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Small Farms, Big Funding Gap: Local bank financing for smallholder farmers meets only 3 percent of overall demand
New research reveals that local bank lending to smallholder farmers – which should be a main avenue for improving their access to finance – meets less than 3 percent of their estimated financing demand. This gap represents an obstacle to global poverty reduction efforts - and a compelling opportunity for buyers, lenders and other actors in the agricultural value chain.
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- Agriculture
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Getting Innovations to Market: Crazy ideas and actionable insights from Grameen Foundation’s Dar es Salaam Workshop
Human-centered design methodology has led to a number of great products, but many get stuck in the implementation phase, only to collect dust on a shelf. That’s why forty international development practitioners recently convened in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to discuss creative ways to ensure that new products actually get to market and reach end users. Grameen Foundation’s Kimberly Davies shares some of their insights.
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- Uncategorized
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Microfinance’s macro potential
Microfinance is, at its heart, an effort to provide financial services to people who are not served – or are under-served – by the formal banking system. With appropriate, accessible, and fairly priced financial services, people can build their savings, cover the costs of unexpected emergencies, and invest in their families’ health, housing, and education.
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- Uncategorized
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The Lion and the Toucan: Bank of Tanzania’s experiences in mobile finance offer valuable lessons to peers in Brazil
Brazil is the largest nation in Latin America in terms of population and area. Already a well-established regional and global leader in the field of financial inclusion, notably in areas such as agent banking and financial education, with a long history of overcoming policy challenges and difficulties, it would be easy for the nation to rest comfortably on its impressive policy achievements.
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- Uncategorized
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Getting Back to the ‘Heyday’ for Vaccines: PATH’s Batson on how ‘really smart innovations’ are bending the global health curve
Foundations and governments involved in global health are more sensitive to cost-per-solution these days. That puts an emphasis on creativity and a disciplined public-private approach going forward.
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- Health Care
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Financial Inclusion Gets to Lagos Slum
Sterling Bank’s recent extension of its financial services, through the agent banking model to Makoko, a slum area in Lagos, has attracted a lot of attention.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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In the Pacific, banks go branchless to reach the unbanked
Branchless banking, mobile banking, mobile “wallets”, innovations in financial services are seeing thousands of poor and low-income people use their mobile phones to enter the financial system for the first time; to open accounts, get paid, save money and begin to move out of poverty.
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- Uncategorized
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NexThought Monday 12/16/13: Is India looking at financial inclusion backwards?
Despite the huge potential of solutions like mobile finance and branchless banking, the growth of these services in India has been slow and patchy. But the country’s mobile banking agenda has been driven largely by government-to-person social welfare payments, compelling service providers to start with the toughest market sub-segment – poor rural households. Should India invert its approach and target business segments first?
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- Uncategorized
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