Financial inclusion strategies and micro-enterprise performance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from mobile money adoption, credit access, and entrepreneurial outcomes

Background: Financial inclusion has emerged as a central pillar of economic development policy in Sub-Saharan Africa, driven by the rapid proliferation of mobile money platforms, agency banking networks, and digital credit instruments. Despite significant infrastructural investments, micro-enterprises remain constrained by uneven access to formal financial services, limiting their capacity to manage cash flows, absorb risk, and invest in productivity-enhancing assets.

Aim: This study examined how financial inclusion strategies, specifically mobile money adoption, formal credit access, and savings mobilisation, influence the performance of micro-enterprises across selected Sub-Saharan African economies, with entrepreneurial orientation as a moderating variable.

Methodology: An ex post facto research design was employed using balanced panel data drawn from 216 micro-enterprise operators across Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa for the period 2015 to 2024. Hypotheses were tested using fixed effects regression, robust regression for sensitivity analysis, and moderation analysis following the Baron and Kenny (2022) framework.

Findings: Mobile money adoption and formal credit access showed positive and statistically significant effects on micro-enterprise revenue growth and employment expansion. Entrepreneurial orientation significantly moderated the relationship between credit access and performance, suggesting that proactive, risk-tolerant entrepreneurs extract greater value from financial inclusion opportunities.

Contributions: The study extends financial inclusion literature by disaggregating inclusion strategies and examining their differential performance effects, while introducing entrepreneurial orientation as a contextually relevant moderator in African micro-enterprise settings.