Posts Tagged ‘africa’

Posted on July 1, 2009 - by Gavin

Google to bring free text information to Africa…

Strategy Eye um4syjrzwb

Google is partnering with technology and microfinance charity the Grameen Foundation to provide an SMS texting service designed to help impoverished Ugandans gain access to online information. Google SMS will allow mobile owners to text free requests for information such as weather forecasts and sexual health advice.

The service will also provide a virtual marketplace and be accompanied by Google SMS Tips, which the company says provides a search-like experience through SMS.

Fixed-line telephones and internet connections are few and far between in most of Africa, but the continent has comparatively high mobile phone penetration rates. The service will allow Google to reach almost 9m Ugandan mobile phone users who are unlikely to come into contact with the brand in any other way. If the project is a success, it is likely Google will roll out the scheme to other developing nations.

The service will only be available on the MTN Uganda network. Company spokesman Noel Meier says: “We are hoping to reach people in rural and disadvantaged communities while we build up a new line of business for the company.” (more…)

Posted on June 22, 2009 - by Gavin

Aid has not, does not, and will never, help Africa…

Daily Nation

RECENTLY, AID TO AFRICA has come under attack from the most
unlikely quarters — the Africans themselves. The most recent of
these has come from Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist, whose
recently-published book, Dead Aid, makes a convincing argument
against foreign aid to Africa. Moyo argues that Africans have for
too long lived in “a culture of aid” that has failed to reduce
poverty or promote economic growth on the continent. She calls
for the eventual phasing out of aid altogether and for making
African markets more efficient. Despite billions of aid money
being poured into government coffers every year, Africa continues
to remain largely poor because aid fosters corruption and hinders
the development of home-grown industries and solutions. Moreover,
aid doesn’t come for free. Most of it has to be paid back, which
means future generations of Africans are burdened with debt
before they are even born. Even when things, such as mosquito
nets, are given for free, they end up stunting or killing local
industries that produce those things, which leads to more
poverty.

(more…)

Posted on June 18, 2009 - by Gavin

Reaching out to the unbanked…

NEXT

Expatriates have advised their foreign counterparts to make the additional efforts it would require to reach out to the unbanked as only then would the economy become a cashless one and achieve its goal of becoming one of the top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020.

The experts, from different information technology companies and finance institutions worldwide, advised their Nigerian colleagues to wake up to the call as they reminded them that they had only eleven years to achieve their dream.

Piet Cooreman, the Distributor Area manager-Africa, Diebold Limited, Belgium, at the CardExpo Africa 2009 event held in Lagos, advised that the banks should adopt Outdoors Multi-functional Automated Teller Machines and move out to the people.

“We have to reach out to the market people; don’t wait for them to come to you. Mobile banking is about outreach. Move the mobile bank branch to the market. Through this medium, you can move them into the banking society and thereby attract new customers. These new machines have many functional facilities including card readers, cheque deposits, bulk notes acceptance, envelope deposits, among others,” he said.

(more…)

Posted on June 17, 2009 - by Gavin

Microfinance Bank Disburses N1.5bn for Poverty…

Thisday Online

Over 10,000 customers of  ACCION Microfinance Bank (AMfB) have benefited from the N1.5 billion loans disbursed by the bank as part of its efforts to fight poverty.

The bank’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Bunmi Lawson, who made this known at the bank’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Lagos, disclosed that the year closed with N715 million in active loan portfolio and over 8,600 borrowers.

“The past year presented us with many opportunities which by taking action we turned into significant accomplishments in ACCION Microfinance Bank. I am pleased to report that in furtherance of our role to make the future bright for our customers”

” AMfB disbursed over N1.5 billion in loan to over 10,000 loan customers closing the year with N715 million in active loan portfolio and over 8,600 borrowers. In addition, we have over 20,000 savings customers with N143 million in saving deposits”, she said. (more…)

Posted on May 29, 2009 - by Gavin

Africa banks on cell phones…

Global Post

Millions to enter banking system through mobile phone system.

ACCRA, Ghana — Most working people here do not exist, at least not in the records of any trustworthy bank: The taxi drivers stash their salaries beneath floor mats and the market women tie their earnings up in the waistlines of their wrapper-skirts.

