Bank of Tanzania (BOT) and AFI are organizing a two-day conference on financial inclusion in Zanzibar, Tanzania starting on 1 March.

The conference is expected to draw more than 100 participants from various parts of the world. Several countries will use the forum to deliberate on how to embark on new initiatives to increase access to financial services and reduce the number of unbanked.

The Maya Declaration on Financial Inclusion was signed at the conclusion of a similar conference — AFI’s Global Policy Forum (GPF) — held in Mexico last year. The Maya Declaration recognizes the important role financial inclusion policy has toward improving global financial stability, fighting poverty and contributing to balanced and sustainable growth across the developing world. To that end, it commits signing countries to create and implement regulatory frameworks that balance inclusion, stability and integrity.

Maya Declaration signers included Tanzania, which pledged to raise its financial access level to 50% of its population by 2015 through mobile banking and other initiatives. Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi, Pakistan, Fiji, the Philippines and several other nations also made commitments at that time.

According to AFI’s Executive Director Alfred Hannig, developing countries took important steps to create home-grown policies and launch initiatives to reduce one of the most significant barriers to global economic growth.

“The result could be to empower hundreds of millions of people to join the formal financial sector in the years ahead,” reiterated Hannig.

Statistics indicate that 2.5 billion people – over half the world’s adult population – do not have access to formal financial services, including banking, savings, insurance, credit or pensions.