The
Luxembourg-domiciled Sanad Fund for MSME recently led a Series A investment in Sky.Garden, a Kenya-based e-commerce platform serving 15,000 micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Sky.Garden plans to use the fresh USD 4 million to expand into
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MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Avla Raising $20m in Equity Round to Be Led by US-based Creation Investments to Expand B2B Insurance Offerings in Chile, Mexico, Peru
US-based Creation Investments Capital Management recently announced it is leading an equity investment of USD 20 million in Avla, a Chile-based business-to-business provider of insurance, surety bonds and collections services in Chile, Mexico and Peru. The firm’s insurance products include coverage for
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: FMO Loans $10m to Bank Respublika to Support Women, Youth, Entrepreneurs Struggling with COVID-19 Pandemic in Azerbaijan
Nederlandse Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden (FMO), a Dutch public-private partnership, recently loaned the equivalent of USD 10 million in local currency as a senior term loan to Bank Respublika, a commercial institution in Azerbaijan. The funds are intended to reduce
MICROFINANCE EVENT: FinovateSpring; May 18-20, 2022; San Francisco, California, USA
FinovateSpring is one of a series of conferences focusing on financial technology (fintech). The event is scheduled to include demonstrations of new fintech products, networking opportunities and approximately 175 speakers, with a focus on
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Mastercard Buying 3.8% Equity Stake in Mobile Money Unit of Airtel Africa for $100m
Mastercard, a US-based financial services company, recently agreed to pay USD 100 million for a 3.75-percent equity stake in Airtel Mobile Commerce, a subsidiary of the telecommunications company Airtel Africa that uses the trade name Airtel Money. Mastercard and Airtel Money plan to deepen their ongoing partnership in the areas of
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Comviva, Logiq Tie Up on Mobile Money in Indonesia
US-based Logiq Incorporated recently launched its PayLogiq digital wallet in Indonesia, using the Mobiquity Pay platform of Comviva Technologies, which is controlled by India’s Mahindra Group. Logiq also leverages Comviva’s Yabx service to lend to merchants and finance their customers’ purchases. Among Logiq’s distribution partners is
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: DFC to Guarantee $10m in Borrowing by Trine to Invest in Solar Power in Latin America, Caribbean
The US government’s International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) recently agreed to cover half of potential losses on USD 20 million being raised by Trine AB, a Sweden-based solar investment platform, to support industrial solar ventures as well as mini-grids in Latin America and the Caribbean. This funding is sufficient to supply renewable energy to approximately 600,0
SPECIAL REPORT: Shafiqual Haque Choudhury: A Practical Visionary
Shafiqual 
Haque Choudhury was born into a landowning family in what was then East Pakistan. Just after he graduated as a sociologist from Dhaka University, a brutal civil war in 1971 ended in the emergence of his new country, Bangladesh.
Wanting to do something about the devastating post-war poverty and underdevelopment, Shafiq joined an overseas charity that had come to Dhaka after the war. But the fishing co-operatives that he helped to form were all too often controlled by their wealthier members, and he took the Maoist view that the poor needed to confront these local elites more directly. With funds from sympathetic international donors, he founded the Association for Social Advancement (ASA) in 1978.
ASA formed groups of working men in the villages, trained them in night schools to “recognise the sources of their oppression” and urged them to carry out “social actions” like work and rent strikes as well as withholding repayments due to moneylenders. The plan was to federate the groups at local, then at district and finally at national levels, with the ultimate goal of creating a government that reflected the needs of its poorest citizens.
