News
Mark Field MP to debate microfinance in Parliament
APPG member Mark Field MP will be leading a 90 minute debate on microfinance in Westminster Hall on Tuesday 26th January at 9:30am.
If you would like to watch the debate, you can do so through the Parliament Live website which allows you to watch live and archived debates from both Houses of Parliament.
Department for International Development releases concept note on microfinance fund for Africa
The Department for International Development (DFID) have just released a concept note on the planned capacity-building facility for microfinance in Africa. Consultations on this fund are ongoing with microfinance institutions and other bodies. The APPG plans to submit a response to the concept note - for more information or to contribute comments please contact julia@results-uk.org.
Harnessing the power of Microfinance in Africa: challenges and opportunities
On Thursday 10th December the APPG held a high level roundtable meeting bringing together Parliamentarians with experienced microfinance professionals and academics to discuss the promise and challenges of microfinance in Africa.
Francis Pelekamoyo, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi and current Chairman of Opportunity International (Africa) opened the discussion, followed by a presentation from Gareth Thomas MP, Minister of State for International Development, on a new capacity-building fund for microfinance in Africa that is being designed by the Department for International Development (DFID).
Participants at the meeting advised DFID to build social goals such as poverty-reduction and empowerment into the structure of the new fund. For more details you can read the minutes of the meeting.
AGM held
On Wednesday 15th July the 2009 AGM of the APPG was held, at which the officers of the group were re-elected, and the group's finances and future business were discussed. Minutes of the meeting are available here.
Sam Daley-Harris speaks at the APPG
Sam Daley-Harris, Director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign and founder of RESULTS International has urged the donor community to do more to increase access to microfinance for the world's poorest people.
At a packed meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mircofinance in April, Sam highlighted two new targets set by the Microcredit Summit Campaign - to reach more than 175 million of the poorest families with mircocredit and to ensure that 100 million families rise out above the $1 a day threshold by 2015 - and called on agencies such as DFID and the World Bank to commit resources to achieving these goals.
Annette Brooke MP, Chair of the APPG acknowledged Sam and RESULTS for their work to raise awareness of microfinance in Parliament.
(left to right: Julia Modern of RESULTS UK; Sam Daley-Harris; Annette Brooke MP; and David Pye and Louise Holly of RESULTS UK)
100 million of the world's poorest families now reached with microfinance
The State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2009 was succssfully launched on January 26, 2009 in New York City. The report carried the exciting news that that more than 106 million of the world's poorest families recieved a microloan in 2007, surpasing a goal set by the Campaign ten yeas earlier. Here is what Nobel Prize Laureate and Grameen Bank Founder MuhammadYunus said about the news: "This is a tremendous achievment that mny people thought was far too difficult to reach. What makes it even more remarkable is that loans to more than 100 million very poor families now touch the lives of more than half a billion family members around the world. That is half of the world's poorest people."
New CDC investment targets announced
3 November 2008. The new targets require that, from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2013, three-quarters of the company's new investments must be in Low Income Countries, with at least half of all investments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the same period, the CDC will be able to invest £125 million to support small and medium-size businesses elsewhere in the developing world.
Gates Foundation Grants 1.7 Million to PlaNet Finance and France Telecom’s Orange for Mobile Banking Microfinance Project
October 28, 2008. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has granted US$1.7 million to PlaNet Finance to fund a mobile banking project aimed at providing microfinance clients with enhanced access to banking services. The project was co-developed with mobile operator Orange and is attempting to facilitate cost-effective access to microfinance services and products for micro-entrepreneurs living in remote areas who cannot afford the time or the money to travel to the nearest bank or microfinance institution.
BRAC Receives US$ 1.5 million Hilton Humanitarian Prize
October 21, 2008. The world’s largest humanitarian prize, the USD 1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, was awarded to BRAC, for helping more than 110 million people through microcredit and basic services programs.
DFID Expands Microfinance Partnerships in Nigeria with US$ 13.9 million in Funding
October 21, 2008. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) has made recent donations to two separate Nigerian organizations involved in microfinance. In August DFID donated N12 million (USD 102 thousand) to an Abuja Enterprise Agency (AEA) run project entitled AEA FCT-wide Enterpreneurship Campaign (AFEC), and then again in October announced that it would provide GBP 8 million (USD 13.8 million) over five years to Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFINA), a non-governmental organization (NGO) conceived by DFID.
Barclays to Invest £10m in Community Finance Schemes
October 1, 2008. Over the past year, the bank has been supporting the expansion of VSLAs in Katine, a sub-county of north east Uganda. Barclays is donating British Pound 1.5 million to a three-year development project in the region being carried out by the African Medical and Research Foundation and Farm Africa, and supported by the Guardian. The programme builds on Barclays work in Katine and similar microfinance projects in Ghana.
British Government-sponsored CDC Group to Invest $10.5m of Equity in Luxembourgian Venture Capital Firm Advans SA
August 18, 2008. Advans SA, a Luxembourgian venture capital firm that specializes in microfinance ventures, recently announced it raised EUR 7 million (USD 10.5 million) in equity capital from CDC Group. CDC’s investment aims to support Advans’ expansion of investments in Asian and African microfinance institutions.
