Airtel Uganda has partnered with Equity Bank Uganda, Uganda Cooperative Savings and Credit Union (UCSCU), and FutureLinkTechnologies (FLT), to implement the Integrated Financial Inclusion Project (IFIP). This is intended to enable more than 2 million customers to get financial access regardless of their location. It will make it easier for savings and credit co-operatives (saccos) to transact. They have previously been hampered by poor infrastructure and limited capacity to invest in multiple banking channels, and by loss of critical data to system crashes caused by unreliable power supply and burglary.

Through the Airtel's M-Sacco Mobile Money option, the project is digitising and connecting together 2,000 SACCOs, starting with 20 for the pilot phase. Airtel Money director Nuhu Kanyike said the IFIP project provides an opportunity for SACCO members to save more often because of the convenience of transacting through Airtel Money anywhere.

Equity Bank Uganda is a subsidiary of the Kenyan Equity Bank Group. In May this year, Equity Kenya announced that it would be entering into the mobile telephony business via the excess capacity on Airtel Kenya's network. Equity Kenya's purpose for entering the mobile telephony business was to offer mobile money services. The bank would use a thin SIM to be overlaid over the normal SIM card to offer the mobile money service. The use of the Thin SIM has been approved by the regulator but opposed by Kenyan members of parliament.

The first two paragraphs have been adapted from telecompaper.com. You can read their story here.