Events & Presentations

May 19-20, Nairobi, Kenya

The Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion will be the official Microfinance Session Sponsors at the 5th Annual Africa Banking & Finance Conference to be held on 19-20, May at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya. This Microfinance Session will take a closer look at the governance and risk challenges of microfinance institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, including strategic planning, implementation and monitoring, as well as balancing social and financial performance. A new approach, the Africa Board Fellowship (ABF), has been designed to help take governance of MFIs and financial service companies to the next level, in a new and dynamic way. Bruce MacDonald, Head of CFI Communications, will represent CFI at this event and will be introducing a couple of fellows from the first class of the ABF program.

April 29, 10:00AM - 11:00AM ET, Virtual 

The Governance Working Group (GWG) and Calmeadow will be hosting a Governance Working Group meeting on Wednesday, April 29th at 10am ET, featuring Alex Silva and Georgina Vasquez of Calmeadow, to discuss the recently released “AfriCap Governance” paper. Please find an invite for this call here. We hope you will be able to join us for this discussion as the AfriCap paper highlights some important governance issues. This call will also include updates from our Governance Working Group members on their recent governance projects.

April 9, 2:00 - 3:15PM ET, Online

The Impact Investing Legal Working Group invites you to join our panel of leading investors and lawyers for a discussion about the unique challenges and opportunities that impact investors face when exiting an equity investment. Topics include: protecting social mission while exiting an impact investment, the market for exit opportunities in impact investing, balancing financial and social return when considering bids, and the development of alternative financial products to provide investors with liquidity absent a traditional equity exit (a.k.a. “structured exits”). This webinar will be moderated by Aaron Bourke of Reed Smith and will include the following panelists: José Tadeo Martínez, Inter-American Development Bank, Bruce Campbell, Blue Dot Advocates, John Hamilton, Vested for Growth, Brenda Hansen, MicroVest, and Danielle Piskadlo, Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion. Please feel free to join this webinar.

April 6-11, Boston, U.S.A.

The 2015 HBS-Accion Program builds on nine successful years and over 550 participants – CEOs, presidents, executive directors, and other high-level professionals – from roughly 100 countries. The 2015 course will be held April 6-11 at the HBS campus in Boston, Massachusetts and will be another exceptional week of learning and exchange among world leaders in financial inclusion. The HBS-Accion Program is an intensive week-long immersion, and at its core are cases drawn from impact investing, microfinance and inclusive finance, as well as examples of business at the base of the pyramid. Previous participants have included leaders from microfinance institutions, traditional banks, technology providers, investors, and policymakers. For more information, including how to apply, visit the program website or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

March 11-12, Luxembourg

Responsible Exits Panel: The CFI and CGAP jointly released “The Art of the Responsible Exit in Microfinance Equity Sales ,” which will be discussed on a panel at the SPTF Investor Working Group meeting in Luxembourg on March 11-12. So far, there are only a very limited number of attempts to present case studies on responsible exits. This meeting will explore what specifically has been done to ensure a responsible exit. Did the sellers define qualitative criteria to choose (beyond the price) between the various transaction structure or potential buyers? Did sellers define specific objectives beyond price? Did they define what a responsible buyer would be? Are there effective post-closing covenants that can be implemented? What is a responsible IPO?

AfriCap Case Study: The Financial Inclusion Equity Council (FIEC) sponsored a recent AfriCap Case Study which will be presented at the SPTF Investor meeting during a session called “Governance for Social Performance.” Social performance governance requires an underlying foundation of good institutional governance. This session will discuss general best practice findings from the AfriCap MIV case of what a foundation of good governance must comprise and how learnings could be applied by other MIVs to ensure the proper foundation is in place for sound social performance. .