It didn’t work. Social actions were few and
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: City Express Markets, Money King Platform Receive Remittance Licenses from Central Bank of Myanmar
The Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) recently granted licenses to City Express Myanmar and Money King that allow them to perform international money transfers. The service is intended only for people from Myanmar who work in other countries
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Symbiotics Introduces $10m Bond to Fund Affordable Housing in Colombia via Hipotecaria Compañía de Financiamiento
Symbiotics, a Switzerland-based impact investing platform, recently agreed to issue a 4.5-year, senior, unsecured loan of COP 35.8 billion (USD 10.5 million) to La Hipotecaria Compañía de Financiamiento (HCF), a Panama-based mortgage lender, from the proceeds of a social bond Symbiotics is launching for this purpose. The goal is to increase access to
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: FMO Loans $25m to Aklease to Support Renewable Energy in Turkey
The Netherlands Development Finance Company, a public-private partnership also known by its Dutch acronym FMO, recently loaned USD 25 million to Aklease, a leasing subsidiary of Turkish bank Akbank, to be used for solar energy projects. Through this loan, Aklease aims to increase the “green” portion
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Singapore, Rwanda Implementing 1st Rollout of E-commerce Platform Proxtera; Promising SMEs International, Domestic Connections to Customers, Vendors, Logistics, Financial Services
Rwanda’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) recently signed a deal to implement the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) platform Proxtera in Rwanda. As the successor to Business sans Borders, Proxtera
MICROFINANCE PAPER WRAP-UP: “Digital Cash Transfers for Stranded Migrants,” by Anit Mukherjee, Published by Center for Global Development
In light of efforts by government entities to assist internal migrants within India whose lives have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr Mukherjee argues that “unlike countries such as Brazil or Pakistan, India does not have a unified beneficiary database or social registry that could be used to identify, target, register and pay those in need of assistance.” The bureaucracy of India’s social assistance programs, which are fragmented among
SPECIAL REPORT: Lessons, Tools for the Pandemic from Prior Microfinance Crises
Deborah 
Drake of Accion’s CFI opened a European Microfinance Week session on crises in microfinance by noting that the effect of COVID-19 on the financial inclusion industry “is a different crisis because it is global.” In past crises, which were centered on a single economy, microfinance investors had sufficient capacity to inject into stronger institutions to help them survive. The global nature of the current downturn, however, may exceed the capacity of investors to sustain “worthy” financial services providers (FSPs) in certain markets. “There is inevitable
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: COFIDES Launches $145m Huruma Fund to Deliver Microfinance to 45k Farmers on 4 Continents
Compañia Española de Financiación del Desarrollo (COFIDES), a development finance institution controlled by the Spanish government, recently launched the Huruma Fund, an investment vehicle with commitments of EUR 120 million (USD 145 million) to assist rural farmers in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean via a range of intermediaries. Seventy percent of Huruma’s portfolio will be deployed via
MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Nasira Guaranteeing $35m in Digital Lending by Sasfin to SMEs Owned by Migrants, Women, Youth in South Africa from Emergency COVID-19 Facility Funded by EU, FMO
The Netherlands Development Finance Company, a public-private partnership also known by its Dutch acronym FMO, recently selected Sasfin Bank of South Africa to be the first beneficiary of an emergency risk-sharing facility intended to counter the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The facility is part of FMO’s Nasira fund, which guarantees bank loans to
SPECIAL REPORT: Lessons from Giving Away, Selling Microinsurance with Remittances
As part of the ongoing search for models that can make microinsurance profitable, the Luxembourg-based nonprofit ADA partnered with UAE-based insurtech Democrance to sell policies to migrant workers in Dubai as they send money to family in their home countries. The incentive for remittance providers to participate is that the draw of microinsurance can increase their customer base and allow differentiation from competitors.
The target population is migrants from India and the Philippines, who are generally tech savvy and aged 25 to 45 years old. Most workers earn up to AED 4,000 (USD 1,100) per month and send about a quarter of that amount home. Rise, a UAE-based facilitator of financial services to migrants, enrolled 1,000 customers by
SPECIAL REPORT: Local Market Data, Resilience During Pandemic, Securitization, Land Title Systems Enable Housing Microfinance, Micro-mortgages
During European Microfinance Week 2020, Maria Claudia Rojas of the Netherlands’ Triple Jump described her firm’s experience managing the MicroBuild Fund it created with US-based Habitat for Humanity in 2012. Compared with Triple Jump’s portfolio as a whole, MicroBuild has maintained higher asset quality, and that margin of superiority has doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lucie Astier Such of the French government’s AFD explained her agency’s role in providing technical assistance, loans and data to support housing finance in developing countries. Part of this effort involves connecting households and microfinance institutions (MFIs) with reputable builders and suppliers of construction materials. One tool for this purpose is