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Microfinance Goes Digital: Opportunities and challenges in enabling pro-poor financial institutions to connect to the digital ecosystem
Mobile financial services are finally moving beyond payments, with 26 mobile savings and 37 mobile credit services now live. But in spite of this progress, smaller microfinance institutions and other pro-poor organizations have been forced to watch from the sidelines for lack of resources. Grameen Foundation addresses this and other challenges in the first post in a series on what it takes for an MFI to go digital.
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Interview: Stuart Hart on How Indian Microfinance Institutions Can Improve Their Negative Image
In the second part of his interview to the Chairman of Indian Council of Competitiveness, Amit Kapoor, global thinker and Founder and President of Enterprise for a Sustainable World, a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping businesses make the transition to sustainability, Stuart Hart talks about how Indian micro finance institutions can work towards cleaning their negative image.
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- Uncategorized
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- South Asia
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- microfinance
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Press Release: International Finance Corporation Loaning $2.5m to La Fayette Microfinance Bank, Nigeria
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, is investing NGN 400 million (USD 2.5 million) in La Fayette Microfinance Bank, one of eight members of the Advans Network of microfinance institutions, which is based in Luxembourg and managed by Horus Development Finance of France. The investment will support the growth of La Fayette, which was created in June 2012 and target micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria’s urban areas.
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- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The Mysterious Disappearance of Poverty
How do you help the poor? It is a very old question. The Roman emperor Nero found the answer in the advice of Stoic philosophers like Seneca, and built an awe-inspiring palace covered in gold leaf. This would fill the lower classes with gratitude for being blessed with such a glorious leader. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Roman senate ended Nero’s reign by ordering him to commit suicide four years later.
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Financial Inclusion in Focus in India, but Bank Loans to Micro Sector Fall 5.5%
State-run banks may have created a record with opening of Jan Dhan accounts, but when it comes to lending to the poor, they are actually faltering. Bank loans to the micro sector, the target group of the government's financial inclusion drive and Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), have fallen 5.5% over the last 14 months, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
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- South Asia
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‘This isn’t what we had once hoped it would be … so what should we do?’: Dean Karlan discusses the influential new studies on microcredit’s social impact
Discussion of the six recent microcredit RCTs has followed two general tracks. Within the sector, it has focused on how the studies can be used to improve products and social impact. But outside the sector, it has focused on how microcredit hasn’t lived up to the hype. Both of those currents came to the fore in our Q&A with Dean Karlan, President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action.
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- Education, Impact Assessment
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Deutsche Bank Closes $50 Million Social Enterprise Fund
Deutsche Bank’s Global Social Finance Group today announced the closing of the Essential Capital Consortium (ECC), a five-year USD 50 million social enterprise fund, which is part of its family of social impact funds first launched in 2005.
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Grameen Foundation USA Partners with MetLife Foundation to Provide Microfinance in Uttar Pradesh
Grameen Foundation US has partnered with MetLife Foundation to provide savings and other services to at least 40,000 poor and women clients in Uttar Pradesh.
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- Uncategorized
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- South Asia
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- microfinance