By Christine Wachira, Senior Manager, Marketing and Corporate Communications
Kenya’s next financial challenge is not access, it is understanding.
Kenya is often held up as a global success story in financial inclusion. With the rise of mobile money services such as M-PESA, the country has shown how technology can bring millions of people into the formal financial system, many for the first time. According to the Central Bank of Kenya’s 2024 FinAccess Household Survey, formal financial access reached 84.8 per cent in 2024, up from 26.7 per cent in 2006. [1]
But access, impressive as it is, should not be confused with understanding.
For a generation of young Kenyans, financial tools are arriving earlier and faster than the knowledge required to use them well. Teenagers are growing up in a world of mobile wallets, digital banking, instant transactions and increasingly sophisticated financial products. They are financially connected long before many of them are financially prepared.
The 2024 FinAccess Household Survey suggests that the gap is real: only 44.1 per cent of adults use more than one formal financial product, while just 36 per cent regularly save with formal institutions. Insurance usage, including NHIF, stood at 22 per cent in the survey. The survey was conducted during Kenya’s transition away from the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to the new social health insurance framework. The Social Health Authority (SHA) formally replaced NHIF from 1 October 2024. [1][3]
That gap matters.
Being able to send or receive money on a phone is not the same as understanding how to budget, how to distinguish saving from investing, how to assess risk, or how to make decisions that support long-term financial stability. Familiarity with digital finance can create an illusion of competence. In practice, access without understanding may expose young people to a different set of risks: poor spending habits, vulnerability to scams, confusion about debt, and unrealistic ideas about wealth creation.
The 2024 FinAccess Household Survey found that 42.1 per cent of the population was considered to have high financial literacy, based on their ability to answer questions on inflation, interest rates and risk diversification. At the same time, only 18.3 per cent were considered financially healthy. [1]
This is where schools ought to enter the conversation more seriously. Financial literacy is often treated as an optional life skill, secondary to the formal curriculum. In Kenya, that view is becoming harder to defend. If young people are expected to navigate an increasingly digitised financial system, then the ability to make sound financial decisions deserves to be seen as part of education for adulthood, not as an extracurricular add-on.
That case looks stronger still when one considers that 23.1 per cent of 18–25-year-olds were totally excluded from financial services in 2024, with exclusion especially pronounced among rural youth. [1][4]
That is the thinking behind initiatives such as Jubilee Asset Management Limited’s AngazaCash Financial Literacy Programme. The programme, which targets high school students, aims to introduce basic concepts such as budgeting, saving, investing and financial planning before students leave school.
The impulse behind such programmes is difficult to dispute. Kenya’s young people clearly need more practical preparation for the financial realities they will face. The more interesting question is whether these efforts are being framed with enough realism.
It sits within a wider national effort to strengthen financial capability. The Kenya Bankers Association and the Central Bank of Kenya, for example, have supported financial literacy initiatives focused on saving, credit and informed financial decision-making, while the Capital Markets Authority continues to undertake investor education and financial literacy initiatives aimed at helping Kenyans understand financial products, risks and consumer protections. [5][6] These efforts point to a broader recognition that access alone is not enough.
Too often, the language around financial literacy is well-meaning but vague. Students are encouraged to “save”, “plan ahead” and “invest in their future” — all sensible ideas, but not yet a sufficient response to the actual financial environment they inhabit.
In Kenya, financial education for teenagers should be rooted less in abstraction and more in the specifics of daily life: mobile money habits, digital fraud, informal saving culture, family obligations, peer pressure, side-hustle economics, betting, short-term borrowing and the social performance of consumption.
Young people may have greater access to financial products through mobile technology and digital platforms, but that access also brings a growing set of risks. Easy access to digital credit can encourage borrowing before young consumers fully understand the cost of debt, while the rapid growth of digital financial services has increased exposure to online fraud, scams and financial misinformation. This makes financial literacy and consumer protection increasingly important as access continues to expand. [1][2]
The challenge is particularly acute for young people who are already economically vulnerable. FSD Kenya’s 2025 analysis, Advancing Inclusive Finance: Understanding Youth Exclusion Through a Gender Lens, notes that despite Kenya’s progress in financial inclusion, many young people — especially those in rural areas and young women — still face barriers to accessing and effectively using formal financial services. [4] The broader lesson is that inclusion cannot be measured by access alone; it must also involve the knowledge, confidence and capability to make sound financial decisions.
Unemployment and underemployment add another layer of difficulty. Limited or irregular incomes make it harder for young people to save, absorb financial shocks or plan for the long term, while increasing the temptation to rely on short-term credit.
Practical financial education therefore needs to go beyond encouraging young people to save or invest. It should help them recognise fraudulent schemes, understand the true cost of borrowing, manage debt responsibly and make decisions that build long-term financial resilience.
This is not a theoretical concern. The Kenya National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2025–2028 identifies over-indebtedness, gambling and weak consumer protection among the threats to financial health, particularly for vulnerable groups. [2]
In other words, the challenge is not simply to teach students about money. It is to teach them how money behaves in the world they already know.
That distinction matters because Kenya’s financial system has evolved quickly. The country has become a model of innovation in access, but capability has not necessarily kept pace. The next phase of the inclusion story is therefore less about opening the door and more about equipping people to walk through it wisely.
High school may be the most important point at which to begin. It is the stage when attitudes toward money, risk and aspiration start to form. It is also the point just before many young people gain greater autonomy without necessarily gaining better judgement.
By then, financial behaviour is already being shaped by what they see at home, among peers and online. Leaving financial literacy until adulthood may simply be too late.
Still, programmes led by financial institutions should invite scrutiny as well as praise. There is always a need to distinguish genuine education from softer forms of brand positioning. If companies are entering classrooms to talk about financial wellbeing, they should also be prepared to support balanced teaching, including the dangers of debt, the limits of investing, the risks of speculation and the importance of consumer protection. Otherwise, financial education risks becoming too polished, and not sufficiently independent.
Kenya has already shown the world what broad financial access can look like. The harder task now is to ensure that access is matched by judgement, discipline and understanding.
For young people especially, the issue is no longer whether they can participate in the financial system. It is whether they can do so in ways that improve their resilience rather than deepen their vulnerability.
That is why financial literacy should go hand-in-hand with financial inclusion, not because every student needs to become an investor or entrepreneur, but because in a country where financial tools are becoming ubiquitous, the ability to make informed decisions is no longer a specialist skill. It is a civic and economic necessity.
References
[1] Central Bank of Kenya, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics & FSD Kenya — 2024 FinAccess Household Survey
2024 FinAccess Household Survey – Main Report (PDF)
[2] Central Bank of Kenya — Kenya National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2025–2028
Kenya National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2025–2028 (PDF)
[3] Ministry of Health — Social Health Authority rollout / transition from NHIF
Kenya to Officially Launch Social Health Authority on October 1, 2024
[4] FSD Kenya — Advancing Inclusive Finance: Understanding Youth Exclusion Through a Gender Lens
Advancing inclusive finance: Understanding youth exclusion through a gender lens – Insights from the 2024 FinAccess Household Survey
[5] Kenya Bankers Association — Financial Literacy and Education
Financial Literacy and Education
[6] Capital Markets Authority — Investor Information
CMA Investor Information