Memoirs from Bukhalalire: a poetic inquiry into the lived experience of M-PESA mobile money usage in rural Kenya

ABSTRACT

M-PESA is the world’s leading mobile money system which supports the person-to-person transfer of money. While the institutional meaning of M-PESA concerning financial inclusion and market access is well documented, the meaning attached to M-PESA by users, particularly in rural communities, has received less attention. This study examines the meaning of M-PESA to the rural poor in villages in Busia County, Western Kenya using the approach of poetic inquiry in which the expressions of local people are rendered as poetry in order to draw out affective and lived experience. A reading of the poems of seven participants reveals the perception of M-PESA as a means of empowerment for women, alignment with their social identity and access to education. This contrasts sharply with the meaning of M-PESA as seen by commercial and non-commercial institutions which focuses on connecting the unbanked to formal banking systems and the exploitation of M-PESA as a primary revenue stream. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for regulation which is delicately balanced between independence from institutional control and the exposure of the rural poor to exploitation.

KEYWORDS:

• M-pesa
• mobile money
• poetic inquiry
• ict and empowerment

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The names symbolise the seasons and the time of day the interviewee was born. .During the transcription, we used a fictitious first name for example, Mary in place of Margret and for the second name we used the Luo equiva6lent for the Luhya name of the interviewee. For instance, in Luhya a girl child born during harvest season would be called Nekesa, in Luo she would be Akeyo. It is therefore not possible to identify the participants from the scripts.