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Citi Foundation Creates $11.2m Program with SEEP Network to Strengthen Trade Associations
The Citi Foundation will work with the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion Network (SEEP) to create the 3-year USD 11.2 million Citi Network Strengthening Program. The program will include 12 major microfinance trade associations and their members. The program’s goal will be to improve the integration of microfinance into the mainstream economies of developing countries. This includes improving participating trade associations’ ability to develop products and services which meet their clients’ needs. In addition, the program seeks to “enhance the industry’s infrastructure, introduce higher standards of management and governance, and promote the vital role of microfinance in providing the poor with access to financial services.”
Another Microfinance Institution (MFI) Closes in Uganda as Chaos Continues in the Sector
The Support Organisation for Micro Enterprises Development (SOMED), a microfinance firm in the Kibaale District of Uganda was shut down in December last year while police claim they are investigating allegations of extortion, embezzlement and fraud. The company had been offering low-interest loans since 2004.
Targeting women: Tenets of Micro-credit for Poverty Reduction
Is this gender consciousness?
Group Mobilisation: Tenets of Micro-credit for Poverty Reduction
Another issue arising in the discussion of targeting clients is that of group dynamics and mobilisation. One of the other features of micro-credit for the poor is the alternatives developed to collateral, namely group guarantees.
Micro-finance Policy and Development Framework: Ethiopia
Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in sub-Saharan Africa with approximately 63 million people and almost 44% of the population being in the age of 15 years and below. Ethiopia ranks 158 out of 162 countries in the Human Development Index (UNDP, 2001a).
Institutional and Operational Arrangements of Micro-finance Institutions
A large number of MFIs have set-up networks in many African countries taking advantage of increased pressure on governments to deregulate the economy and the financial sector, encourage competition in all sectors, and create the conducive environment for increased production.
Summary of main recommendations - Impact Study of the Zakoura Microcredit Program
In preparing the recommendations, we shall try take into account not only the results of the client surveys, on the basis of each of the five tools used, but also the ground reality of the ZMC program. In other words, the aim is to take into account what is desirable while bearing in mind what is actually feasible.
Can MicroStart Have a Significant Impact on Policy and the Environment for Microfinance?
MicroStart programs establish an action-oriented framework for bringing key players together to learn about microfinance development. These players include government policy makers, private sector actors (potential social entrepreneurs or financiers), MFIs, and other donors.

Other TSP Issues
1. Local Technical Service Provider
Creating Effective Capacity Building Relationships
MicroStart's use of TSPs is an experiment in creating a new framework for capacity building. The original design sprang from the recognition that the standard CTA model in use throughout UNDP projects was not the best way to support the development of microfinance institutions.

Summary of TSP Performance in Countries Visited
The experiences of the TSPs in each country visited during the evaluation illustrate a range of different issues.

Can Technical Service Providers Add Significant Value?
The second major hypothesis behind MicroStart is that technical assistance from an experienced microfinance organization or consulting firm can help build the capacity of small, young MFIs.
What keeps MicroStart from selecting more high-performing organizations?
The desire to reach a target number of organizations in each country
MFI Performance in Countries Visited: A Few Numbers
Before reviewing the performance of MFIs in MicroStart, it is useful to consider what minimum level of performance would justify the expenditures MicroStart is making.

Does It Make Sense for UNDP to Help Launch Small and New Organizations?
The most fundamental question that this evaluation addresses is the validity of UNDP's decision to build a program focused on supporting small MFIs.

Overall Conclusions and Main Messages - MicroStart: Finding and Feeding Breakthroughs
Through MicroStart, UNDP is making an important contribution to the growth of microfinance around the world, both through its direct support of MFIs and through the processes and ideas it is introducing into countries where microfinance is just beginning.
Measuring and managing social performance
In recent years donors and practitioners have demonstrated a renewed interest in and commitment to understanding how to reach poor people effectively, assess their level of poverty, and judge the social performance of MFIs.

Assessing social performance cost-effectively
Many MFIs have an explicit social mission that goes beyond profitability such as reducing poverty and exclusion by providing good quality, reasonably priced and sustainable financial services to poor people who are normally excluded from regular banking systems. The link between microfinance services and poverty reduction, however, is far from simple. Positive impacts cannot be taken for granted.

