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> Posted by Andrew Fixler, Associate, CFI
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Inclusive financial services in Africa are blooming. Between the turn of the millennium and 2011, the number of African MFIs reporting to the MIX increased from 58 to 397. From 2000 to 2014, the gross loan portfolio expanded over tenfold to $6 billion. Between 2003 and 2009, the number of borrowers served by MFIs in Africa increased from 1.6 million to 8.5 million. These numbers represent the development of an economic development tool for economies with very small financial sectors. It is impressive progress for an undeveloped industry beset by sparse human capital, problematic governance, and minimal external commercial interest.
AfriCap, which was the first private equity fund to invest exclusively in African microfinance institutions, and other microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) funded by social investors have been a key growth factor through capitalizing MFIs and offering technical assistance and training. This interest is relatively new. The African MIV portfolio grew at an average annual rate of 36 percent between 2006 and 2013. This compares with an average growth of 38 percent for investments in the Latin America & Caribbean region since 2006, and 8 percent in both the Middle East & North Africa and South East Asia regions. The strong connection between MIV financing and microfinance sector growth was also noted in a World Bank paper, Benchmarking the Financial Performance, Growth, and Outreach of Greenfield Microfinance Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper, released in 2014, explains the relevance of greenfield MFIs to effecting financial inclusion in undeveloped financial markets. These institutions are financed in large part by equity and debt from development finance institutions, as well as a now-significant cohort of MIVs.
> Posted by Sumaiya Sajjad, Program Manager, Financial Inclusion, The MasterCard Foundation
In Luxembourg recently, I took part in the European Microfinance Week, whose theme this year was “Developing Markets Better”. The event brought together an excellent group of people from various organizations around the world involved in financial inclusion. On the evening before the formal opening of the conference, Accion’s Center for Financial Inclusion hosted a special cocktail reception where I helped to launch the Accion Africa Board Fellowship program – proudly supported by The MasterCard Foundation.
This program aligns strongly with our Foundation’s goal of promoting financial inclusion in order to help catalyze prosperity and reduce inequality in developing countries. As part of that work, we recognize the critical importance of building capacity at all levels of the financial services industry – especially in that segment of the industry serving the poor. We’ve found that strong, committed, and capable leadership can have the most catalyzing effect on entire organizations, improving the quality of their work, and benefiting the clients they serve.
The following post was originally published on the Microfinance Gateway.
As the microfinance industry grows and becomes more complex, governance plays an increasingly important role in managing sound institutions and preventing crises. Corporate governance provides the framework through which an institution’s diverse stakeholders—investors, board members, management, and employees—set the strategic vision, monitor performance, and manage risks.
The Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion has recently announced a partnership with The MasterCard Foundation to launch the Accion Africa Board Fellowship program. The new program will promote peer-to-peer learning on governance and risk management practices at financial institutions that serve low-income clients in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with more than 6.6 million microfinance clients.
We spoke with Beth Rhyne (left), Managing Director of the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion, and Ann Miles (right), the Director of Financial Inclusion at The MasterCard Foundation, to learn more about their vision for the program.
Good governance helps an institution fulfill its mission, increase efficiency, and improve its ability to attract customers and investors. Why do you think the microfinance industry in Africa needs such a program at this time?
Miles: Good governance begins at the top of any organization. The policies that are set, and the signals that are sent, by board members and CEOs permeate throughout an organization. They are a major component, perhaps the major component, in determining how an organization succeeds in its given mission. So, how a board does its work is critically important, and it’s something that we at The MasterCard Foundation care about a lot.
> Posted by Center Staff
The microfinance industry in sub-Saharan Africa, boasting roughly 6.6 million clients, is growing fast. This expansion of financial services to the base of the pyramid, bolstered by an increasingly diverse array of providers and products, is enabling many lower-income individuals, entrepreneurs, and households to access and use essential tools like loans and savings accounts for the first time. To ensure the stability and success of the institutions that provide services, however, strong institutional governance and risk management needs to be a core priority. A new CFI initiative, generously supported by The MasterCard Foundation, sets out to address this.
> Posted by Nadia van de Walle, Senior Africa Specialist, the Smart Campaign
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According to a recent Overseas Development Institute (ODI) report, of every eight dollars sent to Africa, a whole dollar is lost to accompanying transaction fees. This loss, estimated by ODI to be between $1.4 and $2.3 billion annually, is particularly significant given that remittances comprise a significant share of African states’ economies and are rapidly increasing; the World Bank estimates they totaled around $32 billion in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in 2013 and may reach $41 billion by 2016. These numbers attracted The Economist to ask, “Do the middlemen deserve their cut?”
Looking at these practices through the lens of the Smart Campaign’s Client Protection Principles, we question whether they are in keeping with responsible pricing. These charges can’t be explained by distance. In fact, large amounts of remittances are intra-country or intra-Africa, transmitted from urban to rural areas or by migrant workers from one country to another. Remittance corridors within Africa have some of the highest charge structures in the world. The 12.3 percent average charge for sub-Saharan Africa compares to a global average (without SSA) of 7.8 percent.
> Posted by Julie Fawn Earne, Senior Microfinance Specialist, IFC
The Investing in Inclusive Finance program at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion explores the practices of investors in inclusive finance. Across areas including risk, governance, stakeholder alignment, and fund management, this blog series highlights what’s being done to help the industry better utilize private capital to develop financial institutions that incorporate social aims.
