Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
Share of e-money accounts with no transaction in the last 90 days, eight WAEMU countries, end of year, BCEAO.
- 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
- 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
- 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
- 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
- 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
- 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
- 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
- 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
- 9. Nearly two in three people in Africa are still offline
- 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
- 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
- 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
- 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
- 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
- 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
- 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
- 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
- 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
- 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
- 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
- 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
- 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
- 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
- 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
- 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
- 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
Share of e-money accounts in the eight WAEMU countries unused for 90 days at end-2024, up from 54.6% in 2020.
Accounts opened by end-2024, 2.6 times the 94 million of 2020. Active accounts grew 1.8 times, to 77 million.
E-money transactions in 2024, up from 3.5 billion in 2020: each active account made nearly twice as many.
the numbers & method
| no use in 90 days (%) | |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 54.6 |
| 2022 | 58.4 |
| 2024 | 69.1 |
Claim types Fact
Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), annual report on digital financial services in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU/UEMOA: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo), 2024 edition, Annex 1 (pp. 26–27). E-money (monnaie électronique) from all issuers, mostly mobile money. Active account = at least one transaction in the last 90 days (BCEAO definition). End-of-year stocks, WAEMU total as printed: accounts opened 94,226,056 (2020), 131,006,798 (2021), 157,465,685 (2022), 209,025,380 (2023), 248,710,918 (2024); active accounts 42,803,234 / 57,364,445 / 65,469,887 / 68,864,678 / 76,863,533; activity rate as printed by BCEAO 45.43% / 43.79% / 41.58% / 32.95% / 30.90%. Transactions (number, calendar year): 3,497,284,116 in 2020 (BCEAO 2020 report, Annex 4) and 11,921,750,329 in 2024 (2024 report). Idle shares (100 minus BCEAO's activity rate: 54.57%, 56.21%, 58.42%, 67.05%, 69.10%) and the ratios 2.6× and 1.8× are progrss calculations. Transactions per active account (81.7 in 2020, 155.1 in 2024, 1.9×) are progrss calculations on year-end active accounts. One person can hold several accounts with different issuers, so accounts are not people. Licence: BCEAO allows free reuse, including commercial, if reproduced exactly with BCEAO cited; the data are freely available on bceao.int.
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