Are Western credit agencies in Africa driven by data or bias?

Credit scores are like a report card for how well you pay your bills.

Imagine a teacher grading your math homework. If you get most answers right, she gives you an A. If you often forget to turn it in, you get a C. This is data. It is just facts. Western agencies look at your payment history, how much debt you have, and how long you have had a credit account. They use these facts to guess if you will pay back a loan.

But here is the tricky part. Sometimes the teacher is unfair. Imagine she loves kids who wear red shirts. She might give them an A even if their work is average. This is bias. In Africa, many people use cash or informal markets, so they do not show up on the big agencies' computers. If the agencies only look at bank records, they might judge someone as "high risk" simply because they lack a paper trail, not because they are bad with money.

It is like judging a fish by how well it climbs a tree.

So, are they driven by data or bias? They start with data, but without local context, that data can be incomplete. This missing piece often leads to unfair scores.