They are the “un-banked” — potential customers but for now invisible, lost among the 80 percent of Africans who do their banking in tin cans and fanny packs. They do not keep the sort of accounts one can present to a loan officer.

Africa’s economy of cash handovers and stowed-away savings has long been a hindrance to the continent’s economic growth, as well as a cause and excuse to deny credit to its poor.

But now, at a time when 10 million Ghanaians own a phone, the world’s banks, cell phone networks and aid agencies are coming here to flip one thing into the other — to tweak a few features on a sim card, circumvent some regulations, and voila: The ordinary pre-paid cell phone becomes something not unlike a checking account — a way to text money from person to person throughout this intricate economy. (more…)

Posted on May 20, 2009 - by Gavin

Standard Chartered’s Microfinance Deal Awarded Best Structured Finance Deal – Africa by The Banker…

Standard Chartered

Standard Chartered’s Microfinance Institutional Loans for Africa and Asia’s $93m (MILAA) risk participation deal was awarded by The Banker as one of their Deals of the Year 2009. The deal was awarded by the highly influential publication as the best Structured Finance Deal in Africa and is a clear indication of the Bank’s leading role in the Microfinance Sector.

Standard Chartered acted as the sole arranger on a deal that allowed international investors to get valuable exposure to a growing, but still inaccessible, asset class. MILAA was the first ever issuance of notes backed by loans to micro¬finance institutions in Africa and Asia.

The structure of the deal is novel. While the underlying loans will be provided to microfinance institutions in local currency, investors’ exposure is limited to their original investment in dollars. The deal structure also incorporates a three-year re-investment period which provides investors with a longer-term exposure to the asset class. Participating investors took a pari-pasu interest in the reference portfolio, which ensures alignment of interest between investors and Standard Chartered. (more…)

Posted on May 15, 2009 - by Gavin

Even those with very little money have a sophisticated approach to finance…

Economist.com

From The Economist print edition

PAYING interest on your savings will strike most people as odd. Yet some poor people in the developing world do just that. In West Africa, for example, some people pay roving susu collectors a fee amounting to a -40% annual interest rate for looking after their deposits.

And the authors of a new book* about the financial lives of people who earn less than $2 a day find that this sort of “pay-to-save” model is by no means unique to Africa. They encounter a similar phenomenon in India, where a female deposit collector called Jyothi looks after small savings for people in the slums of Vijayawada, at an effective yearly interest rate of -30%.

Some of Jyothi’s customers are among the 250 families in South Africa, India and Bangladesh whose financial transactions over a year were recorded to study how very poor people manage their resources. Given that these are so meagre, this might seem to be an unpromising line of inquiry. But as many of the subjects emphasised, controlling the flow of cash becomes all the more critical when income is not just low, but also unpredictable and irregular.

These features are what economists like to call “consumption smoothing”—spreading spending out in a way that ensures that what you eat one day is not determined by what you have earned that day or the day before. The subjects used a combination of loans and savings to ensure that their lives were not, literally, hostage to fortune. Hardly anyone lived utterly hand-to-mouth. (more…)

Posted on April 9, 2009 - by Gavin

Sierra Leone: Country is First for Mi-Pay Services…

All Africa.com

Freetown — Leading international mobile money services provider, Mi-Pay, yesterday announced a new win in Sierra Leone; making it the first West African country to benefit from Mi-Pay’s online and mobile international remittance solution.

The service will allow customers in the Sierra Leone corridor to use their mobile phone or the web to send/receive money payments to/from friends and relatives abroad – making it ideal for the region’s many migrant workers, travellers and expatriates.

The announcement is one of many recent wins for Mi-Pay in Africa. It follows the launch of its domestic mobile money transfer solution in Sudan, which is undergoing roll out by agent-based Saraf Mobile across North Africa, and precedes the anticipated announcement of an East African mobile banking deal. (more…)

Posted on March 18, 2009 - by Gavin

Credit crisis looms in Africa…

Daily Monitor

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Posted on March 13, 2009 - by Gavin

World Bank: Development Finance Institution Meeting Seeks Closer Cooperation to Reduce the Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Developing Countries…

Isria

The world’s largest International Finance Institutions (IFIs) and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) met in Vienna today to discuss closer cooperation in responding to the global financial and economic crisis and to share information on initiatives aimed at supporting banking, trade, infrastructure, agribusiness, and other key sectors in developing countries.

