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Author: Dirk Lebe - Swisscontact
A lack of data is a significant bottleneck for financial institutions and development organizations. The same is true for knowledge about a targeted sector, especially when working in agriculture and agri-finance. Swisscontact’s Sustainable Cocoa Production Program (SCPP) in Indonesia, aiming to assist 130,000 cocoa farmers by 2020, tackles those two topics through training financial institutions about the cocoa sector and cocoa financials and shedding light on the financial situation and perception of cocoa farmers. Through an advanced program management database, SCPP is able to identify critical and interesting data relations. Baseline data of 17,429 farmers and first conclusions were compiled into a baseline report. This blog post highlights some findings from the report. One of the most important outcomes of our data analysis is the categorization of farmers into professional, progressing and unprofessional categories, and subcategorizing them into small, medium and large in terms of farm size. This leads to different approaches in targeting farmers, especially in the sense of formal Access to Finance (A2F).

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Author: Gabriela Erice
For its annual meeting in Luxembourg this year, CGAP asked e-MFP to organize a session for its members. This was our first opportunity to present some of the lessons being highlighted by the 7th European Microfinance Award “Microfinance and Access to Education”, especially the role that donors and investors can play to support the efforts of MFIs to promote access to quality education at the bottom of the pyramid.

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Author: e-MFP
We’re delighted to announce the release of the 9th edition of the European Dialogue, a periodic and in-depth analysis of a particular important area of innovation in microfinance. Since the first in 2008, several of the previous editions have paralleled the subjects of the now-annual European Microfinance Award. This year, too, the Dialogue is focused on the most recent Award, recognising excellence in microfinance in post-disaster/post-conflict areas & fragile states.

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Author: e-MFP
This week, e-MFP announced the launch of the 6th European Microfinance Award. This year, the Award will recognise one of most important challenges that some financial institutions face: providing financial services to vulnerable clients in post-conflict or post-crisis regions. As all e-MFP members well know, providing quality services to clients in stable markets poses many challenges – from managing portfolio risk, to expanding product offerings, hedging risk, understanding clients, adapting to regulatory changes, sourcing funds and innovating with new technologies.

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Author: Daniel Rozas
The microfinance sector has been abuzz with the implications of the “final word” study on microcredit impact. For many, including myself, this has been an opportunity to consider a trend that’s been taking place for several years now – from microfinance to financial inclusion. In my last blog, I touched upon the subject of metrics that this new shift requires. I would like to delve deeper.

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Author: Daniel Rozas
The verdict is out. Final publication of six randomly-controlled studies (RCTs) has drawn a pretty thick line under the words of David Roodman: the average impact of microcredit on poverty is about zero. The notion that microfinance lifts the poor out of poverty is officially dead. Now, the caveats. The studies evaluated microcredit only – not savings or payments or insurance. Nor did they cover so-called microfinance-plus programs, which provide training, health care or other interventions, along with credit. It’s quite possible that these or other specialized branches of microfinance practice do raise the living standards of the poor. But, if I may be so bold, even the best of these initiatives are probably less effective than we might have supposed. This is good news. We in the microfinance community could use some humility. We’re financiers, not doctors, scientists, or teachers. To think that we can alter the lives of millions is hubris.

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Author: Daniel Rozas
Last week, as its football team was preparing for its match with the Netherlands, Mexico hosted the International Forum for Financial Inclusion. It was an important event, opened by the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, and attended by such notables as Christine Lagarde. By all accounts, it was an excellent meeting where representatives of financial regulators from around the world shared their experiences and strategies to promote financial inclusion in their countries. But one thing stood out.

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