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> Posted by Center Staff
This episode of the MF blogosphere’s best spotlights tech and product development, interesting Foromic discussions, and microfinance as it’s contributing to prosperity in Uganda.
- Sarah Fathallah, Toru Mino, and Mark Pickens examine the nuts and bolts of building better products in their CGAP Technology post “When Product Innovation Meets Agile Development.”
- Hidden away in David Roodman’s post “San Isidro Dispatch: Village Banking in Costa Rica” is a video of the Foromic panel discussion “How Microfinance Affects the Lives of the Poor.”
- Peggy Woo, in her post “Climbing the Ladder of Prosperity in Uganda” on The MasterCard Foundation blog, quotes a microfinance client as saying: “I used to have a monthly income of 100,000 shillings and now it is 700,000 shillings!”
Image credit: Iainf
Have you read?
Big Data, Financial Access & the Arab Spring – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – October 24, 2011
Mexico, Mobile Banking & Shodh Yatra – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – September 30, 2011
Energy Drinks, Lebanon & Impact Investing – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – September 14, 2011
> Posted by Center Staff
This week’s highlights of the blogosphere include a look at the Arab Spring through the lens of Tunisia, a discussion of where mobile phones can take Big Data (and us), and reflections on what we need to know in order to improve financial access.
- Jonathan Morduch poses “Ten Research Questions on Improving Financial Access,” and argues on the Financial Access Initiative blog that these queries need to be answered “if we are to make informed decisions on how to improve financial access.”
- Grant Tudor, writing about “The Age of Big Data” on NextBillion, maps out the thinking that’s been done on a new era where mobile phones may help resolve our data dilemmas.
- How is the industry responding to the new challenges and opportunities created by the Arab Spring? In “From Microcredit to Microfinance: New ambitions for Tunisia” on CGAP’s Microfinance Blog, Emna Kallel and Alice Negre examine some answers.
Have you read?
Mexico, Mobile Banking & Shodh Yatra – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – September 30, 2011
Energy Drinks, Lebanon, & Impact Investing – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – September 14, 2011
Andhra Pradesh, Haiti & Corporate Capital – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – August 22, 2011
Financial Ed, Mobile Money, & Savings – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – August 3, 2011
Women, India, & Tourism – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – July 19, 2011
Armenia, Andhra Pradesh & Pakistan – Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere – June 13, 201
> Posted by Center Staff
This week’s Top Picks includes some good news for banks, some welcome calls in Mexico’s mobile market, a wrap-up of Vijay Mahajan’s trek across India’s microfinance landscape, and a look at Kiva’s contributions to non-traditional services and loans.
- “These are not the best of times for banks globally” might be an understatement, but Kabir Kumar identifies some reasons for optimism in his CGAP Technology Blog post “Banks Have Some Good News…Are They Listening?”
- Vijay Mahajan, who we earlier noted was “Treading Carefully in Indian Microfinance’s Troubled Landscape,” encapsulates the insights gained during his investigation/walk in his blog’s post “Shodh Yatra – A Video Summary of 79 Days in 15 mins.”
- “Without a credit card, bank account, or official employment history, mobile providers are unwilling to take the gamble on providing a post-paid monthly plan option to Mexico’s poor,” observes Josh Cleveland in his post “Reinventing the Mobile Market in Mexico” for NextBillion. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
Excellent post by Michael Burbano on the CGAP Microfinance Blog.
“Is Responsible Finance in Your DNA?” maps out “a way of doing business – a never-ending process of adapting your products, processes and policies to keep your clients at the center. ”
Burbano, who is General Manager at Banco Solidario, uses his institution’s 15th anniversary as a starting point for reflections on two strategies: grounding the practice of responsible finance in your business model, and measuring your “responsible finance chromosomes.”
Burbano highlights the Smart Campaign‘s set of Client Protection Principles as a tool to “help MFIs to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of our responsible finance practice.” He places the Smart Campaign’s principles in the same toolkit with the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI), Social Performance Ratings (with Planet Rating and Microfinanza Rating), and the Social Performance Indicators Audit Tool (SPI).
Burbano’s advice? Make responsible finance part of your institution’s DNA. We couldn’t agree more.
Have you read?
Making History: Investors in Microfinance Agree on Principles of Conduct
Responsible Finance: Making It Work in Microfinance
> Posted by Center Staff
This latest “Top Picks of the Microfinance Blogosphere” swoops in for a closer look at spurious links between energy drinks and microfinance, examines ways of opening up impact investing to the masses, maps out Lebanese microfinance, and more.
- “Why is it illegal for me to invest even $100 in the business of my choice?” asks a post by Nilima Achwal on the NextBillion blog. “SOCAP11: Breaking Down Barriers to People Powered Capital” dives deep into “the democratization of impact investing.”
