in the 21st Century

The Geography of Financial Services Providers in Kenya 71
a smaller density (there are a maximum of 52 units per 100,000 people in
Kirinyaga). Interestingly, bank branches never exceed 16 units per 100,000
people, but they operate, albeit with a small number of units, even in the
remotest regions of the country. 9 Finally, MFIs and SACCOs present very
similar levels of outreach to each other, while the presence of ATMs in the
territory appears far more limited.
As a second step, we analyse in greater detail the distribution of MFIs,
SACCOs and ATMs (Figure 2) in order to capture any heterogeneity across
counties for these three categories, which have a much smaller outreach than
mobile money agents and bank agents, for instance. SACCOs and MFIs
have very similar density patterns: there are 18 counties with less than one
SACCO per 100,000 inhabitants, with the same exact figure holding for MFIs.
Moreover, these two categories of financial services providers operate in the
same counties, with the only exceptions being West Pokot (where there are no
SACCOs) and Garissa (where there are no MFIs). At the same time, however,
SACCOs display higher concentration rates than MFIs (and ATMs, as well),
particularly in south-western counties. There are more than four SACCOs per
100,000 inhabitants in six counties (Embu, Kiambu, Kirinyaga, Nyandarua,
Nyeri and Tharaka-Nithi); interestingly, in Nairobi County this share is ‘only’
3.6. Conversely, only two counties (Kajiado and Taita Taveta) have more
than three MFIs per 100,000 inhabitants, with the density reaching 4.5 for
Kajiado. Heterogeneity in densities patterns is mainly driven by differences
in the number of units between SACCOs and MFIs (there are 706 SACCOs,
compared to 500 MFIs). Both financial services providers are spread across
the same number of counties, thus resulting in lower density rates for MFIs.
In contrast, things appear quite different when we compare density rates of
MFIs and ATMs. This is even more surprising, since these two categories
have almost the exact same number of units (503 ATMs versus 500 MFIs). As
emerges from Figure 2, in contrast to MFIs, ATMs are mainly concentrated
in the counties of Nairobi (with more than 8 ATMs per 100,000 inhabitants),
Kajiado and Mombasa (with 2.76 ATMs per 100,000 inhabitants). Thus,
differences in density rates are the result of very different expansion strategies
carried out by ATMs and MFIs. While the former (as we will also highlight
later in the chapter) are mainly concentrated in fewer, wealthier areas of the
country, the latter are more likely to operate in a larger number of counties,
with a remarkable presence even in relatively poor counties.
9 Note that in Figure 1 we adopt the same scale for all categories of financial services providers. For a more detailed
discussion of the density of bank branches in Kenya, we refer the reader to Section 6, Figure 15.