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South Sudan is celebrating a technological advance with the launch of a nationwide system for mobile money transfers. The new service called M-Gurush — M for mobile and Gurush for money in Arabic — removes the need for a bank account, which most South Sudanese lack.
Lado Kenyi of the National Communication Authority has high hopes for the new system.
“The real success of mobile money is in targeting the people of low income and our rural population,” Kenyi said. “Those are the people we want to reach and include them into the financial system.”
South Sudanese Minister of Information Michael Makuei demonstrated the ease of use by buying a cow with his mobile phone. He said it will take time for rural South Sudanese to trust cashless payments.
“You have a very big task to do,” Makuei said. “You need to sensitize the people of South Sudan. Including me.”
Ravaged by years of war and conflict, South Sudan is wracked by poverty and has one of Africa’s lowest rates of mobile phone penetration at 21%.
“One of the biggest challenges is network coverage,” said Joshua Makuru, a telecommunications specialist in Juba. “Because as we all know after the war, telecom infrastructure was destroyed, especially most of the telecom infrastructure in the villages.”
Mobile money is expected to speed up trade and add thousands of new jobs to South Sudan’s struggling economy. It also puts South Sudan in the ranks of other East African nations using mobile money, such as Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
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