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Technological innovation and entrepreneurship are crucial to development. A new entrepreneurial approach to development is emerging. This involves designing new technologies and adapting existing ones to suit the specific requirements of poor people. These are then bought by poor people to form the basis of small businesses or used to help people meet their basic human needs.
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Most MFIs seek to promote the business of their clients and thereby raise client incomes. Some MFIs also invest in services intended to achieve direct social impacts in the form of raising awareness on health, encouraging children's education, promoting women's empowerment within households and so on. MFI achievements on this front have been relatively well-documented.
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New benefits and old inequalities in Nigeria's informal sector
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In recent years donors and practitioners have demonstrated a renewed interest in and commitment to understanding how to reach poor people effectively, assess their level of poverty, and judge the social performance of MFIs.
Microfinance and the MDGs - Click To Read Article
Microfinance, and the impact it produces, goes beyond just business loans. Poor people use financial services not only for business investment in their microenterprises but also for health and education, managing household emergencies, and meeting the wide variety of other cash needs that they encounter.
Unleashing entrepreneurship: Making business work for the poor - Click To Read Article
There has been a big change in the United Nations's engagement with the private sector influenced by its stewardship of the Millennium Development Goals. It was the urgent need to enhance the contribution of the private sector in achieving the MDGs that prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to appoint a commission to examine how the role of the private sector in this major global effort could be maximized.
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Putting public value into science and technology
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Achieving both profitability and strong social performance is the ultimate promise of microfinance. It is not impossible, but neither is it easy, and relatively few micro-lenders are there yet.
Threats, opportunities and incentives for pro-poor innovation - Click To Read Article
Many advocates of pro-poor innovation fear a globalised world that is exploited by large corporate enterprises and powerful countries, now including China and India. Perceived threats include loss of local knowledge and powerlessness of low income economies and their enterprises in the face of cheap goods produced elsewhere. Pro-poor innovations, such as drought- or disease-resistant crops or effective and cheap drugs are often not prioritised.
Realising the potential of microfinance - Click To Read Article
Microfinance is a key strategy in reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and in building global financial systems that meet needs of most poor people. Although microfinance has demonstrated the potential to reduce poverty, its impacts have varied. Perhaps as a result of these inconsistencies, few donors have prioritised microfinance in their strategies to achieve the MDGs.
Making business work for development: Rethinking corporate social responsibility - Click To Read Article
Business is everywhere. Some is crucial to development, while some is implicated in poverty, human rights abuses and environmental destruction. In recent years there has been an upturn in corporations taking responsibility for development challenges. Research shows this is a mixed blessing whilst development practitioners and policy makers could engage more critically to ensure real benefits for development.
Assessing social performance cost-effectively - Click To Read Article
Many MFIs have an explicit social mission that goes beyond profitability such as reducing poverty and exclusion by providing good quality, reasonably priced and sustainable financial services to poor people who are normally excluded from regular banking systems. The link between microfinance services and poverty reduction, however, is far from simple. Positive impacts cannot be taken for granted.
Sustained growth with equity is needed to halve poverty in Africa - Click To Read Article
Researchers predict that many African countries will not reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving extreme poverty by 2015. Will accelerated economic growth or better income distribution be most helpful in getting African countries get back on track to achieve the MDG poverty target?
A participatory learning system for microfinance - Click To Read Article
A key objective for impact assessment of microfinance programmes is 'internal learning' by field staff and programme managers about what is working, what is not working and why, in order to improve programme operations.
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