David Roodman at the Center for Global Development has begun an “open book” about microfinance. He is publishing chapters as he goes, with space for readers to comment.
As well as an interesting way of working, this threatens to be a very interesting topic. David is not starry eyed about the role that microfinance (and other financial services for the poor) can play in development – he’ll bring an unsual degree of rigour and balance to this debate.
2 responses to “Microfinance Open Book Blog”
We are really excited about how you are using your blog to spread the important message about the effectiveness of microfinance! As a international leader in facilitating microfinance stakeholders to focus on helping the world’s poor, we at the Microcredit Summit Campaign are working to make sure that 175 million of the world’s poorest families are reached through microfinance by 2015. To learn more about the Microcredit Summit Campaign and our goals, check out our website at http://www.microcreditsummit.org and we hope you visit our blog too at http://microcreditsummitcampaignblog.blogspot.com.
No systematic effort to map the distribution of microfinance has yet been undertaken. A useful recent benchmark was established by an analysis of ‘alternative financial institutions’ in the developing world in 2004.[18] The authors counted approximately 665 million client accounts at over 3,000 institutions that are serving people who are poorer than those served by the commercial banks.