The meeting, hosted by the Development Bank of Austria, OeEB, and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, brought together 14 institutions including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), other World Bank Group members IBRD and MIGA, the African Development Bank, the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), the UK’s CDC, Germany’s KfW and DEG, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), the Netherlands’ FMO, Norway’s Norfund, and Spain’s Cofides.

Michael Wancata, Member of the Board of OeEB, said, “OeEB appreciates IFC´s initiative to bring together a number of DFIs to discuss harmonized activities. In times like this, Development Finance Institutions should assume an active role and demonstrate they are reliable partners to their clients.”

OeEB announced at the meeting that it will commit €20 million to the Microfinance Enhancement Facility, founded by KfW and IFC. The 0 million fund will boost the available pool of refinancing available to the microfinance industry. (more…)

Posted on March 12, 2009 - by Gavin

State intervention key to getting more people out of poverty — WB…

Business World Online

GOVERNMENTS should give the poor better access to economic opportunities and ensure that democratic institutions are working if it wants to liberate more citizens from poverty, a book the World Bank released yesterday said.

In the 341-page book, entitled: Moving Out of Poverty: Success from Bottom Up, written by Deepa Narayan, Lant Pritchett and Soumya Kapoor, the World Bank said while some managed to move out of poverty on their own, government interventions to provide preferential opportunities to the poor would hasten this process for more of the disadvantaged.

“The grain of truth is that the poor do face an uphill struggle as they grapple with markets that are, at best, indifferent and at worst deliberately rigged against them. Lacking assets, connections, access, and sometimes business expertise, poor people often have great difficulty riding market forces out of poverty,” the study said.

“Most people living in poverty take initiative to change their conditions, and most are confident that, with hard work they will prevailBut their initiatives often come up against blocked opportunities, whether in the context of rigged markets or local democracies captured by the elite.” (more…)

Posted on March 6, 2009 - by Gavin

African growth finance faces cost barrier…

Private Equity Online

High set-up costs and a lack of performance data are two obstacles that the ‘missing middle’ needs to overcome in Africa.

The proliferation of growth finance in Africa is facing several obstacles, including high costs and insufficient returns.

Often referred to as the “missing middle”, growth finance involves providing capital and business support for small- and medium-sized businesses that are unable to attract capital from other sources. Target businesses for growth finance funds are typically too large to go to microfinance institutions and too small for private equity and traditional commercial lenders.

“This is a high transaction cost environment, and investors need to understand that 4 percent is typically what you need to manage funds at this level,” said Jurie Willemse, founder and managing director of Africa-focused growth finance provider GroFin.

Limited partners in emerging markets private equity funds are typically exposed to a “2 and 20” fee structure, whereby the fund manager collects fees of 2 percent of the assets under management and a 20 percent outperformance fee once a pre-agreed benchmark is passed. (more…)

Posted on March 3, 2009 - by Gavin

Miners lend hand to African women…

National Post

This week’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference is attended by 15,000 delegates from around the world. Here is the first of my reports on the gathering and the sector.

Canada’s No. 1 industry, mining, built Canada and continues to be the single most important underpinning for Canadian living standards, far surpassing the auto and manufacturing sectors in economic importance. Roughly half of Canada’s oil production is from the oil sands, which is, after all, a mining process. Mining is Canada’s only clear-cut competitive advantage.

And yet, my biggest pet peeve is that there is little appreciation of this by Canadians or their leaders. Schools ignore mining, the media only exploits negative news, and politicians and policymakers generally don’t get it. Mines open all the time and are ignored while headlines focus on cutbacks in other industries.

I’m a director of a public mining company and a member of Women in Mining. This organization is hoping to raise $250,000 in seed capital for a micro-credit bank in South Africa, another great mining nation. Called the Townships Project, this initiative is designed to provide capital for non-profit Tetla Financial Solutions, which lends small amounts to female entrepreneurs who eke out an existence for their families in and around Capetown. (more…)

Posted on February 13, 2009 - by Gavin

CGAP encourages mobile banking in Africa…

Source: http://ecommerce-journal.com/news/13132_cgap_encourages_mobile_banking_in_africa

(more…)

Posted on February 11, 2009 - by Gavin

Africa wants slice of bail-out…

Africa’s leaders urge governments in the US, Europe and Asia to add an African component to their stimulus packages so the continent continues its economic turnaround after the GFC.

