In this interview, we talk to Sany Weng, entrepreneur and national representative of Money Savvy, about her professional career and her commitment to financial education in Mozambique. With a degree in Business Management, Sany found her true calling when she founded Money Savvy Mozambique, a platform whose mission is to transform the financial reality of Mozambicans.
Profile Mozambique: Tell us briefly about your professional career, highlighting your education and main experiences?
Sany Weng: I have a degree in Business Management, but my career took a different turn when I became Facilities Manager at a pioneering Serviced Offices company in 2013. I evolved, and am currently General Manager.
In 2018, I founded a Facilities Management company (MMO Facilities) as an extension of Mozambique Managed Offices (MMO), consolidating my role as an entrepreneur.
During this period, I realized the great lack of financial education in Mozambique, something that became evident through my own life experiences, especially as a single mother who faced financial difficulties and managed to overcome them. Initially, I wanted to help people by sharing my experiences, but I first decided to invest in my own financial education. I attended courses with Money Savvy Humans in South Africa (2022) and with the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2024, combining experience, theory and methodologies to be able to help more people effectively.
With this base of knowledge and experience, I created Money Savvy Mozambique to help overcome financial challenges and transform lives through financial education, with the main focus on combating the lack of information, which is often the root cause of financial problems.
PM: How did MoneySavvy Mozambique come about? Is it a genuinely Mozambican platform?
SW: Yes, the platform is genuinely Mozambican. Although it is a franchise from South Africa, under the MoneySavvy brand, the partners are entirely Mozambican and the company is 100% led by Mozambican women. Although the materials are created in South Africa, they are adjusted and adapted to our reality. This includes modifying the content to make it more accessible and understandable, avoiding complex terms and using a more direct, practical and inclusive approach.
Regarding the level of financial literacy among Mozambicans, there is currently great concern. The main challenge is the difficulty in managing the monthly budget. For example, the minimum wage has increased from 8,600 to 9,600 meticais, while basic costs, such as transportation, consume around 2,000 meticais, leaving only 6,000 meticais to cover all other expenses. For a family of five, this is not enough to guarantee a dignified survival.
The solution is to change mentality and create additional sources of income. Therefore, we encourage you to start small businesses or extra income-generating activities, use your passion to generate income such as selling homemade food, tutoring, baby sitting, among others to supplement the budget.
Our approach includes training in personal financial management first, followed by a change in mentality. Many people are taught from an early age that money is scarce and there is no way to save it. Instead of being taught how to use, save and invest, we are taught to avoid spending. As a result, when we reach adulthood, we don’t know how to deal with these issues.
Therefore, Money Savvy Mozambique positions itself as a catalyst for changing financial mentality, promoting a practical and results-oriented approach that aims to transform the financial reality of Mozambicans.
PM: The Money Savvy Mozambique platform positions itself as a catalyst for changing financial mentalities. What are the main strategies you use to transform the way Mozambicans deal with money?
SW: It is essential to start creating awareness and changing the prevailing mentality that earning money is extremely difficult and that scarcity is inevitable. We must promote the idea that money is a valuable tool for achieving our goals.
Just as the telephone serves to communicate and the car to get around, money should be seen as a means to achieve our goals. It is therefore crucial to cultivate a positive mindset and change negative beliefs about money.
You may remember the concept presented in the book “The Secret”, which deals with the Law of Attraction and the importance of focusing on positive thoughts to attract good things. In a prosperous mindset, it is fundamental to believe that money is abundant and accessible, and that it can help improve our family’s life, among other benefits.
In addition, our surroundings play a significant role. If we are surrounded by negative people, who live unproductively and engage in harmful behavior, we tend to be influenced by these attitudes and remain in a negative cycle. On the other hand, surrounding ourselves with positive people, with clear goals and similar ambitions, can help us move forward and achieve our own goals.
PM: Based on the information that 70% of adults with an income in South Africa are over-indebted, how does this reality compare to the Mozambican context? What are the main causes of over-indebtedness in Mozambique?
SW: It is possible that the level of indebtedness in South Africa is higher than in our country, with an estimate of up to 80% of the South African population in debt. Although I don’t have precise statistical data, this is a plausible assumption. It’s worth noting that the economic reality in South Africa is somewhat different from ours. There, access to banking services and loans is easier and salaries tend to be higher.
In our case, the main causes of indebtedness include immediacy and consumerism, especially among the middle class. For the low-income population, debt often results from the need to survive. Many people on low wages or even without steady work end up in debt to cover their basic daily needs.
Informal vendors face similar challenges. Although they generate income through their sales, the money they earn is often quickly spent on immediate expenses, such as food. This makes it difficult to reinvest in new materials and perpetuates a cycle of debt.
PM: What are the main misconceptions or misunderstandings about finance that Mozambicans face? How does Money Savvy help to demystify these issues and promote more effective financial management?
SW: One of the main misconceptions is the lack of information. In Mozambique, there is a significant lack of financial knowledge, with many financial opportunities and products, such as loans and banking services, being poorly publicized. Even those who are in a better financial situation may not have access to the information they need to expand their credit and investment options.
Money Savvy strives to overcome these challenges by offering courses and training programs. Our courses cover a variety of financial products and services available on the market, such as savings options and stock market investments.
Many people don’t know, for example, how to invest in shares in companies such as HCB, ENH, Tropigalia, among others, and our aim is to provide this information in an accessible way. Platforms such as Banco BIG and BCI offer investment services. BVM is also an option for investing in shares. Recently, at the CTA conference, the positive performance of shares in companies such as CDM and ENH were discussed, highlighting opportunities in the stock market, and Mozambican citizens need to take advantage of these opportunities, starting with just 100mts.
Money Savvy is currently preparing several programs focused on social impact. We have held online sessions and collaborations with partners such as the Salimo Abdula Foundation, Mozyouth, and ICEF, focusing mainly on women’s financial empowerment.
We will be working closely with Tecnoserve on various projects with a social impact in the north of the country. On the other hand, we have signed a memorandum of partnership with television presenter Hugo Diogo (Dygo Boy) for a conference on financial education to be held next November.
MP: With the increasing digitalization of financial services, how is Money Savvy adapting its programs to ensure that Mozambicans are prepared to navigate the world of digital finance?
SW: Although digitalization is being promoted through services such as M-Pesa and mKesh, and other digital wallets, the issue of financial management still needs more attention.
Digital inclusion isn’t just about access to technology, it’s essential that there is also inclusion in effective financial management. We must first know how to manage our money so that we can then manage it in our mobile wallets.
At Money Savvy, we seek to promote digital inclusion in a practical and effective way. For example, the action we carried out with GIZ was a hybrid model, combining face-to-face classes with online sessions where we managed to attract participants in places like Beira, Inhambane and Pemba. This hybrid approach was necessary to ensure everyone’s participation, but it highlights the importance of face-to-face interaction for more comprehensive and effective learning.
We have a platform that aims to create educational content, such as Money Savvy’s LMS, to make online classes available. However, we’ve observed that face-to-face teaching is much more engaging and interactive than online classes, where participants often get distracted. We try to offer a richer learning experience through direct interactions, and we are collaborating with NGOs, embassies and companies with social responsibility to carry out these activities face-to-face and to be able to have a greater impact
