Mobile money: Ethiopia struggles to pay the price of progress

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Ethiopia's capital city grapples with long queues for petrol as a result of a new payment policy. There is no petrol shortage, but motorists are now required to use only two digital payment systems and can no longer pay for petrol with cash.

Pay up: M-Pesa has transformed Kenya’s economy. But Telebirr has been bringing Ethiopia’s capital to a halt. Photo: Eric Lafforgue/ArtInAllOfUs/Corbis/Getty Imageslias Alemu waited more than an hour to refuel his vehicle, a Toyota Vitz, at a petrol station near Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa.

“Should any gas station be caught transacting fuel in cash after the deadline, they will be banned from the fuel supply,” said Saharla Abdullahi, the head of the Petroleum and Energy Authority. A petrol attendant had similar gripes. “What can we do? People are taking their time to figure out how mobile money works. As are we.”The disruptive policy has its roots in the announcement, earlier this month, that the National Bank of Ethiopia had granted Kenyan telecoms operator Safaricom a licence to operate its pioneering, award-winning mobile money service M-Pesa.

 

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