“We call on rich countries to keep Africa in mind as they design programs to help their economies weather the financial crisis,” said Obiageli Ezekwesili, the World Bank’s vice-president for the Africa Region at a video press conference from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
 
Ezekwesili said it was important for wealthier nations not to focus on “insular” domestic responses to the crisis. World Bank president Robert Zoellick has earlier called for donor countries to devote 0.7 percent of the amount of their stimulus packages to a Vulnerability Fund for Africa.
 
Ezekwesili said the Vulnerability Fund would use the financial aid to help Africans who have become unemployed after mining operations closed, tourism slowed and foreign investors stopped injecting capital into the region.

The Fund would also help humanitarian programs, provide microfinance loans and continue current health, education and school feeding projects, she said… [click here to read the rest of this article...]

Posted on January 19, 2009 - by James

Which way for African Microfinance?…

Nairobi, Kenya,  January 2009  –  In its bid to develop microfinance within the broader context of continental economic growth and poverty alleviation efforts, the African Union commissioned a workshop in Dakar, Senegal in 2008. The meeting was attended by 27 experts in the field of microfinance, regulatory agencies and staff of the AU Commission. 

The workshop hosted by the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) defined Microfinance as “ the provision of a broad range of financial products and services to people with low incomes who, by virtue of their social and economic status, are excluded from conventional financial institutions. Such provision must be sustainable both for the microfinance institutions and for the borrowers.” The workshop further observed that “Microfinance is a key component of financial systems and aims at changing and improving the lives of people with low incomes, creating jobs and contributing to the development of both the local and the national economy.”

The Consultant, Mr. Henry Oloo Oketch, presented a report on the study on the elaboration of a roadmap/action plan for the development of microfinance in Africa. On the state of microfinance in Africa, he observed the following… [click here to read the rest of this article...]

Posted on November 12, 2008 - by James

USAID, Standard Chartered partner on economic growth in Africa

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Standard Chartered Bank today announced today that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) designed to support the increased availability of financial services in sub-Saharan Africa and to encourage sustainable economic growth there.  The goals of the parties under the MOU are to:

• promote the development of the financial sector, increase trade, and encourage local financial institutions and enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa.
• execute partial credit guarantees that focus on sectors that further economic growth, including microfinance institutions, micro- and other local enterprises, agribusiness entities and project and infrastructure-based transactions.
• provide technical assistance to financial institutions in Africa and co-host seminars, workshops and conferences for African enterprises.

Posted on October 31, 2008 - by lincolnw

Nigeria: Microfinance Inter-Bank Money Market Takes Off

There are strong indications that the proposed Microfinance Inter-bank money market will take off by the end of this year.

It would be recalled that Financial Vanguard exclusively reported that some Microfinance Banks in the country have commenced moves to set up an inter-bank money market for the sub-sector.ket includes the five discount houses.

However, other financial institutions like micro-finance banks and primary mortgage institutions (PMIs) cannot participate in the market because they do not have direct access to the clearing house of the Central Bank of Nigeria hence the decision of microfinance banks to create their own inter-bank money market…{click this link to read the rest of the article}

Posted on October 31, 2008 - by lincolnw

Microfinance Empowering Egyptian Women

Dr. Lee emphasized that he was not a historian and that he preferred to take an “anti-chronological” approach and explore the ideologies and central issues then apply it to history…{click this link to read the rest of the article}

Posted on October 29, 2008 - by lincolnw

Global Economy Tests African Microcredit Channels

Amid growing signs that the global economy is worsening, the White House yesterday extended an invitation to developing countries to attend a summit next month in Washington with leaders of the world’s wealthy economies.Faced with rising food and fuel prices, some of Africa’s poorest nations are struggling to lower earlier projections of economic growth by focusing on how to satisfy the basic day-to-day needs of their citizens. One avenue for attracting investment needed to keep capital flowing in to local African businesses and public works is the practice of microfinance, or supplying credit to the poor at agreed-to, flexible rates which they can afford to pay back in an acceptable time frame.But the director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Sam Daley-Harris says that tightening pressures are being felt even in low-end borrowing circles and that such small but essential programs that can make a difference for Africans facing dire poverty are also feeling the effects of the global financial pinch…{click this link to read the rest of the article}