Source: Financial Times
Mobile airtime is as precious to Lucia Njelekele as the chicks that are her livelihood. The poultry farmer relies on her mobile phone: for real-time information about demand for her 3,000 livestock from one of Tanzania's biggest supermarkets; to arrange transport; source feed; and consult her vet.

What is more, Ms Njelekele's data trail is valuable. The stream of information left by her consumption of mobile phone airtime, her data purchases, and her social network interactions has persuaded Fanikiwa Microfinance, a local outfit, to provide a loan to expand her business.

The mother of two school-age children recently left a secure job as a secretary to set up the business she runs from home in Imbezi, an hour's walk from downtown Dar es Salaam. She believes that, as an entrepreneur, she will be able to profit more fully from Tanzania's near-7 per cent economic growth.

Despite that growth, Tanzania's female agricultural workers need all the help they can get. The UN found that women in the country earn on average about half what men do and bear the brunt of unemployment. Women form about 90 per cent of the country's agricultural workforce, and wages are low.

But Ms Njelekele has benefited from a credit scoring system designed for consumers without bank accounts by First Access. The social enterprise creates custom-built financial models for lenders such as Fanikiwa to evaluate the creditworthiness of people whose mobile data offer financial information.

Such credit-scoring services could help many more women across rural Africa qualify for loans, the organisation says.

Nicole Stubbs, chief executive of First Access, says: "Mobile phones have been invaluable to women as communication and transaction devices, but their unsung glory is that they offer a traceable record of those activities."

With basic phones, women can access text-based mobile money services and send cash to friends and family, trade and pay bills.

A report by McKinsey, the consultancy, has found that a growing number of Africa's 650m mobile phone subscribers is making the most of increased levels of education, income, and digital infrastructure.

Services such as M-Pesa, a money transfer system introduced by Safaricom of Kenya seven years ago, are used by consumers for everyday purchases. Roadside stalls and corner shops dispense cash to customers based on their airtime credits or mobile saving balances.

Demand is strong. In Kenya, for example, M-Pesa claims 88 per cent annual growth in the rate consumers are making mobile payments.

"The aspirations of informal traders and small business owners have been limited [in the past] by what working capital could finance," says Zanele Mgidi, financial services manager at MTN Mobile Money South Africa. "Helping [businesses] . . . to secure financing will help many break out of the low-growth trap."

Yolande Van Wyk, chief executive of First National Bank's E-Wallet, a mobile money service, believes banks and retailers are becoming more imaginative about how they tackle financial inclusion. "Don't expect mobile money to continue to be telco-led," she says.

These quasi-formal transactions bring new opportunities for entrepreneurial women such as Ms Njelekele. With a mobile phone, they can send money or airtime to friends, family, merchants or employees.

"Women are less likely than men to have home ownership papers, land titles, bank accounts and other official documents," points out Ms Stubbs of First Access.

"Mobile data will be the next big asset that women can access on a massive scale," she says.