In the busy Piassa neighborhood of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia mobile money agent Ziyada Seid is helping her community make the leap into the digital economy. From her small grocery store, she assists customers with everything from paying utility bills to settling traffic penalties through mobile money services. With support from Highlight Trading, a leading Ethiopian distributor working with telecoms, income from her digital transactions now accounts for more than half of her daily revenue, boosting both her earnings and her financial independence. Ziyada’s story is just one example of a wider shift taking place across Ethiopia, where agent networks are becoming vital bridges between rural and urban communities.
“Working as a Telebirr agent (mobile money agent) has provided me with an additional source of income and made a big difference in my earnings, enabling me to provide for my family,” said Seid.
In Ethiopia, where 81% of the population live in rural areas and access to financial services remains uneven, the digital divide is more than a technological gap, it’s a barrier to economic opportunity, especially for women and youth led small businesses. A key factor behind this divide is the weakness of agent networks, the vital bridge between digital systems and rural users. Agents like Ziyada Seid are often local shopkeepers who help people send, receive, and manage money using their cellphones, translating digital finance into services communities can trust. But when networks are sparse or poorly supported, they deepen exclusion. Low digital literacy and trust in mobile money further limit rural participation in Ethiopia’s growing digital economy.Recognizing these challenges, the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), through its Digital Finance for Resilience (DFS4Res) programme, funded by the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of African Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), partnered with Highlight Trading in May 2022 to pilot a bold new approach to agent network expansion. Highlight Trading is one of eight master/super-agent distributors for Ethio Telecom, Ethiopia’s state-owned telecom operator. The result was a transformative initiative that not only expanded access to digital financial services but also catalysed systemic change in Ethiopia’s financial ecosystem.
A collaboration to share the benefits of growth
Highlight Trading, with its strong distribution network and a history of innovation in Ethiopia’s telecom and fintech sectors, was already well-positioned to scale digital services. However, it initially lacked the tools to manage and scale its distribution network effectively. Most of its agents were inactive, and Telebirr, Ethio Telecom’s mobile money platform that enables users to send, receive and store money digitally, accounted for just 1.66 percent of the company’s total sales. UNCDF’s support aimed to unlock this latent potential by introducing a digital tool that embedded inclusion, innovation, and sustainability into Highlight Trading’s business model.
“Scaling digital finance meant more than just deploying tools. It required rethinking how we empowered agents, especially women and youth. The intervention gave us the structure, and our commitment to inclusion drove change,” said Kidist Zegeye, General Manager, Highlight Trading.
In 2022, UNCDF and Highlight Trading launched the ‘Tegera’ project, a digital agent management platform to digitize how local shopkeepers and businesses are onboarded, monitored, and supported as mobile money service points. With UNCDF’s catalytic funding of over $250,000 and technical assistance, Highlight Trading transitioned from manual processes to a digitally enabled, data-driven model that enabled real-time performance tracking. In this manner, agents were able to take their place as a critical component of Ethiopia’s digital economy.
Raising the bar for what’s possible
By the end of 2023, Highlight Trading had onboarded 319,000 customers, more than six times the original target of 50,000 set at the project’s start in 2022. Of these, 23,462 were women and 108,000 were youth between the ages of 15 and 35, reflecting a deliberate focus on marginalized groups. On the agent side, Highlight Trading recruited 11,000 mobile money agents, with 3,000 active, surpassing the original goal of 2,000. This included 25 percent women and 59 percent youth agents, many based in rural and peri-urban areas, reinforcing the project’s commitment to inclusion.
Agent activity also improved significantly. At baseline in 2022, just 17 percent of agents were active, but by the end of 2023 activity among newly recruited agents had climbed to 42 percent. For women agents, it rose from nearly 20 percent to 41 percent over the same period. Additionally, Telebirr’s share of Highlight Trading’s total sales surged from just 1.6 percent in April 2022 to over 52 percent by June 2023, a transformative shift that made digital payments an essential part of how consumers interact with Highlight Trading reflecting a profound change in consumer behavior.
An elderly mobile money agent facilitates a digital payment for a client. Photo: UNCDF Ethiopia.
Driving real impact: beyond the statistics
In 2024, an evaluation of the partnership’s systemic impact in Ethiopia, using the Adopt, Adapt, Expand, and Respond (AAER) framework showed that the UNCDF–Highlight Trading collaboration didn’t just deliver results, it catalysed a deeper transformation across four dimensions.
Highlight Trading began its transformation by adopting the ‘Tegera’ platform and using data-driven interventions to boost the activity of the agents. This marked not just a technical upgrade but a shift in how agents were supported and engaged. The company then moved to a commission-based sales model, embedding analytics into operations, and expanding into underserved regions like Tigray and Somali. Finally, it formed strategic partnerships with Dashen Bank, NGOs, and agricultural processors to enhance liquidity, enable humanitarian payments, and strengthen its financial distribution network in high-potential and high-risk areas.
Gender inclusion opens the door to financial independence
One of the most compelling aspects of the partnership was its impact on gender inclusion by expanding opportunities for women to participate and thrive as mobile money agents. Thanks to the project’s intentional focus on women’s recruitment, women agents became significantly more active over time, with their activity rates more than doubling between 2022 and 2023. For many, becoming a mobile money agent was not only a secondary income source, but one that offered financial autonomy and social empowerment.
UNCDF’s catalytic role
The success of the partnership hinged on UNCDF’s ability to act as a catalyst. Its financial support de-risked Highlight Trading’s investment in digital tools, while its technical assistance validated the ‘Tegera’ model and encouraged broader industry adoption. This included a partnership with Dashen Bank which provided overdraft facilities to address liquidity constraints and a further collaboration with NGOs for humanitarian cash disbursement. Without UNCDF, Highlight Trading would likely have faced significant barriers, limited capital, slower scaling, industry skepticism and a narrower focus on inclusion. For instance, women and youth in rural areas, who were intentionally targeted during the project, might have been overlooked.
UNCDF’s additionality was evident in its ability to unlock innovation, crowd in other stakeholders, and position Highlight Trading as a model for inclusive digital transformation. This included supporting digital literacy campaigns, data-driven deployment of Point-Of-Sales terminals to high-performing agents, implementing gender-focused initiatives, such as recruiting and training women agents, and awareness efforts to strengthen community trust. Together, these interventions enabled HT build a scalable and high-performing agent network that is inclusive for women and youth.
The UNCDF–Highlight Trading partnership is more than a success story. It’s a blueprint for systemic change. It shows that with the right tools, partners, and vision, digital finance can be not only scalable but equitable. This mirrors the kind of leapfrogging innovation that reshaped access to finance through models like M-Pesa, by bringing digital financial services directly to the unbanked. As Ethiopia continues its digital transformation journey, this collaboration stands as a compelling example of what is possible when development finance meets local innovation and how strategic support can move the needle on financial resilience.
