Serena Natile

Bio: Serena Natile is an academic researcher from Brunel University London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Financial inclusion & Financial services. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 8 publications receiving 30 citations. Previous affiliations of Serena Natile include University of Warwick.

The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Walls

Abstract: Focusing on Kenya’s path-breaking mobile money project M-Pesa, this book examines and critiques the narratives and institutions of digital financial inclusion as a development strategy for gender equality, arguing for a politics of redistribution to guide future digital financial inclusion projects. One of the most-discussed digital financial inclusion projects, M-Pesa facilitates the transfer of money and access to formal financial services via the mobile phone infrastructure and has grown at a phenomenal rate since its launch in 2007 to reach about 80 per cent of the Kenyan population. Through a socio-legal enquiry drawing on feminist political economy, law and development scholarship and postcolonial feminist debate, this book unravels the narratives and institutional arrangements that frame M-Pesa’s success while interrogating the relationship between digital financial inclusion and gender equality in development discourse. Natile argues that M-Pesa is premised on and regulated according to a logic of opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution, favouring the expansion of the mobile money market in preference to contributing to substantive gender equality via a redistribution of the revenue and funding deriving from its development. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students in Global Political Economy, Socio-Legal Studies, Gender Studies, Law & Development, Finance and International Relations.

Regulating exclusions? Gender, development, and the limits of inclusionary financial platforms

Abstract: Digital financial-inclusion platforms have gained increasing attention as instruments for economic growth that also contribute to development goals such as poverty reduction and gender equality. One of the most acclaimed digital financial platforms to date is M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) in Kenya – a mobile-phone-enabled money-transfer service realised via a public–private partnership between the UK's Department for International Development, Vodafone and its local partner, Safaricom. Since its launch in 2007, M-Pesa has grown at a phenomenal rate and it is now used by over 70 per cent of the Kenyan population. Bringing together socio-legal enquiry, feminist political economy analysis and post-colonial literature, this paper discusses M-Pesa's inclusionary regulatory arrangements and examines their implications for gender equality. It shows that, while these arrangements contribute to including women in the formal financial system, they fail to adopt the redistributive measures necessary to address the gendered socio-economic disadvantages that cause and reproduce financial exclusion.

Global Regulations for a Digital Economy: Between New and Old Challenges

Abstract: Digital technologies are often described as posing unique challenges for public regulators worldwide. Their fast-pace and technical nature are viewed as being incompatible with the relatively slow and territorially bounded public regulatory processes. In this paper, we argue that not all digital technologies pose the same challenges for public regulators. We more precisely maintain that the digital technologies' label can be quite misleading as it actually represents a wide variety of technical artifacts. Based on two dimensions, the level of centralization and (im)material nature, we provide a typology of digital technologies that importantly highlights how different technical artifacts affect differently local, national, regional and global distributions of power. While some empower transnational businesses, others can notably reinforce states' power. By emphasizing this, our typology contributes to ongoing discussions about the global regulation of a digital economy and helps us identify the various challenges that it might present for public regulators globally. At the same time, it allows us to reinforce previous claims that these are importantly, not all new and that they often require us to solve traditional cooperation problems.

Digital Finance Inclusion and the Mobile Money "Social" Enterprise: A Socio-Legal Critique of M-Pesa in Kenya

Abstract: Financial technology or fintech initiatives are gaining increasing global attention as instruments for financial inclusion and economic and social development. Among such initiatives, mobile-phone-enabled money transfer systems, or “mobile money”, have been particularly acclaimed for facilitating access to financial services and creating opportunities for the so-called “unbanked poor”. One of the first and most-discussed mobile money projects to date is M-Pesa in Kenya, a digital payment system which is now used by over 70 per cent of the Kenyan population across a variety of sectors including finance, commerce, education, health, and social welfare. M-Pesa is premised on a narrative of social entrepreneurship and has increasingly embraced the idea of philanthrocapitalism, promoting the logic that digital financial inclusion can simultaneously address social problems and produce profit. This paper brings together socio-legal enquiry and international political economy analysis to illustrate the institutional arrangements underpinning the development of M-Pesa and examine some of the projects built on its infrastructure. It argues that social entrepreneurship promotes a logic of opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution, favouring mobile money providers and the institutions involved in the mobile money social business over improving the lives of the intended beneficiaries, namely the unbanked poor.