Partnership Models
The examples cited are just some of the models where microfinance can be used as a platform to offer and deliver integrated services to clients. Like any business model, there is no single right way to offer services.2
Pro Mujer - Providing Clients with Essential Health Care
Pro Mujer, an international microfinance network composed of partner MFIs in several Latin American countries, is a believer and a practitioner of “Microfinance Plus”— a term that has come to capture the concept of offering integrated services to its clients.
Increasing Microfinance’s Reach with Integrated Services
The destitute—individuals at the very bottom of the socioeconomic scale—are still outside the current scope of most microfinance institutions.
Inhibitors to Success
At its core, microfinance is not terribly different from mainstream consumer finance. From accessing funding to managing the disbursement and collection of funds, microfinance operates like any consumer finance business. But because microfinance serves a very different client segment – the world’s poor – we cannot ignore the different set of challenges these clients face and the implications these challenges have on the organizations serving them.
VI. Module III: National, Regional, and International Support
Microfinance initiatives are more likely to succeed in a supportive national, regional, and international environment. Applying a systems’ perceptive, poverty eradication is recognized as a multi-scale endeavor with different partners participating at the local, national, regional, and international levels. Whereas the foregoing discussion has focused on microfinance lessons for the local level, this section will broaden the scope with lessons that scale up through the state to the global community.
IV. Principle III: Reinforce Microfinance to Advance the African Private Sector
Key Principles for an African Model of Microfinance
IV. Principle I: Prioritize Group Formation and Networking
Key Principles for an African Model of Microfinance
Report from the Field: Incorporating Microfinance into Kenya's Economic Recovery Strategy
With a population of 30 million people and a per capita income of US$260, Kenya is categorized the 20th poorest country in the world.[1] Estimates indicate that about 47% of the rural population and 29% of the urban population live under conditions of absolute poverty, where malnutrition and seasonal famine are not just a consistent fear, but also a frequent reality in their lives. On the other hand, the unemployment rate, currently estimated at between 25% and 35%, threatens to get out of hand as roughly 0.5 million school dropouts continue to join the ranks of the unemployed every year.
The wider impacts of microfinance
Most MFIs seek to promote the business of their clients and thereby raise client incomes. Some MFIs also invest in services intended to achieve direct social impacts in the form of raising awareness on health, encouraging children's education, promoting women's empowerment within households and so on. MFI achievements on this front have been relatively well-documented.
The wider impacts of microfinance
Most MFIs seek to promote the business of their clients and thereby raise client incomes. Some MFIs also invest in services intended to achieve direct social impacts in the form of raising awareness on health, encouraging children's education, promoting women's empowerment within households and so on. MFI achievements on this front have been relatively well-documented.
The wider impacts of microfinance
Most MFIs seek to promote the business of their clients and thereby raise client incomes. Some MFIs also invest in services intended to achieve direct social impacts in the form of raising awareness on health, encouraging children's education, promoting women's empowerment within households and so on. MFI achievements on this front have been relatively well-documented.
The wider impacts of microfinance
Most MFIs seek to promote the business of their clients and thereby raise client incomes. Some MFIs also invest in services intended to achieve direct social impacts in the form of raising awareness on health, encouraging children's education, promoting women's empowerment within households and so on. MFI achievements on this front have been relatively well-documented.
Can microfinance be profitable? FAQ
Yes it can. Data from the MicroBanking Bulletin reports that 63 of the world's top MFIs had an average rate of return, after adjusting for inflation and after taking out subsidies programs might have received, of about 2.5% of total assets. This compares favorably with returns in the commercial banking sector and gives credence to the hope of many that microfinance can be sufficiently attractive to mainstream into the retail banking sector. Many feel that once microfinance becomes mainstreamed, massive growth in the numbers of clients can be achieved.
Can microfinance be profitable? FAQ
Yes it can. Data from the MicroBanking Bulletin reports that 63 of the world's top MFIs had an average rate of return, after adjusting for inflation and after taking out subsidies programs might have received, of about 2.5% of total assets. This compares favorably with returns in the commercial banking sector and gives credence to the hope of many that microfinance can be sufficiently attractive to mainstream into the retail banking sector. Many feel that once microfinance becomes mainstreamed, massive growth in the numbers of clients can be achieved.
Can microfinance be profitable? FAQ
Yes it can. Data from the MicroBanking Bulletin reports that 63 of the world's top MFIs had an average rate of return, after adjusting for inflation and after taking out subsidies programs might have received, of about 2.5% of total assets. This compares favorably with returns in the commercial banking sector and gives credence to the hope of many that microfinance can be sufficiently attractive to mainstream into the retail banking sector. Many feel that once microfinance becomes mainstreamed, massive growth in the numbers of clients can be achieved.
5.0 Conclusions: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
In sub-Saharan Africa, there is ample evidence that the poor, particularly those in the rural sector, value both deposit and credit facilities. The existence and growth of cooperative banking and combined savings and credit institutions in the microfinance sector in sub- Saharan Africa reflects the growing demand for both savings and credit facilities.
3.1 Links Between the Operations of MFIs and Banks, Donors and NGOs: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
A. Developing Complementarities between MFIs and Banks
2.1 The CommunityBased Approach in MFI Development: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
An approach commonly followed in African countries has been to rely on local communities to support the development of MFIs, outside the formal banking sector.

