Over 1,500 high school students across the East and Southern African region will benefit from financial literacy training meant to cultivate a healthy savings culture in them.
Octagon Africa, through the first virtual financial literacy training, themed Starting now for a better future, aims to educate the students on understanding money, budgeting and saving.
“Currently the pension coverage in the country is still low at about 22 percent of the total labour force which is heavily attributed to a poor savings culture,” said Octagon Africa Group CEO Fred Waswa.
He said in order to avert these glaring statistics there is a need to cultivate healthy saving habits from a young age.
An analysis by EFG Hermes reveals that Africa’s saving rate stands at an average of 17 per cent with Kenya’s saving rate at 12 per cent, half of the average for low-income countries.
“Our vision as Octagon Africa is to guarantee financial security and we believe that the key to this security lies in saving cultivated from a young age,” he added.
Through these financial literacy trainings, Waswa said they are confident of increasing the savings rate across the region.
He said the free financial literacy training for high school students was part of Octagon’s social responsibility to contribute to the region’s pension uptake across youth, employed and informal groups.
By Catherine Muindi