Mobile Money and the Limits of Financial Inclusion: a Gender Analysis of M-Pesa in Kenya

Abstract: Financial inclusion, as an instrument for sustainable growth and stability while achieving social goals such as poverty reduction and gender equality, is now a core feature of the global development project. The development agenda presents financial inclusion to women as a precondition for securing their own, their families' and their communities' autonomy and future well-being. This research investigates this claim, the assumptions on which it is based, the institutions and narratives that underpin it, and the limits, as well as the potential, of financial inclusion regarding gender equality in the case of mobile money, and in particular of M-Pesa in Kenya. Mobile money refers to payment systems that provide access to formal financial services via mobile phone network infrastructure. M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa Swahili for money), is a mobile money platform introduced in Kenya in 2007 via a public-private partnership between Vodafone and the UK Department for International Development. Now used by about 70 per cent of the Kenyan population, M-Pesa has captured global imagination as a successful financial inclusion project providing access to formal financial services for the 'financially excluded', including poor and low-income women. The main question this thesis asks is whether and to what extent M-Pesa can be considered a successful financial inclusion project in terms of substantive gender equality. A framework of analysis drawing on feminist political economy and African and Kenyan feminism(s) is used to explore the context and institutionalisation of M-Pesa, and the regulatory arrangements through which it has facilitated access to formal finance for poor and low-income women. The analysis focuses on two main elements emerging from the empirical and theoretical investigation, social entrepreneurship and the law. It argues that although M-Pesa has increased the number of women accessing formal financial services, it has not advanced substantive gender equality at the lower end of the income distribution, mainly due to the lack of corresponding redistributive measures addressing existing socio-economic inequalities. Funds, partnerships and initiatives developed around mobile money are organised and distributed according to a logic of entrepreneurial opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution. A logic of opportunity, unlike a politics of redistribution, not only tends to ignore the past and present political, socio-economic and legal dynamics that have contributed to creating and reproducing gender inequality but also risks furthering unequal gender relations by investing poor and low-income women with the responsibility for transforming opportunities into better livelihoods. The centrality of opportunity in M-Pesa, for instance the opportunity for self-employment or to access basic goods and services, is powered by narratives such as philanthrocapitalism that tend to favour providers and financial institutions over poor and low-income people. Mobile money products and services, in fact, reconceptualise access to basic resources as a for-profit enterprise rather than as a public good or entitlement, seeing such basic needs as market opportunities to be accessed via fee-based mobile financial services. In this way, the opportunities created by mobile money ensure a secure source of revenue for mobile money providers and other powerful institutions involved in the mobile money 'social' business. These dynamics, which are also facilitated by the way in which M-Pesa is regulated, undermine mobile money's potential for contributing to a fundamental transformation towards substantive gender equality. This thesis sees gender inequality as deriving more from a lack of redistributive approaches and measures than from a lack of financial services, and argues for a politics of redistribution to guide financial inclusion projects, policies and regulation. Finance can be organised and regulated according to different interests: expanding access to financial services can further the interests of financial providers and other powerful institutions, reproducing and increasing inequalities; or it can contribute to a fundamental transformation oriented towards universal provisioning and substantive equality through the redistribution of power, resources and responsibilities.

Give a Man a Fish. Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution

Abstract: The idea behind “Give a Man a Fish” is as simple as it is radical: that labour given in exchange for a wage can no longer be the basis of entitlement to resources even for able-bodied adult men: th...

Assessing the impact of mobile money on improving the financial inclusion of Nairobi women

Abstract: This paper assesses to what extent, and in what ways, mobile money has affected the financial inclusion of women in Nairobi. Women in Kenya have limited property rights and continue to require appr...

Women's Human Rights. CEDAW in International, Regional and National Law

Abstract: The CEDAW Convention has lately been in focus in a number of important books. A comprehensive commentary, The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: A Commen...

Feminist global political economies of work and social reproduction

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed the relevance of social reproduction as a key analytical lens to interrogate contemporary capitalist processes. Building on insights from distinct theoretical traditions, in this introductory contribution to the special issue in Feminist Global Political Economies of Work we propose social reproduction as a prism to examine labour and work in the Global South from a feminist standpoint. We develop a social reproduction-centred methodology to the study of labour processes and relations, based on combined insights from Feminist IPE (FIPE), Feminist Economics (FE), and Feminist Political Economy of Development (FPED). Insights from these three disciplinary frontiers of feminist work are well-equipped to analyse the complexities of labouring in the Global South and how reproductive dynamics co-constitute the 'everyday’ in the global economy in manifold ways. These include relations with the state and (‘crisis’ of) care provisions; the blending of productive and reproductive temporalities of work across labour processes; the continuum of paid/unpaid work within and beyond the household; and novel global processes of commodification of life and the everyday. In setting the contours of this ambitious agenda, we reflects on the complexity of feminist research methods; on positionality and ethics.