NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Mike McCaffrey specializes in designing sustainable, demand-driven financial services for the poor. He started his career in rural Bolivia as a microenterprise volunteer for the Peace Corps. Afterwards, he joined Innovations for Poverty Action, advising leading microfinance organizations like Pro Mujer on how to improve products and services.

Subsequently, he moved to the Fiji Islands to serve as the financial inclusion technical specialist for the United Nations South Pacific regional initiative. There, he supported the development of mobile money networks in seven countries, including: (1) consulting Central Banks on regulatory policy, (2) supporting banks and mobile network operators develop new products, and (3) conducting national market demand studies.

He currently lives in Nairobi, Kenya, heading a regional program on digital financial services for MicroSave. The focus of his work is determining how digital financial services for the poor can be better designed, and more easily scaled to national levels. The includes managing the Agent Network Accelerator (ANA) project, and The Helix Institute of Digital Finance.

Mike attended the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, receiving a master’s degree in development economics & a graduate certificate in science, technology & environmental policy. He also holds B.A. degrees in economics & psychology from the University of California.

Maha Khan manages the research component of the Agent Network Accelerator (ANA) Project. ANA, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is the largest research project on agent networks in the world, designed to determine what drives their success and scale. ANA primarily focuses on eight countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.

The research includes conducting quantitative and qualitative research in the eight countries every two years and disseminating the data to the larger community and digital financial service providers.