Mapping financial literacy in Africa : a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The interest in financial literacy has led to its popularization in the finance literature in African countries as well as worldwide. However, considering the socio-economic and developmental status of the countries in the African continent, financial literacy is a more critical issue. Although there are studies on the subject worldwide, to the best of our knowledge, there is no research that comprehensively analyses the financial literacy literature in the African context. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap through a retrospective investigation of financial literacy studies in the African context by employing the method of bibliometric analysis. The results show a recent and rapid growth in the financial literacy literature, based on 336 publications indexed in the Scopus database. The results show that human development is a dominant research theme in studies related to financial literacy, but economics and business management is an emerging theme with the potential to be fully settled. As such, this study provides a comprehensive overview of financial literacy in the African context and opens up new avenues for future research.