This book examines the determinants of financial performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Ghana and Uganda, against the backdrop of the public and academic debate over the financial and social implications of microfinance. In the absence of a conceptual model, the study chooses an inductive research approach with the objective of defining and developing a conceptual model with the capacity to explain, quantify, and compare the performance of MFIs. The research is particularly relevant in the African context where microloan interest rates regularly exceed 100% per annum and where the microfinance industry is lacking behind its global peers in regard to financial and social performance. (Series: Contributions to the Africa Research / Beitrage zur Afrikaforschung - Vol. 59) [Subject: Economics, Finance, African Studies]

The purpose of the 'Microfinance Handbook' is to bring together in a single source guiding principles and tools that will promote sustainable microfinance and create viable institutions.

Africa is home to some of the poorest and vulnerable populations in the world. The ten poorest countries in the world are in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest incidence and greatest depth of poverty in the world. Fewer than one in five adults in Africa has access to the services of a formal or semi-formal financial institution. Microfinance in Africa is growing, though. A broad range of diverse institutions offer financial services to the poor and low-income clients in Africa. These include non-governmental organizations, non-banking financial institutions, cooperatives, credit unions, rural banks, Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs), postal financial institutions and an increasing number of commercial banks. Increasingly, technology is being used to expand microfinance outreach mobile phone banking is one such example. This book provides an overview of the microfinance sector in Africa, reviews the performance and impact of microfinance institutions in the region, and outlines some of the opportunities and challenges that African microfinance has on hand.

This first of three volumes on credit risk management, providing a thorough introduction to financial risk management and modelling.

Research on MFI performance is still in its infancy. MFIs are hybrid organizations with dual objectives. Performance studies in microfinance are therefore less straightforward compared to performance studies in traditional banking research. This book contains new MFI performance research by top scholars from across the globe.

In response to a clear need by low-income people to gain access to the full range of financial services including savings, a growing number of microfinance NGOs are seeking guidelines to transform from credit-focused microfinance organizations to regulated deposit-taking financial intermediaries. In response to this trend, this book presents a practical 'how-to' manual for MFIs to develop the capacity to become licensed and regulated to mobilize deposits from the public. 'Transforming Microfinance Institutions' provides guidelines for regulators to license and regulate microfinance providers, and for transforming MFIs to meet the demands of two major new stakeholders regulators and shareholders. As such, it focuses on developing the capacity of NGO MFIs to mobilize and intermediate voluntary savings. Drawing from worldwide experience, it outlines how to manage the transformation process and address major strategic and operational issues inherent in transformation including competitive positioning, business planning, accessing capital and shareholders, and how to 'transform' the MFI's human resources, financial management, MIS, internal controls, and branch operations. Case studies then provide examples of developing a new regulatory tier for microfinance, and how a Ugandan NGO transformed to become a licensed financial intermediary. This book will be invaluable to regulators and microfinance NGOs contemplating institutional transformation and will be of tremendous use to donors and technical support agencies supporting MFIs in their transformation.

In 2011 the World Bank—with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—launched the Global Findex database, the world's most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Drawing on survey data collected in collaboration with Gallup, Inc., the Global Findex database covers more than 140 economies around the world. The initial survey round was followed by a second one in 2014 and by a third in 2017. Compiled using nationally representative surveys of more than 150,000 adults age 15 and above in over 140 economies, The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It has additional data on the use of financial technology (or fintech), including the use of mobile phones and the Internet to conduct financial transactions. The data reveal opportunities to expand access to financial services among people who do not have an account—the unbanked—as well as to promote greater use of digital financial services among those who do have an account. The Global Findex database has become a mainstay of global efforts to promote financial inclusion. In addition to being widely cited by scholars and development practitioners, Global Findex data are used to track progress toward the World Bank goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The database, the full text of the report, and the underlying country-level data for all figures—along with the questionnaire, the survey methodology, and other relevant materials—are available at www.worldbank.org/globalfindex.

Self-efficacy (SE) is the critical link between environment, culture, institutions, modernization, and development. It enables adaptive learning from environmental stimuli, and fosters agency, cooperation, goal setting, openness, opportunity recognition, and longer-term planning. SE can be regarded as fertilizer for any policy measure. Research amongst smallholder farmers in South Ghana shows that historical return on investment culturally bequeathed investment SE, which largely influences today's farming investment and household income. SE is well malleable and perceptive to intentional promotion.

"The study investigates how Muslim religious specialists (fuqarâ, sing. fakî) acquire Qur'anic knowledge in the context of the 'communities of practice'. It contextualises the Qur'anic schools of Jebel Marra in the Sudan arguing that the fuqarâ increase their access to knowledge of the Qur'an by socially interacting with each other. The book is grounded in a[n] ethnographic study of Qur'anic memorisation and activities that the fuqarâ perform after graduation from Qur'anic schools. It thus provides a fresh perspective to Islamic learning and epistemology. 'The great value of the study lies in the author's reconstruction of the practices and techniques, cognitive and corporeal, which are systematically employed to memorise the whole of the Qur'an.'"--Page 4 of cover.

Tracks and Traces of Violence explores the social conditions, political contexts, and cultural spaces of violence in Africa. It is comprised of accounts that underpin the visible and hidden 'tracks and traces' of violence in the memories of traumatized individuals and groups. It also interrogates the gaps, silences, and vacuities of/in these memories, as well as the role they play in shaping the facial contours of our modern societies. Weaving together views from literature, anthropology, art, cultural studies, and museum studies, this book provides deeper insight into the meanings of violent socialities, spatialities, and temporalities, as well as into how they materialize in poetry, fiction, art, and popular culture. (Series: Contributions to African Research / Beitrage zur Afrikaforschung, Vol. 80) [Subject: African Studies, Sociology, Art, Literature, Anthropology]