EcoCash Burundi: Mobile Money for Financial Inclusion

Econet Wireless Burundi, part of the pan-African Econet Group, rolled out its EcoCash mobile-money service after acquiring operator U-COM in October 2014. A 2015 partnership with WorldRemit let the Burundian diaspora send international remittances directly into EcoCash wallets. By mid-2023, Econet/EcoCash had grown into Burundi's largest mobile operator.

In 2015, only around 7% of adults in Burundi held a bank account. A 2016 national financial-inclusion survey found that only 12.5% of Burundian adults held an account at a formal financial institution, compared with a 34% sub-Saharan Africa average, with urban account-holding roughly five times the rural rate. By mid-2023, Econet/EcoCash held roughly 55% of the mobile market, and a national survey found 43% of respondents named mobile money their most-used transfer channel.

On 24 January 2023, Burundi's tax authority (OBR) froze Econet Wireless Burundi's accounts over a disputed debt of more than 88 billion Burundian francs (about US$44 million), paralysing EcoCash cash-out at banks and microfinance institutions nationwide; agents reported individual losses of hundreds of thousands to millions of francs held in trust, illustrating a concrete instance of regulatory/state risk disrupting a widely used digital-inclusion service.