UK announces £5 million in support of Afghanistan Microfinance scheme
International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander announced an additional £5 million to the Government of Afghanistan’s microfinance scheme. This brings the UK’s total investment in the scheme to £35 million.
The scheme has provided small loans to over 400,000 people so far – 280,000 of whom are women. By the end of next year, the scheme will have benefited some 400,000 women.
Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus in the UK
On Thursday 14th February, Muhammad Yunus adressed a gathering of the Microfinance Club. The theme of his talk was 'microfinance and social business for poverty allieviation' and coincided with the release of his new book 'Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism'.
Founder of The Jamii Bora Trust, Ingrid Munro addresses joint Microcredit Summit Campaign/RESULTS & MF Club event.
Jamii Bora is a microfinance institution that started in 1999 when 50 former beggars and slum dwellers asked Ingrid Munro - then head of the African Housing Fund - to help the improve their lives. She agreed, and since then the programme has grown into a nationwide microfinance institution with over 130,000 members and 60 branches all over Kenya.
On Monday 8th October, Ingrid Munro kindly agreed to address a joint Microcredit Summit Campaign/RESULTS & MF Club event to share her remarkable story.
APPG on Microfinance - Newsletter Summer 2007
For news and information on the work of the APPG on Microfinance please click here
Peace Prize Winner Yunus backs G8 Microcredit Fund - March 2007
Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-poverty pioneer, Muhammad Yunus has this week commended Germany's efforts to create an African microcredit fund at the 2007 G8. In addition, he noted that the true value of such a fund will only be optimised if it focuses on reaching the poorest:
"I welcome a German-led initiative in microfinance from the G8 Summit in 2007. I just want to caution the G8 leaders to make sure that the bulk of the money goes to people living on less that $1 a day."
Germany to push for African Microcredit Fund at 2007 G8 Summit – February 2007
Germany’s Development Minister has publicly announced Germany’s intention to launch an African Microcredit Fund at this year’s G8 Summit. During its G8 Presidency Germany will be looking to encourage other G8 countries to support the creation of this new Fund to promote African enterprise.
For more information on the proposed initiative click here.
British Government Lead on Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund – January 2007
The British Department for International Development is taking a leadership role in developing the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund. This Fund, identified as a key recommendation in the 2005 Commission for Africa Report, will be launched in summer 2007 in partnership with a range of donors, including the Dutch government, African Development Bank and IFAD.
Challenge Funds, like the AECF, have been used by donors for a number of years and have proven to be effective at bringing the private sector on board with development initiatives. They are an innovative way of increasing resource flows to particular issues; DfID’s Financial Deepening Challenge Fund, for example (which focused on banking the ‘un-banked’) meant that the $15 million invested by donors leveraged $72 million from the private sector.
For more information on the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund click here.
Global Microcredit Summit 2006 – November 2006
The second Global Microcredit Summit took place in Halifax Nova Scotia in November 2006. The four-day Summit was attended by over 2,200 participants from more than 110 countries, with high level spokespeople including: Queen Sofia of Spain; Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz; and newly awarded Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus.
The summit, its supporters, and attendees had much to celebrate. Those who had been watching, and working towards, the audacious goal of “reaching 100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, with credit for self-employment and other financial services”, were rightly overjoyed by the progress which had been made towards this shared vision.
Latest data from 2005 illustrated that 113 million people received micro-loans in 2005 (a nine-fold increase from the number in 1997 when the campaign began) and that 82 million of these borrowers were classed as heads of the poorest families.
But, demand for microfinance continues to outstrip supply, and its potential to impact on the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty by 2015 has not yet been fulfilled.
The Summit therefore set two new goals, symbolising phase II of the campaign:
- To reach 175 million of the world’s poorest families with credit for self employment and other financial services by 2015 and
- To ensure that 100 million of the world’s poorest families cross the $1 a day threshold by 2015.
For more information on the Global Microcredit Summit and the ongoing work of the Microcredit Summit Campaign click here.
Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank Win Nobel Peace Prize – October 2006
Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of ground-breaking Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding contribution to social and economic advancement through the provision of small loans, known as Microcredit.
Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in the mid 1970s when the poorest in society lacked any access to financial services. Yunus reflects, “... when I look back, my strategy was whatever banks did, I did the opposite. If banks lent to the rich, I lent to the poor. If banks lent to men, I lent to women. If banks required a lot of paperwork, my loans were illiterate friendly. Yes, whatever banks did, I did the opposite.”
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Microfinance/Microcredit, established to build political commitment for this innovative and proven tool for poverty alleviation, warmly welcomed the announcement.
Annette Brooke MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Microfinance/Microcredit commented, “Muhammad Yunus is an inspirational and life-changing individual. His longstanding commitment to empowering the poorest in society, particularly women, through the provision of small loans has created a sea-change in the way we view development. The Grameen Bank model provides a hand-up rather than a hand-out and the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus is thoroughly deserved”.
For more information on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus click here.