Articles

Over a period of less than two weeks, since it was officially declared a pandemic by WHO, COVID-19 has disrupted lives and economies around the globe. According to a briefing issued by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the COVID-19 pandemic will likely shrink the global GDP by almost one percent in 2020. Countries have taken unprecedented and drastic measures to contain the spread of the virus by closing towns, cities, and national borders, disrupting not only the big corporations but also millions of SMEs around the world. 

Promoting good practices in women entrepreneur financing has always been an important focus of the SME Finance Forum. Financial inclusion for women has always been challenging, particularly in emerging and developing markets where women entrepreneurs have lower access to capital, which severely restricts their progress and ability to contribute to the national economies. The COVID-19 crisis makes financial inclusion for female entrepreneurs even more challenging as it poses serious threats to the financial stability of SMEs, and especially to women entrepreneurs.

SME Finance Forum members CRIF and

Posted originally on The Banker website.

Article by Lesly Goh, SME Finance Forum Senior Advisor, and former chief technology officer at the World Bank.

Closer partnerships between governments and innovative companies will help our communities during and after the COVID-19 crisis, says the World Bank's Lesly Goh. 

In this article published by ALIDE, prepared by Pablo Pombo, Horacio Molina, and Jesús N. Ramírez, the authors aim to provide a better understanding of the operation of guarantee schemes through their typology and their corresponding business models. 

Proparco’s 10-year anniversary issue of the Private Sector & Development magazine focuses on SME finance in Africa. As with each issue, Member Proparco gives a voice to a wide range of contributors: entrepreneurs, economists or fintech experts, allowing us to take a fresh look at the subject of SME financing, have a feeling from the ground of the difficulties still encountered by SMEs in Africa, and see the possible practical solutions.

Originally posted on the World Bank Blogs Platform.

Have you noticed the large number of digital trails that are left behind in your browser and social media? Have you ever received an offer for a product or service that you were just thinking of?  A friend of mine was researching about a critical illness and looking for insurance plans on the internet at the same time, and she started receiving ads to secure “the right spot” in a graveyard!  

Reserving equity crowdfunding rounds exclusively for customers is emerging as a popular method of fundraising. Read more here.

Article via Medici.

In this interview by James Militizer of NextBillion, Martin Burt, Founder and CEO of Fundacion Paraguaya, speaks about his book and suggests we ask a different question: Who owns poverty? In it, he explores what happens when you examine poverty from the viewpoint of the real experts: poor families themselves.

The phenomenon can be traced to the development of emerging economies that picked up just as smartphones were catching on. Millions of people in Asia's emerging markets missed the personal computer era but have leapfrogged straight to smartphones, and using apps is second nature to them.

Read more about WeChat and Go-Jek here.