The Foundation organizes the 5th African Facility Forum

From October 20 to 25, the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation brought together in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) 22 African microfinance institutions (MFIs), partners supported within the framework of the African Facility, a mechanism set up in 2013 by the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation and the AFD to support a greater number of rural MFIs in sub-Saharan Africa.

On October 20, the 42 representatives of the partner institutions met with the Foundation's teams to take stock of the African Facility over the past year, welcome the new beneficiaries of the program and share best practices from the various institutions present, before meeting with the representatives of AFD and Proparco present in Ouagadougou.

Participation in the African Microfinance Week

The African Facility's partners also had the opportunity to participate in the African Microfinance Week (AMW 2019), organized by ADA from October 21 to 25. Open to all microfinance practitioners, the AMW is a shared African platform for reflection and exchange among all stakeholders in the sector to sustainably accelerate both financial inclusion and economic growth on the continent.

The aim of this event is to facilitate exchanges between microfinance professionals and foster synergies at the regional and international levels. With this in mind, the Foundation organized a training session on Adapting MFIs to Climate Change, which brought together more than fifty professionals, mainly from Africa, concerned by the fact that climate variations and the difficulty of predicting the climate are jeopardizing the livelihoods of microfinance borrowers, and thus threatening the future ability of MFIs to operate in rural areas.

Represented by Philippe Guichandut, Director of Inclusive Finance Development, the Foundation also spoke at a roundtable discussion on the current state of the inclusive finance sector and its contributions to the SDGs in Africa. He highlighted, among other things, the challenges related to the financial inclusion of refugees, the challenges of digital finance, and the importance of financing small farms, which remain at the heart of the Foundation's concerns.

Learn more