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ABSTRACT
With this explorative research, we investigate if and how farmers in Rwanda adopt mobile money, or m-money, and integrate it into their everyday life to foster their economic development and social well-being. To this end, we adapt a domestication perspective and base our research on qualitative evidence from 72 semi-structured interviews with farmers in rural Rwanda. Our findings reveal that – where available – Rwandan farmers continuously domesticate m-money. While they acknowledge the convenience of using m-money, they experience three major inhibitors that particularly affect its use for business: (1) limited opportunities for learning about m-money, (2) high and non-transparent costs, and (3) barely accessible network agents with insufficient liquidity. Based on our findings, we discuss how policymakers and service providers can increase the adoption of m-money among farmers, thereby reducing social exclusion of the unbanked and fostering economic growth in Rwanda and other emerging economies.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Marthe Uwamariya
Marthe Uwamariya ([email protected]) is a PhD student at the Department of Media and Technology Management, University of Cologne, Germany. She holds two Master Degrees in Technology Management and in Business Administration, obtained from the University of Rwanda and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Her research interests comprise mobile commerce and technology adoption.
Claudia Loebbecke
Claudia Loebbecke ([email protected]) holds the Chair of Media and Technology Management at the University of Cologne, Germany. She was President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) in 2005-2006, which named her AIS Fellow in 2012. Her CV and publication list are linked under www.mtm.uni-koeln.de/team-loebbecke-home-engl.htm.
Stefan Cremer
Stefan Cremer ([email protected]) holds a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Cologne, Germany. He works both in industry and as an external researcher. His research focuses on the impact of culture on innovation and offshore work, the impact of website information cues on the online consumption of media goods, and the role of technology in emerging countries.