Hans Dieter Seibel - e-MFP founding board member 2006-2015's picture
About the author 

Hans Dieter Seibel is a professor emeritus at Cologne University and a former board member of the European Microfinance Platform. He also taught at the universities of Monrovia in Liberia, Princeton, N.J. in the US, Dortmund in Germany and Lagos in Nigeria.  He is specialized on rural and microfinance, Islamic microfinance, linkages between formal and informal finance including digital linkages of self-help groups with banks/MNOs, agricultural development bank reform, and MSME development. He did his first survey research on self-help groups as informal financial intermediaries in the 1960s in West Africa, followed by numerous projects, studies and consultancies of microfinance institutions and rural banks in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In 1988-1991 he was team leader of Linking Banks and Self-Help Groups in Indonesia, a joint project of GIZ and the central bank of Indonesia, which has also served as a model for the SHG banking program in India. In 1999-2001 he was Rural Finance Advisor at IFAD in Rome and author of its Rural Finance Policy (2000). He also is a founding board member of the European Microfinance Platform. He is the author of "Financial Systems Development and Microfinance" (http://db.tt/QpbWGVjm) and numerous other books and articles, and co-author of “From Microfinance to Inclusive Banking: Why Local Banking Works” (John Wiley & Sons, 2016).