Microfinance leaders from 35 countries have already registered for the Africa-Middle East Regional Microcredit Summit to be held April 7-10, 2010 in Nairobi, Kenya. The Summit will be the largest microfinance gathering ever held in Africa and the Middle East. Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima of The Netherlands, one of the keynote speakers, will join Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, BRAC Chair Fazle Abed, CARE CEO Helene Gayle, and Kenya’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta at the Summit in Nairobi. Last September, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Princess Máxima as Special Advocate on Inclusive Finance for Development.

The Summit program, which will showcase microfinance innovations, has just added three new workshops: “Mobile Banking: What is the Cutting Edge?”, “Obtaining Funds from New Financial Instruments and Mechanisms for both the Fully Commercial and Emerging Microfinance Institution,” and “Process of Designing and Implementing a National Strategy for Financial Inclusion: Challenges and Lessons Learned.”

Purpose

The purpose of the Africa-Middle East Regional Microcredit Summit (AMERMS) is to encourage practitioners and other stakeholders to use microfinance as a means towards ending global poverty, especially within the region, as well as to spur progress towards fulfilling the Microcredit Summit’s two goals for 2015:

Working to ensure that 175 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, are receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and business services. (With an average of five in a family, this would affect 875 million family members.)

Working to ensure that 100 million of the world’s poorest families move above the US$1 a day poverty threshold, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). (With an average of five per family this would mean that 500 million people would have risen above $1 a day nearly completing the Millennium Development Goal on halving absolute poverty.)

Background

The Africa-Middle East Regional Microcredit Summit will be the 14th gathering in a series of global and regional summits organized by the Microcredit Summit Campaign. In February 1997, RESULTS Educational Fund convened the first Microcredit Summit, launching a nine-year Campaign to reach 100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the end of 2005. This historic event, held in Washington, DC, brought together over 2,900 delegates from 137 countries.

Building on the achievements of the 1997 Summit, a series of Global and Regional meetings have since been successfully held. They have attracted more than 15,000 delegates from over 140 countries. From 1997 to the present, the Microcredit Summit Campaign has relentlessly pursued its goals, maintaining a steadfast commitment to the Summit’s four core themes: 1) reaching the poorest, 2) reaching and empowering women, 3) building financially self-sufficient institutions, and 4) ensuring a positive, measurable impact on the lives of the clients and their families. The Microcredit Summit Campaign is a global effort to restore control to people over their own lives and destinies.

Since 1997, the Microcredit Summit Campaign has been leading, supporting, and guiding the microfinance field to address failures in reaching the very poor. The success of the first phase of the Campaign, during which those with microloans grew from reaching 7.6 million of the world’s poorest families in 1997 to more than 100 million in 2007, fueled the decision to extend the Campaign. The Campaign’s goals for 2015 (see above) were launched at the 2006 Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax, Canada.

The Microcredit Summit Campaign is the only global network linking all actors in the microfinance sector that sets and regularly measures progress toward bold goals for using microfinance to end poverty. It announces progress towards these goals through the publication of the State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report.

From the most recent report, we are pleased to announce that as of December 31, 2007, 3,552 microcredit institutions reported reaching more than 154 million clients, 106 million of whom were among the poorest when they took their first loan. Of these poorest clients, 83.2 percent, or more than 88 million, are women. Institutional Action Plans (IAPs) were submitted by 861 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 2008. Together these 861 institutions account for 86 percent of the poorest clients reported. Assuming five persons per family, the 106.6 million poorest clients reached by the end of 2007 affected some 533 million family members.

Two thousand delegates from more than 40 countries are expected to attend the Africa-Middle East Regional Microcredit Summit, including heads of state and government and other dignitaries. This summit will provide the opportunity for microfinance practitioners, advocates, investors, donors, and others committed to the Summit’s goals to assess progress, discuss challenges to achieving the new goals for 2015, share best practices, and accelerate innovations.

The Africa-Middle East Regional Microcredit Summit will include: 1) five cutting edge topics discussed in plenary, 2) presentation of two Institutional Action Plans in plenary session, 3) some twenty workshop sessions, 4) five intensive day-long courses on a variety of subjects, and 5) fifteen additional associated sessions organized by delegates.