State whether or not the introduction in each paper is based on these key components

2. Discuss part of the introduction that relates to each of the five components (if a particular component is missing in the paper point it out in your discussion).

3. Consider you are given the opportunity to improve each paper, and explain the deficiency that you will want to address. 

The objective of this paper is to examine the determinants of financial inclusion in Africa. We use the World Bank’s Global Findex database on 37 African countries to perform profit estimations. We find that being a man, richer, more educated, and older favors financial inclusion with a higher influence on education and income. Mobile banking is driven by the same determinants as traditional banking. We observe that the determinants of informal finance differ from those of formal finance. Our work, therefore, contains findings to design policies to foster financial inclusion in African countries.

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Introduction

Introduction At the G20 Summit in Seoul in 2010, financial inclusion, i.e. the use of formal financial services, has been recognized as one of the main pillars of the global development agenda. In its most basic definition, financial inclusion refers to the fact that a person owns an account at a formal financial institution. Such an account allows one to save and borrow money formally, to contract insurance, or to use payment services. Being financially included leads therefore to economic benefits. It can favor disadvantaged and poor people allowing them to increase their income and the probability of being employed (Bruhnand Love, 2014). Indeed, in the absence of inclusive financial systems, poverty traps can emerge and hamper economic development since access to financial tools allows people to invest in their education, finance projects, and become entrepreneurs(Demirgüc¸-Kunt and Klapper, 2012b). In addition, financial inclusion can favor women's empowerment (Swamy, 2014) and contribute to financial stability (Han and Melecky, 2013).

Financial inclusion is a particular concern in Africa. Beck and Cull (2015) observe that African banking systems are less inclusive than those outside Africa. Once they drop upper-middle-income countries, they observe that 21 percent of firms affirm they have a line of credit and 16.5 percent of households report having an account with a formal financial institution in the median African country, while the figures are respectively43 percent and 21 percent in the median non-African country. Mlachila et al. (2013a) point out that financial sector development has contributed to improving the growth process but financial services are clustered around major urban areas. There are, however, current evolutions that can foster or at least transform the situation of financial inclusion in Africa with the emergence of mobile banking and the rising economic growth in many of these countries.

Therefore, understanding what influences financial inclusion is a major question to favor economic development in Africa. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the determinants of financial inclusion in Africa. In this aim, we use data from the 2014 World Bank’s Global Findex database to answer four key questions for financial inclusion in Africa. We realize probit estimations to assess the impact of individual characteristics – gender, age, income, and education – on financial inclusion indicators. Our sample covers 37 African countries representing 37,102 individuals.

First, we examine the individual determinants of the three main financial inclusion indicators: ownership of a bank account, saving on a bank account, and use of bank credit. We are then able to identify if some individuals are particularly affected by a lack of access to the formal banking industry. Second, we analyze how barriers to financial inclusion are associated with individual characteristics. It helps identify policies to promote financial inclusion. Third, we investigate the determinants of informal saving and informal credit. It is of important to check if these alternative forms of finance are associated with different individual characteristics. It is notably of interest to know if gender types differ in the form of finance they mainly use, following the finding from Demirgüc¸-Kunt et al. (2013b) of a gender gap in the use of informal financial services in some countries. Fourth, we study the motivations for saving and credit and check how they're related to individual characteristics. We can then provide a better knowledge of the financial behavior of individuals in Africa.

Our paper provides several contributions to the literature. First, it contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of financial inclusion by focusing on Africa in addition to former works worldwide (e.g., Allen et al., 2016, Demirgüc¸-Kunt and Klapper, 2012b) or analyzing one country (e.g., Fungácová and Weill, 2015, for China). Demirgüc¸-Kunt andKlapper (2012) provide an investigation of financial inclusion in Africa, but they only provide statistics on this issue and do not aim to identify the determinants of financial inclusion. Second, our analysis contributes to the literature on key cur-rent finance issues for African countries: informal finance, and mobile phone banking. African financial markets are dualistic markets organized around the interaction between formal financial institutions and informal agents. According to Steelet al. (1997), increasing the role of informal institutions canenhance access of the broader population to financial tools this requires a good understanding of the phenomenon. We provide a new analysis of the determinants of informal finance in Africa. We also give new evidence on the determinants of mobile money banking. Such analysis is of prime interest, considering for instance the success of the Kenyan mobile phone-based payments system M-PESA and the potential of mobile banking in the continent (Mlachila et al.,2013b).