Blog

By Ghiyazuddin Ali Mohammad, Senior Policy Manager, Digital Financial Services, AFI

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”  – Martin Luther King Jr, Letter from Birmingham Jail

The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that sparked protests and civil unrest in the United…

This article was published by NextBillion on 13 August 2020.

Editor’s note: This article is part of NextBillion’s series “Enterprise in the Time of Coronavirus,” which explores how the business and development sectors are responding to the pandemic. For news updates and analysis, virtual events, and links to useful…

By Mohanad Salous, Chief of Financial Inclusion Division, Palestine Monetary Authority, and Diana Schvarztein, Policy Manager, Financial Inclusion, AFI

The coronavirus pandemic has further exacerbated youth’s vulnerabilities and is likely to have a greater negative impact on young people’s livelihoods, particularly for those in developing countries.

Recognizing this,…

By Bidhan Chandra Shaha, Deputy Director, Bangladesh Bank

“Social media deserves great appreciation not only because people are spending a lot of time on Facebook during COVID-19 pandemic, but also due to the fact that my business does not need to shut down for a single moment amidst the prolonged lockdown in the country,” revealed Anu.

Sumaiya Islam Anu is the founder of…

By Luis José Arredondo Heredia, General Director of Supervision of Savings and Loan Cooperatives, CNBV

Responding to the growing economic uncertainties amid COVID-19 restrictions, Mexico’s Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV) recently launched a special accounting standard that allows financial intermediaries, such as banks, financial cooperatives, popular finance companies…

By Helen Walbey, AFI Head Gender Inclusive Finance & Adeyemi Omotoso, Policy Specialist, FInTech, AFI

The financial inclusion gender gap of nine percent stubbornly persists in developing countries and nearly a billion women, globally, remain financially excluded. Ongoing barriers that led to this range from socio-cultural factors, lack of gender sensitive policies, limited ownership of…

By Waleed Samarah, Central Bank of Jordan

Since the early onset of the global pandemic, Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) has adopted ongoing preventive and supportive measures aimed at containing the negative repercussions of COVID-19 on the local economy. Furthermore, the central bank has facilitated the use of digital channels in financial transactions to help limit the spread of…

By Saiyad Hussain, Acting Chief Executive Office, Fiji Development Bank

Thanks to innovative thinking and financial literacy skills of entrepreneur Meena Gounden, award-winning Gopal’s Poultry Farm in Coqeloa, Labasa is weathering the COVID-19 pandemic crisis by staying open for business.

Meena is already thinking of ways to improve her business resilience by making plans for the “…

By Samuel Tarinda, Gender Researcher & Deputy Director in the Economic Policy & Research Division, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken all the countries of the world, almost instantaneously within the first quarter of 2020. In Zimbabwe, like in many other countries, we are beginning to observe some channels through which COVID-19 has, and will have,…