Screens and Savings: Edutainment’s Role in Advancing Financial Inclusion in Central Asia

The IFC’s edutainment campaign in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan effectively improved financial behaviors like account ownership and savings among women and youth. While it raised awareness of harmful social norms, deeper attitude shifts proved more resistant, highlighting the need for sustained engagement.

In a groundbreaking initiative led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), supported by MarketShare Associates and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Central Asia witnessed a novel approach to financial inclusion. The CAFINC (Central Asia Financial Inclusion) project launched a multimedia edutainment campaign in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan aimed at transforming how women and youth the region’s most financially excluded populations engage with money. The campaign, delivered through an original television series, TEDx-style “Money Talk” events, and engaging social media content, combined the emotional appeal of storytelling with the educational power of financial literacy. The impact evaluation, executed by the IFC in collaboration with MarketShare Associates, used randomized trials and genetic matching algorithms to assess how entertainment could shift long-standing beliefs and behaviors around savings, spending, and financial agency.

A Region Held Back by Social Norms and Low Access

The campaign emerged in response to alarming financial access gaps. According to the World Bank’s 2021 Findex, 47 percent of women in Kyrgyzstan and a staggering 63 percent in Tajikistan lacked formal bank accounts. The roots of this exclusion run deeper than economics: social and cultural norms pressure women to relinquish control of their finances to husbands or families and discourage financial independence. Many women save in secret, while youth are often driven by peer expectations to overspend on technology and social events, without planning or tracking their expenses. These behavioral patterns are less about knowledge gaps and more about entrenched beliefs making traditional financial literacy programs largely ineffective. Edutainment, which blends cultural relevance with mass appeal, was chosen as a tool to reach people where they are: on their screens, in their communities, and within their everyday social media environments.

A Nationwide Media Push with a Personal Touch

Branded as Akcha in Kyrgyzstan and Pul in Tajikistan, the campaign was rolled out nationally through partnerships with local media firms. The content included emotionally resonant TV episodes broadcast during primetime, community-based speaker events featuring relatable influencers, and short videos circulated on social media. To test the campaign’s influence, researchers selected 2,187 respondents across 14 cities and randomly divided them into “encouraged” and “non-encouraged” groups. While the encouraged group received direct text nudges to view the content, organic exposure to the campaign was so widespread that the control group was inadvertently reached. This presented a unique challenge: traditional intent-to-treat analysis became unviable. In response, the research team employed a genetic matching algorithm, pairing individuals based on shared characteristics to isolate the true effects of campaign engagement.

Tangible Financial Shifts and Empowered Choices

The results revealed promising shifts, especially in financial behavior. Participants who engaged with at least one campaign component were more likely to open formal financial accounts, with a notable increase in e-wallet usage. Formal savings rose, while informal savings like stashing cash at home declined, indicating a deliberate reallocation of resources toward secure financial channels. These effects were especially pronounced among Tajik women, who not only adopted formal accounts but continued to use them actively three months later. The campaign also boosted monthly financial transactions, suggesting increased confidence and comfort in using financial tools. These changes were not just statistical they reflected real steps toward economic empowerment in a region where access to banking is still viewed by many as a male domain.

Awareness Without Full Attitude Change

While the campaign successfully increased awareness of harmful social expectations particularly those discouraging women from financial independence the translation of awareness into attitude change was more complex. For instance, more women acknowledged that communities expect them to hand over earnings to family members, but this did not consistently shift their personal agreement with such norms. Similarly, youth became more conscious of peer pressure to keep up with technology, but this awareness didn’t always lead to reduced spending. In some cases, women reported having less decision-making power over savings after becoming more financially active, hinting at pushback or tension within households. This suggests that while edutainment can nudge behavior, challenging deeply rooted power structures requires longer-term cultural engagement.

Lessons for the Future of Financial Inclusion

The Central Asian edutainment campaign demonstrated that media when thoughtfully designed, can be a powerful agent of social change. It managed to move key financial behaviors, raise awareness of restrictive norms, and drive interest in formal financial tools. However, it also exposed the limitations of short-term interventions in transforming deep-seated beliefs. Trust in financial institutions remained largely unchanged, and some behavior changes faded over time without reinforcement. The findings underline the importance of repeated exposure, targeted messaging, and community involvement in shifting cultural narratives. For development practitioners, policymakers, and financial institutions, the message is clear: to foster inclusion, we must speak not only to people’s minds but also to their hearts and entertainment may be one of the most effective ways to do just that.