SPECIAL REPORT: Microfinance Institutions in Africa Boost Social Performance with Connections Made at SAM

Nadège SPTF Training at SAM 2017 Djatty, the assistant director of FIDRA, an MFI in Côte d’Ivoire, attended the most recent SAM in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While there, she was one of about 100 people at the full-day training on the Universal Standards for Social Performance Management, which was delivered by Amelia Greenberg and Katie Hoffmann of the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF). After the training, Ms Djatty told Ms Greenberg that the “training had caused her to think more deeply about who they were excluding as clients because the products are not quite right for their needs and how they might adapt their products to be more inclusive.”

Ms Greenberg also met several leaders of institutions that subsequently applied for co-funding from the SPTF-run Responsible Microfinance Facility to help them “put clients at the center of every decision.” Among these were Arsène Koffi, the programs manager at the 48-member Association Professionnelle des Systèmes Financiers Décentralisés (APSFD) de Côte d’Ivoire, and Charlemagne Yankoty, the director of IAMD-Microfinance of Benin.

Ms Greenberg adds, “SAM helps SPTF stay focused and connected. Attending SAM also allows us to share what SPTF has been working on and receive feedback on areas of greatest need going forward. It is an extremely well organized event and offers an unparalleled opportunity for us to meet in person with so many of our partners in Africa, as well as to speak to organizations we’d like to work with in the future.”

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 APSFD de l’Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine. We invite you to read more about SAM at http://sam.africa.

This vignette is part of a sponsored series demonstrating the value of SAM (the French acronym for African Microfinance Week), a major conference dedicated to financial inclusion in Africa. The first three SAMs were held in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2013; Dakar, Senegal, in 2015; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2017. The next SAM will take place October 21-25, 2019, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso!

The goal of SAM is to provide a unified platform for addressing issues facing microfinance in Africa by bringing together investors, MFIs, researchers, banks, networks, innovators, governments and other stakeholders.

The 2017 SAM hosted 700 participants from 58 (mostly African) countries, including representatives of 200 MFIs; 25 exhibitors at the Innovation Fair; and 26 investors, who made 170 MFI contacts at the Investor’s Fair. The proceedings also included conference sessions presented by 60 speakers plus a menu of 20 training programs.

Additional Resources

SAM
http://sam.africa/

Past vignettes and MicroCapital coverage of SAM
http://www.microcapital.org/category/semaine-africaine-de-la-microfinance-sam/

Past vignettes on SAM en francais
https://www.ada-microfinance.org/fr/evenements/semaine-africaine-microfinance/objectif-sam-2019/paroles-de-nos-participants