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The European Investment Bank and AFC Agriculture & Finance Consultants have jointly conducted the “EIB Eastern Africa SME and Microfinance Banking Forum 2018” on October, 30 – 31 2018 in Nairobi, Kenya. Senior executives of commercial banks, microfinance institutions and banking associations, as well as other relevant stakeholders from Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somalia were invited to attend the event.
The exclusive event, which was officially opened by the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, Mrs. Sheila M’Mbijjewe, and the Head of EIB Regional Office for East Africa, Mrs. Catherine Collin, gave the 100 participants the unique opportunity to learn more about funding products and technical assistance to the SME & Microfinance sectors and network with EIB officials as well as other influential leaders and stakeholders in East Africa. Several presentations and interactive panel discussions were held during the two days of the forum, allowing the participants to exchange ideas and actively discuss the topics presented. Renowned international experts provided new and important insights into topics such as banking regulations, EIB’s credit lines and technical assistance for the financial sectors in East Africa, agricultural finance, environmental and social risk management and effective product offerings and optimization solutions for banks, just to name a few.
The first EIB Eastern Africa SME and Microfinance Banking Forum 2018 was very well received by the participants and formed the starting point for further events to be held in the following years.
Find the highlights and results of the Forum in a nutshell:
This event was organized in the framework of the East Africa Technical Assistance (TA) Programme funded by the European Investment Bank (EIB) Framework and successfully implemented by the consortium of Agriculture and Finance Consultants (AFC), the Academy of German Cooperatives (ADG), and INTEGRATION since 2014. The current project countries include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, with a total of 30 participating financial institutions (FIs). The main objective of the EIB East Africa TA Programme is to support the set-up and growth of micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) across all economic sectors through the provision of global loan facilities, so-called Private Enterprise Finance Facilities (PEFF) and Microfinance Facilities (MFF), as well as TA measures to participating FIs. To date, the consortium has managed to conduct 424 training sessions on various topics related to the MSME banking and finance sector for 9126 participants, implement 201 capacity-building interventions and organize 238 workshops for 17761 MSMEs.
For further details please contact Mareike Decker (Mareike.Decker [at] afci.de)