Microfinance Capacity Building Fund for Africa

The African Development Bank Group (AfDB), in partnership with the Government of Spain, has launched the Microfinance Capacity Building Fund for Africa. Its purpose is to help strengthen capacity building efforts in the financial sector that benefit poor and low-income populations in the continent, particularly women and those living in rural areas.

The core mission of the Microfinance Capacity Building Fund is to:

• deepen the outreach of the African financial sector by developing inclusive financial sectors that are composed of diverse institutions providing permanent access to a wide and adapted variety of financial services for a broad range of poor and low-income people
• help increase transparency within the microfinance sector, supporting projects in rural areas and empowering women
• provide technical assistance at three levels: at the micro level to retail institutions, at the medium level to market infrastructure, and at the macro level for legal and regulatory framework and supervision.
• provide technical assistance across various parts of Africa.

The fund will provide awards through three separate Calls for Proposals, occurring annually over the course of 2011 – 2013. Each call will focus on a specific area(s) of intervention and a specific set(s) of African countries.

Read more here http://www.fundsforafrica.org/ and here http://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/article/afdb-launches-microfinance-capacity-building-fund-8301/