Colonial Financial Infrastructures and Kenya’s Uneven Fintech Boom

Abstract Kenya is a widely cited case for proponents of fintech for development. This article shows how Kenya’s fintech boom replicates patterns of uneven development inherited from the colonial era. In particular, fintech use is unevenly distributed between urban and rural areas, and heavily concentrated on Nairobi and Mombasa in particular. The article seeks to explain these patterns by situating them in relation to the spatiality and political economy of settler‐colonial agriculture, tracing successive (unsuccessful) efforts at reforming the financial system to ameliorate social and spatial disparities inherited from the colonial era. It does so drawing on recent debates about “financial infrastructures”, alongside considerations of the political economy of land, property relations, and the state.