SPECIAL REPORT: In 1 Day, Over 500 Meetings Between Microfinance Institutions, Funders at SAM Investors’ Fair

In a series of “speed-dating” sessions, 120 microfinance institutions (MFIs) and 24 investors met a total of over 500 times to find out whether they might be good matches for one another. This was during the five-day SAM conference that closed October 25 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The MFIs represented 24 countries. About half were for-profit firms, while about half were organized as cooperatives or NGOs.

Altemius Millinga, the Managing Director of Tanzania’s Yetu Microfinance Bank, tells MicroCapital that the Investors’ Fair “was the best part of SAM because I was able to interact with investors, while at the same time sharing experiences immediately with other MFIs. SAM gave me the opportunity to meet investors and make several preliminary proposals on funding; it was surely worth the investment!”

Christian Ramm, the Investment Director for the Nordic Microfinance Initiative, commented, “The Investors’ Fair is an efficient and useful arena where we can meet, match and discuss the big picture (and sometimes a few details), all in the time span of 20-minute meetings.”

Ed Higenbottam, the Managing Director of Verdant Capital, was pleased to find “a wide range of MFIs, diverse in terms of Anglophone versus Francophone as well as a good continuum from larger, more mature institutions to smaller, younger institutions, including institutions with very specific developmental impact.”

This article is part of a sponsored series on SAM (the French acronym for African Microfinance Week), a major conference dedicated to financial inclusion in Africa. The most recent SAM took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, from October 21-25, 2019.

ADA, an NGO based in Luxembourg, co-organizes SAM every two years with the support of Luxembourg’s Ministry for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs. The SAM steering committee members are: ADA, Luxembourg’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the Microfinance African Institutions Network, the African Rural and Agricultural Credit Association, and the Fédération des Association Professionnelle des Systèmes Financiers Décentralisés de l’Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine. We invite you to learn more about SAM at http://www.sam.africa.

MicroCapital has been contracted to promote and document each SAM since 2015.

Additional Resources

SAM
http://sam.africa/

Other MicroCapital coverage of SAM and vignettes demonstrating its value to participants
http://www.microcapital.org/category/semaine-africaine-de-la-microfinance-sam/

Vignettes demonstrating the value of SAM en francais
https://www.ada-microfinance.org/fr/evenements/semaine-africaine-microfinance/objectif-sam-2019/paroles-de-nos-participants