Finance Ministry to oversee financial education initiatives

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning has stepped in to regulate all activities related to financial literacy in order to avoid duplication of financial education and savings campaigns that may stifle initiatives aimed at boosting financial inclusion.“The big issue is that we have many players but we are not coordinated. So, what we want is to have the Ministry coordinate all activities in terms of budget and training,” Remy Iyikirenga, the Savings Coordinator and Promotion Specialist in the Ministry said last week during a training foreducation dialogue methodology.He noted that through a forum now in the pipeline, different stakeholders would be able to share their activities amongst themselves as a way of avoiding duplication of activities.Recently, the government rolled out a financial education and savings campaign especially to pockets of the population that are financially excluded. The campaign has attracted participation from various stakeholders.The campaign is a follow up from recommendations contained in the 2008 Fin Scope Survey, which indicated that over 80 per cent of the population cannot access formal financial education and are not financially educated, slowing down the country’s efforts to fight against povertyAmy Davis, Chief of the United Statees Agency for International Development’s (USAID) programme dubbed “Ejo Heza (brighter future) noted that despite the availability of content and information about financial education, there has been lack of a methodology to reflect change in people’s lives.“We believe that this methodology can create real impact for the beneficially in the field,” she saidThe education dialogue methodology designed by microfinance institutions is expected to facilitate CHF to implement its five year financial education campaign under the USAID- ejo Heza project. The project is part of US President Barrack Obama’s initiative of Feed the Future global project and is crafted by CHF international with funding from USAID.It aims at bringing over 75,000 people out of poverty in the next five years.Experts say that through adult financial learning, information about financial education would easily be rolled out to the lower strata of society.