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

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance access to quality financial services on the continent on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The agreement aims to create a collaboration framework to promote financial inclusion in Africa.

This partnership is aligned with the Bank’s High 5 priorities and the Financial Sector Development Policy and Strategy. The Bank envisions a financial sector that is vibrant, innovative, robust and competitive both nationally and regionally. Modern financial systems will steadily expand their coverage, attaining almost universal access (at least 90 percent of the continent’s population) by 2025, providing essential financial services and products (deposit, payments, credit, and insurance), and improve quality and usage by offering a full range of financial products and services for the continent’s productive sector. The partnership will also strengthen the technical capacity of financial regulators and policy-makers across the continent to implement substantive policy reforms to advance financial inclusion.

In order to implement its Financial Sector Development Strategy, the Bank relies notably on strategic and innovative collaborative partnerships with organizations like the Alliance for Financial Inclusion. On Tuesday, several AfDB departments involved in financial inclusion, namely Private Sector, Statistics, Human and Social Development, Renewable Energy, ICT, Gender Women and Civil Society, Agriculture finance and Rural Development joined a workshop led by the Financial Intermediation and Inclusion Division to explore ways to enhance collaboration with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion.