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Rehabilitation and attack: microcredit helps the poor after all
FOR years the reputation of microfinance—which gives tiny loans to the poorest—rose and fell in tandem with relations between Grameen Bank and the Bangladeshi government. In 2006 the bank and its head, Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel peace prize for reducing poverty and Mr Yunus toyed with setting up a political party, supposedly with the government’s blessing. Since then several studies have found limited or no benefits from microfinance, and in 2011 (for different reasons) a new government forced Mr Yunus to resign from the bank he had founded.
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OPINION: Managing Finances Well is Key to Africa’s Success
More than ever, African governments need to make the region attractive to investors to shore up the growth path the continent has embarked upon.
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- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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March’s Most-Popular Posts on NextBillion
Three posts, each advocating constructive and concrete steps for expanding the umbrella of financial inclusion to even more people, were the most-read articles on NextBillion in March.
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Why Is Financial Inclusion in India Not Improving?: New numbers, new approaches
In the past five years, the Reserve Bank of India has worked harder than many central banks in developing countries to bring financial inclusion to the BoP. Nevertheless, recent reports show that full financial inclusion is not happening, and is probably not even progressing by most important metrics. MicroSave’s Ritesh Dhawan explores why this is the case, and how things might improve.
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Sankalp Forum 2014: Lessons for the India/Africa Connection
One of the key themes at the Sankalp Unconvention this year: How do we make all this ‘talk’ of Africa-India collaboration real? Over various roundtables and conversations, some key themes emerged on whether we are doing all that is necessary to foster collaboration between social enterprises in India and Africa.
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- scale
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Impact Investing and Global Finance: The Big Picture
One of the interesting and important recent developments in wealth management has been the emergence of a group of clients committed to investing with impact across their entire portfolios, meaning they seek to deliver measurable positive social or environmental benefits with every dollar they put to work.
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- impact investing
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India’s New CSR Act: Marking the shift from corporate ‘spending’ to ‘investing’ on social impact
India’s Corporate Social Responsibilities Act now represents an unprecedented opportunity to drive social progress. It also raises a big – and much discussed – question for companies tasked with distributing CSR money: What’s the best way to spend it? Satyam Darmora with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation says that’s not the right question to ask.
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Kenya officially gives green light to three mobile virtual network operators
Kenya’s number of mobile money players could jump from four to seven after the country has officially awarded three mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) licences this week.
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- governance, mobile finance
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