Mohamud Said Yusuf, Khadar Ahmed Dirie, Reza Widhar Pahleviv, Jamaliah Said, Wahyuni Rusliyana Sari
Eliminating severe poverty continues to be among the most challenging and important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. The key aim of this study is to identify if there is a long-term co-integration presence among the proxies of financial inclusion and poverty abating in selected East Africa countries (i.e. Rwanda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) from 2010 to 2018. The study utilized Panel of Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) method to determine the long-term equilibrium nexus amongst the proxies examined. The study discovered that financial inclusion has a long-run association with the level of poverty. The findings will help East African countries’ policymakers develop financial inclusion instruments and strategies to promote financial development and resolve the situation of extreme poverty in region. The novelty of this paper lies in establishing the impact of financial inclusion on poverty alleviation in context of East Africa, a region with many people living below the poverty line.