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Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the development potential and power dynamics underlying new forms of domestic resource mobilization in the Global South which involve mobile phone-based money and financial services through a comparative assessment of developments in Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Paper long abstract:

Mobile phone-based money and financial services have emerged as a significant target of developmental intervention in the Global South. While much of the literature has been organized around the problematics of microfinance and financial inclusion, far less attention has been paid to the ways in which states are deploying these new technologies as vehicles for domestic resource mobilization. This paper will provide a comparative assessment of recent developments in Kenya and Zimbabwe, two countries which have been at the forefront of promoting mobile financial services, albeit under profoundly different circumstances and with strongly divergent objectives. In both countries, mobile money has converged with recent policy shifts towards domestic financing for the government budget and for development. By conceptually situating mobile money and finance within broader theories of money, it will argued that the significance of new forms of digital money lies in the ways in which it is being institutionalized in national payments systems and fiscal structures, as well as integrated into state financial policy and governance, especially as a target of taxation and as a mechanism of financial intermediation.