Regular patrons of One Economy’s Community Knowledge Centers in South Africa now have a new tool to help them manage their money – an online financial capability quiz.

Users in the computer-equipped centers can click on a link to financialcapabilities.org and find themselves presented with a welcome screen. Upon clicking “Take Money Management Quiz” and entering some brief demographic data, they are immediately brought to a one-page set of questions about their money knowledge, skills, habits, and attitudes. Sample questions include: “Do you have at least one account of any kind at a bank or formal financial institution?” and: “True or False: In the past year I have received financial help from others to pay for the basic needs of my family such as food, rent, or utility bills.”

This quiz is the Financial Capability Index, and it was developed with the input of focus groups in South Africa, so that the questions accurately reflect a distinctly South African sense of what it means to be financially capable. To develop specialized quizzes for South Africa, MFO researchers used guided group conversations about familiar households to elicit markers of financial capability like “Being able to survive a drought” or “Having a burial policy”. This process – and all of the tools necessary to create a targeted FCI quiz for any context in the world, is available on MFO’s website here.

MFO partner One Global Economy is currently pilot testing the online portal in Durban, with plans for a wider rollout in the next few weeks. The project is funded by Cisco Systems, Inc. Partial funding for the development of the online portal was provided by the Citi Foundation.

If you have questions about how the online FCI portal could play a role in your next project, don’t hesitate to contact MFO at info@mfopps.org.