urban poor in Tanzania
Stark, L. (2021). Mobile money and the impact of mobile phone regulatory enforcement among the urban poor in Tanzania. Human Technology, 17(1), 22-44. https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.202106223977
Published in
Human TechnologyAuthors
Date
2021Copyright
© 2021 Laura Stark and the Open Science Centre, University of Jyväskylä
Mobile money provides a tool for survival, particularly in urban conditions shaped by city regulations that make microvending difficult for the poor. An analysis of 165 interviews conducted in two low-income neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over 8 years demonstrates how interlocked layers of technology and interaction make mobile money services semiformal. I introduce two mobile money-enabled survival strategies: intrahousehold transfers for day-to-day survival (transfers within the same city) and resource safeguarding through kin remittances of start-up capital (home-based subsistence business capital stored for kin access in emergencies). The recent tightening of mobile phone regulations in the global South has disrupted users’ multilevel and formal/informal-hybrid infrastructures of money movement in these communities. Such tougher regulations could result in a new digital divide that hinders rather than facilitates the financial inclusion of the poor.
Publisher
Jyväskylän YliopistoISSN Search the Publication Forum
1795-6889Keywords
Original source
https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/article/view/239Versions elsewhere
https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.202106223977Publication in research information system
https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/97935753
Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
License
Related items
Showing items with similar title or keywords.
-
Mobile Phone Theft, Resale, and Violence in Dar es Salaam
Stark, Laura (Zed Books, 2022)In Africa’s towns and cities more than those on any other continent, governments seem unable to ensure security for their citizens. The majority of urban residents find themselves ‘entangled within power dynamics that ... -
Educational research from Tanzania 1998–2008 concerning persons with disabilities: What can we learn?
Lehtomäki, Elina; Tuomi, Margaret; Matonya, Magreth (Pergamon Press, 2014)The global Education For All process and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have increased the attention given to marginalised and excluded groups showing the need to enhance the education of ... -
Cultural Politics of Love and Provision among Poor Youth in Urban Tanzania
Stark, Laura (Routledge; Etnografiska Museet, 2017)This article examines how urban youth in the poorest neighbourhoods of Dar es Salaam negotiate the terms of transactional intimacy, that is, heterosexual relations in which men are expected to provide for women materially. ... -
Motives and Agency in Forced Marriage among the Urban Poor in Tanzania
Stark, Laura (Routledge, 2020)Using the method of third-person elicitation and 171 interviews in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I examine one form of forced marriage, ‘marriage on the mat’ (ndoa ya mkeka). In it, girls’ parents use the normative pressure of ... -
Mobile money as a driver of digital financial inclusion
Shaikh, Aijaz, A.; Glavee-Geo, Richard; Karjaluoto, Heikki; Hinson, Robert Ebo (Elsevier, 2023)Meeting the mobile money needs of the less privileged in developing and emerging markets opens up enormous possibilities for banks and newly emerged financial-technology firms. Many consider mobile money services a separate ...