Impact of Women's Empowerment on Female Account Ownership: A Case Study of Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries (2011 – 2021)

This study investigated women's empowerment and its impact on female account ownership, using selected sub-Saharan African countries as a case study from 2011 to 2021. The central research question covers whether women's empowerment has any impact on the financial inclusion of women in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on account ownership by women as a yardstick to measure financial inclusion. The selected women empowerment variables comprised the percentage of the total labour force, namely female labour force (FLF), equality in the rights to ownership of property (EOR), non-discrimination of women in employment (NDW), choice of where to live by women (CWL), mean years of schooling of females (MYS), and women political empowerment (WPE). By means of pooled ordinary least square regression, using the fixed effects estimation model applied to the panel data from 38 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries with available data for the period 2011 to 2021, as reported on the three-yearly database, this research was able to establish the impact of some of the selected variables of women empowerment on female account ownership in SSA. This study hinges on the undeniable potential of women to lift Africa from multi-dimensional poverty since a greater proportion of household consumption is contributed by the income of women rather than men in Africa. The authors, therefore, recommend, among others, that African governments should invest in policies that will encourage gender equality and women's emancipation to boost women's empowerment, which is the gateway to enhanced financial inclusion of African women and the attendant gain of accelerated poverty reduction in Africa.