A good number of greenfield MFIs in Sub-Saharan Africa now have sufficient track records to enable an analysis of their institutional performance and role in the market. A stocktaking of their experiences to date can help inform decisions that will shape the coming generation of investment in African microfinance. Could this business model play a central role in increasing financial inclusion on the continent, where currently only about a quarter of adults have access to formal financial services?
But first, let’s start with the context. Financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are provided by a disparate group of relatively small providers. At one end of the spectrum are indigenous NGOs and informal microfinance providers. On the other end are commercial banks, which offer a full range of banking products and services but generally exclude the vast majority of the population. Between these two poles are cooperatives, government institutions, such as postal banks, and other non-bank financial institutions, which fill some of the gaps but have failed to reach widespread sustainability and outreach. According to the MIX Market, in 2009 less than half of the MFIs in SSA (of all institutional types) demonstrated financial sustainability. As a result, few of these institutions are likely to grow to meet the needs of large numbers of unbanked households and enterprises.
In light of this, a number of global holding companies and investors, largely comprised of development finance institutions (DFIs) set out around the turn of the Millennium to develop a group of well-managed, sustainable, and commercially-oriented formal financial institutions that offer a range of financial products through a scalable operating model. Today, there are more than 30 greenfield MFIs spread over at least 12 African countries, including frontier markets such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Liberia. While many greenfield MFIs are still young, the analysis in Greenfield MFIs in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Business Model for Advancing Access to Finance, published last month by IFC, CGAP, and The MasterCard Foundation, shows signs of solid institution building for the longer term. While there is a range of microfinance providers in SSA, the proliferation of greenfield MFIs expands the commercial end of the spectrum with regulated, mostly deposit-taking institutions, focused on low-income individuals, microenterprises, and small businesses. At the end of 2012, 31 greenfield MFIs had more than 700,000 loan accounts, an aggregate loan portfolio of $527 million, and close to 2 million deposit accounts with an aggregate balance of $445 million. At the end of 2012, collectively they employed more than 11,000 local staff and had 700 branches.
> Posted by Mary Hansen, Organizational Development and Training Associate, Accion
842 million people struggle through the hunger games yearly. The games begin as food and money run low sometime before harvest and last until the first ripe crops. This is better known as los meses flacos, the thin months, in Latin America. Or as I knew it in East Africa, wanjala in Swahili and nyengo yonjala in Chichewa (the hunger season). These recurring hunger games are not state sponsored and the participants do not fight each other to the death, but they do fight individuals, families, or communities to survive. Every day, 25,000 people around the world die from hunger-related causes, including 16,000 children. That’s one child every five seconds.
The regions deeply affected by hunger depend heavily on smallholder farming. Around 75 percent of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers. Half of the world’s undernourished people, including three-quarters of Africa’s malnourished children and the majority of those living in absolute poverty live on small farms.
Many of these farmers face the struggle of the hungry season. To understand their situation, consider how you would budget if you were only paid a few times a year.
Personally, I struggle with budgeting when paid twice a month. When I was in the Peace Corps in Malawi and was paid monthly, I struggled even more. Yet, smallholder farmers often receive payment only during harvest, or twice a year. I still do not fully understand how families survive with this income structure, even though I lived in a rural town in Malawi for two years. Yet, this is the reality for many of the 2.5 billion people that depend on smallholder agriculture for their livelihoods.
> Posted by Merene Botsio, Financial Inclusion 2020 Project Coordinator, CFI
The Financial Inclusion 2020 project at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. Accordingly, this blog series will spotlight financial inclusion efforts around the globe, share insights coming out of the creation of a roadmap to full financial inclusion, and highlight findings from research on the “invisible market.”
A fitting final FI2020 blog post for me, focuses on my beloved country, Ghana. Hailed as one of sub-Saharan Africa’s shining stars and recently categorized by the World Bank as a lower middle income country, Ghana has been growing at a steady pace. GDP grew an impressive 15 percent in 2011 and 7.9 percent in 2012. Per capita income for all income quintiles is set to increase by approximately two-thirds by the year 2020. However, one question that plagues me, as I return home each year to new skyscrapers, apartment complexes and more gleaming cars, is how the financial needs of the up-and-coming middle and vulnerable income classes and people at the bottom of the pyramid are met. Currently, only 29 percent of Ghanaians have bank accounts, 37 percent have savings accounts, and 35 percent have access to credit.
Graciously, the Head of the Banking Department at the Bank of Ghana (BOG), with responsibility for formulation of policy for Financial Inclusion, Mrs. Elly Ohene-Adu, granted me an interview, to discuss the state of financial inclusion in Ghana:
> Posted by Center Staff
Corruption at any step in a financial system jeopardizes financial inclusion. Globally, roughly 1 in 4 people paid a bribe to a government employee or institution in the last year. That’s the big finding from the Global Corruption Barometer 2013, the latest in Transparency International’s annual public opinion survey on corruption. This year’s survey polled more than 114,000 people in 117 countries on their experience with bribes, their perceptions of corruption across institution types, and their beliefs on the potential for ordinary people to fight corruption.
Percentage of respondents per country/territory who paid a bribe to a government employee or institution in the last year.
For many, especially those living on less than two dollars a day, a bribe added to the cost of a service can determine if a service is a possibility – this includes basic financial services. Of the countries included in the Barometer, it was found that 7 out of the 9 countries with the highest bribery rates were in sub-Saharan Africa. Sierra Leone recorded the highest rate with 81 percent of polled individuals reporting that they had paid a bribe during the past year, followed by Liberia, Yemen, and Kenya, with 75, 74, and 70 percent, respectively. According to Global Findex data, access to and usage of formal financial services in sub-Saharan Africa is among the lowest in the world.
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