Other MFIs Related Articles

2.1 The CommunityBased Approach in MFI Development: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
An approach commonly followed in African countries has been to rely on local communities to support the development of MFIs, outside the formal banking sector.
2.2 Formalizing Informal Methods of Financial Intermediation: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
Traditional informal systems for the collection of savings and for lending have provided substantial insight for the operations of licensed MFIs in African countries.
3.1 Links Between the Operations of MFIs and Banks, Donors and NGOs: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
A. Developing Complementarities between MFIs and Banks
4.3 Accompanying Measures: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
The capacity of MFIs has an important bearing on the compliance with regulatory requirements. It is therefore important to put in place appropriate measures in the following areas:
The wider impacts of microfinance
Most MFIs seek to promote the business of their clients and thereby raise client incomes. Some MFIs also invest in services intended to achieve direct social impacts in the form of raising awareness on health, encouraging children's education, promoting women's empowerment within households and so on. MFI achievements on this front have been relatively well-documented.
The Citi Foundation Citigroups GrantMaking Arm Pledges USD 100000 to PlanetFinances Microfinance Training Programme in Middle East and North Africa
The Citi Foundation, the grant-making foundation of international financial services firm Citigroup, has pledged a USD 100,000 grant to PlaNet Finance, the French non-profit company that assists microfinance institutions (MFIs), towards the development of a microfinance training curriculum in Arabic. This will be aimed at MFIs in seven Arab countries and delivered through 50 course modules designed to provide them with skills in human resources, planning and strategy, products, accounting, supervision and finance. There will be five-day training sessions in Casablanca, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, Ramallah, Damascus and Sana’a over the next three years.
V. Material Benefits of Microfinancing
Microfinance initiatives can play an effective role in addressing material poverty, the physical deprivation of goods, services, and the income to attain them. MFIs can help people become more economically secure. This, in turn, has a multiplier effect on people's standard of living, enhancing basic household welfare, such as food security, nutrition, shelter, sanitation, health and education services. MFIs can help prevent and extricate people from debt. Oftentimes, they liberate low-income households from moneylenders with outrageous interest rates that often reach 100% annually. Savings and credit services help people start or improve their own small businesses, providing income generation and employment for themselves and their families.
Does It Make Sense for UNDP to Help Launch Small and New Organizations?
The most fundamental question that this evaluation addresses is the validity of UNDP's decision to build a program focused on supporting small MFIs.

Can Technical Service Providers Add Significant Value?
The second major hypothesis behind MicroStart is that technical assistance from an experienced microfinance organization or consulting firm can help build the capacity of small, young MFIs.
Federal Executive Council (FEC) of Nigeria Approves $27.2m Loan from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for Rural Microfinance
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) of Nigeria, presided over by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, approved a USD 27.2 million loan from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), as reported by AllAfrica.com. The loan, along with a USD 400,000 grant from IFAD, will constitute the core financing of IFAD’s Rural Finance Institution-Building Programme (RFIBP), a seven-year plan to strengthen rural microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Nigeria as well as establish increased linkages between MFIs and mainstream financial institutions.

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