The unmapped region
South Africa sends money to 15 SADC members. 1 of those corridors has a published size.
Not one that is hard to find. One that exists. Every other corridor out of the largest economy in the region is transacted on daily and has never been measured in public.
This page is the map of that absence. It required no new research to publish — only the decision to record a gap as a gap rather than leave the row out, which is what makes the difference between “no flow” and “no data”.
Measured
South Africa → Zimbabwe
12.7% average cost to send US$200, against an SDG target of 3% by 2030. Inward remittances were 9.6% of Zimbabwean GDP in 2023; over 50% of the market moves informally.
Q1 2024 · IMF and World Bank
It took a joint IMF and World Bank diagnostic mission to produce that one line. That is the level of effort the published record represents, and it has been spent on a single destination.
Not measured — 14 corridors
Each of these carries real money every month. None has a published size, an average cost, or a measured settlement time from any source we can find.
- South Africa → Angolaunmeasured
- South Africa → Botswanaunmeasured
- South Africa → DR Congounmeasured
- South Africa → Comorosunmeasured
- South Africa → LesothoCMA · unmeasured
- South Africa → Madagascarunmeasured
- South Africa → Mauritiusunmeasured
- South Africa → Malawiunmeasured
- South Africa → Mozambiqueunmeasured
- South Africa → NamibiaCMA · unmeasured
- South Africa → Seychellesunmeasured
- South Africa → EswatiniCMA · unmeasured
- South Africa → Tanzaniaunmeasured
- South Africa → Zambiaunmeasured
Why this is not just about small markets
Lesotho uses the rand. It is unmeasured, and it does not pay out like South Africa.
Lesotho is a Common Monetary Area member. The loti is pegged at par to the rand, the rand is legal tender there, and its banking arrangements are comparable to South Africa’s. Every assumption available says this corridor should behave like a domestic transfer.
It receives substantially on mobile money. A route designed from the Johannesburg end, reasoning from the currency peg, lands in the wrong place — and there is no published measurement of the corridor to correct the assumption before it is built into a product.
The same shape holds across the region. In Zambia, the one destination where the register holds reach evidence, 53.6% of people can reach a mobile money agent on foot within thirty minutes and 17.8% can reach a bank branch. Nobody has done that measurement for the other thirteen. What is known about the last mile.
And between each other — 18 more
The published research is hub and spoke. Corridors that do not touch South Africa at all are folded into regional totals, if they appear anywhere.
- AO → NA
- BW → NA
- BW → ZW
- CD → ZM
- MW → MZ
- MW → TZ
- MW → ZM
- MW → ZW
- MZ → MW
- NA → AO
- NA → BW
- TZ → MW
- ZM → CD
- ZM → MW
- ZM → ZW
- ZW → BW
- ZW → MW
- ZW → ZM
Working on one of these?
If your corridor is on the unmeasured list, tell me which one and roughly what you move a month. You get what the register does hold on it — the regulator, the obligations, which rail actually reaches your recipients — and an honest account of what nobody has measured yet. The register is open while these are being filled in.