Effect of digital financial inclusion on household consumption in ECOWAS countries

Information technology through the promotion of financial services can help reduce poverty in poor countries. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of digital financial inclusion on household consumption in the countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). To achieve this goal, the data used comes from WDI and IMF over the period from 2015 to 2021 and on a sample of 13 countries in the region. We specified a dynamic panel estimated with the GMM technique in order to control for endogeneity. our findings reveal that digital financial inclusion positively and significantly affects household consumption expenditure in ECOWAS countries. It is the same as for the economic growth which also significantly improves consumer spending. It therefore emerges from our results that a particular emphasis must be placed on digital financial inclusion to encourage consumer spending by households in this zone.