- “While the microfinance sector in Lebanon is growing, it is still relatively small in respect to the unmet need throughout the country,” writes Jonathan Bloom in his post “Passport Series: Lebanon: Part 2: Microfinance” on the Kiva.org blog. He takes a look at the big picture of Islamic banking to contextualize his observations about the work taking place on the ground.
- Five young people of the African Leadership Academy (ALA) “interviewed their peers within their countries to solicit views on a number of questions about education, careers, financial services, leadership and entrepreneurship,” Reeta Roy recounts in “Managing Life Transitions” on The MasterCard Foundation blog. The post offers up the pivotal points that go with these peers’ coming of age, as part of efforts to answer the wider question: “How do we prepare young people for a lifetime of transitions?” Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
This week’s “best” of the blogosphere includes good news from Haiti, not-so-clear news from DFID, new data from India, and potentially good news for social entrepreneurs interested in corporate capital.
- Jonathan Morduch fears that the DFID study “will add confusion to a conversation that’s already muddled” by failing to make clear the critical difference between “proving that something doesn’t work” and “not being able to prove that it works.” Microfinance, of course, is the “it” Morduch discusses in his post “Disproving and Confusing” on the Financial Access Initiative blog.
- “[M]obile money is well on its way to fulfilling the promise of being a ‘legacy of the earthquake’,” Greta Greathouse writes in her post “Mobile Money Moving Rapidly Ahead in Haiti”. As this technology makes inroads, she observes on the CGAP Technology and Microfinance blog, “donors in Haiti are increasingly interested in transforming many of their ongoing ‘non-emergency’ programs and payments to these platforms.”
- “The world’s largest corporations are awash with cash,” notes ClearlySo CEO Rod Schwartz in his piece “Corporate Capital for Social Enterprises” on Social Edge. While sizing up the significant potential upsides to acquiring corporate money, Schwartz also asks “Is securing corporate capital a dangerous step down a slippery slope, imperiling social and ethical missions?” Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
The blogosphere’s virtual teeth are chewing over many matters, including financial education and high-tech solutions, that earned ink in the Center’s recent “Opportunities and Obstacles to Financial Inclusion” report.
- Cheryl Heller, writing over at NextBillion, shares her take on a few things every entrepreneur should know about communication, maintaining that communication “is what transforms an idea into a vision, defines how it’s different, explains why it will work, and engages people in helping make it a reality.”
- Kiva reposts a nice piece by Rachel Brooks, the director of marketing and communications at the MFI Juhudi Kilimo, on her organization’s efforts to bridge service gaps using mobile technology including Safaricom’s M-PESA platform. This is critical, she writes, because one of Juhudi Kilimo’s greatest challenges “is sheer distance.”
- The buzz about financial education is getting louder, as evidenced by The MasterCard Foundation blog post “Moving the Financial Education Needle Forward.” Monique Cohen suggests that policymakers and practitioners in the financial services space “now increasingly recognize the important link between financial education for low-income groups and their ability to make informed decisions about personal finance for improved well being.” Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
This week’s blogosphere features question marks over India’s legislative landscape, tourists and their relationship to microfinance, and new ideas for boosting women’s economic power.
- In his blog, David Roodman analyzes India’s new draft microfinance bill, highlighting key points and pondering its potential consequences.
- Alleviating poverty through tourism? Kiva’s blog explores the links between microfinance and sustainable tourism in countries such as Mexico and Peru.
- The Financial Access Initiative blog features an interview with Dean Karlan, who recently co-authored More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty along with Jacob Appel. (Also check out Guy Stuart’s book review on this blog.) Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
This week’s Top Picks delves into bloggers’ thoughts on branchless banking, private-sector opportunities at the base of the pyramid, and the sobering prospect that some countries that might go down the same teeth-rattling road as Andhra Pradesh.
- David Roodman contributes to the Beyond Profit blog, mulling which countries could be next on the list to experience a microfinance crisis similar to those of Andhra Pradesh and others. Hint: Think Armenia. Interesting graphs here.
- On a similar note, Timothy Ogden at the Harvard Business Review blog discusses the “microfinance contagion scenario,” in which local issues could have significant global consequences. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
This week the blogosphere offers insight into the ongoing turbulence in Andhra Pradesh, agriculture as opportunity, savings and debt, and what you can accomplish for microfinance not long after you learn to tie your own shoes.
- What’s in a name? Barbara Kiviat at the Financial Access Initiative blog takes a deeper look at “a call for better language” in the wake of the Microfinance USA conference, where the meaning of the word “microfinance” was discussed.
- At CGAP’s Microfinance Blog, Dean Karlan shares an excerpt from his book as part of CGAP’s blog series on savings. In this snippet, Karlan sets up the question of why people borrow, instead of save, when they are engaged in a cycle of high interest rate debt. Read the rest of this entry »
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