By Chrispin
Sinyangwe
A survey by Finscope in 2009,showed that out of the total
Zambian populous only about 37% had access to formal financial services. This
posed a threat to both the financial security of the country and its citizens.
Research also showed that financially literacy skills benefit
everyone, whatever their income or age. Good financial literacy skills help
individuals and families make the most of their opportunities, meet their goals
and secure their financial wellbeing, also contributing to the economic health
of society.
With Zambia’s financial literacy been low in urban areas and
extremely low rural areas, its citizen were at risk of been financially exploited.
Having easy access to unconventional means of borrowing money from places like
loan sharks, knowledge on financial products and services being low exposed
Zambian citizens to different types of financial exploitation. With little or
no knowledge and the rapidly changing economy, coupled with complex financial
decisions, makes personal money management more challenging than ever before.
As a result it was decided upon to have a strategy to improve
financial literacy of the country.
The Nation Strategy on Financial Education for Zambia was
commission by Bank of Zambia and co-founded by the UK’s Department for
International Development’s (DFID) Financial Education Fund (FEF) and by
FinMark Trust. The primary objective of the strategy is to empower Zambians
with knowledge, understanding, skills, motivation and confidence to help them
secure positive financial outcome for themselves and their families by 2017.
Children being the future, need to understand more and more
about finance, if Zambia is to achieve its goal of being a prosperous middle
income country by 2030, children are a key component to this realization.
Financial Education Coordinating Unit of the Bank of Zambia Programme’s
Coordinator Mrs Kabinda Kakoma Kawesha said the National Strategy
has three approaches to reach children. Firstly through the school system, this
has been done by integrating financial education concepts in the national
curricula which will be rolled out next year.
A number of
institutions have set up clubs providing extra curricula activities reaching
out to children and the youth, we are also seeking partnership with higher
learning institutions, to see how those programmes can be provided to their
students, she further lamented.
She stressed the fact that financial education was not only
going to be implement by financial institutions but also NGO’s and with the partnership with NGO’s having rural outreach
programmes, that have been integrated with financial education. This will
enable those in rural areas have access to financial education.
Meanwhile, Mwiza Zulu, 14, a pupil at Libala Secondary
School expressed great pleasure at the
move by Bank of Zambia and its co-operating partners on the development of the
National Strategy.
“If children grow up with financial literacy, they become
more responsible with money, promoting accountability and responsibility among
children, also reducing corruption, as children are taught core values of
Finance”, She said.
The realization of the need for financial education has
brought about hope for the future, a financially fit country is a country
masked in wealth. It is therefore the collective responsibility of the Government,
its co-operating partners and the Zambian citizen to ensure financial education
will contribute adequately to the six national development plan (SNDP), which
aims to actualise the aspirations of vision 2030 under the theme of “sustained
economic growth and poverty reducation”.
The writer of this
article Chrispin Sinyangwe 16, is at Lusaka High School and a member of the
Children’s News Agency.
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