Microfinance: Access Africa – Closing the Gap

This review focuses on the potential for the savings-led microfinance (MF) movement in sub-Saharan Africa to close an important gap in MF so that all poor people can access the financial products and services (including most fundamentally savings, credit, insurance, and remittances) that they need to improve their lives and livelihoods. The three sections of this review include (1) taking stock of where the savings-group (SG) movement fits within the larger MF sector and what different facilitating agencies (FAs) are doing in SG programming and where; (2) assessing program integration, in which SGs are implemented with other development programs, and linkage, in which SGs can opt into the formal financial sector; and (3) urging advocacy for changes in financial regulatory systems to enable MF development – and development policies more broadly – to be much more pro-poor and supportive of gender equality than they now are.