AFI Partnership Champions

While AFI membership is restricted to policymakers and regulatory institutions only, AFI engages with a variety of stakeholders including the private sector, through its strategic partnership platforms. At the 2018 AFI Global Policy Forum (GPF), AFI acknowledged partners that have supported with funding and intellectual cooperation in scaling up AFI's services significantly.

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, AFI’s founding partner whose support has been instrumental to help advance digital financial services.
• German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) who has partnered with AFI to advance SME finance, capacity building, gender and financial inclusion for women, financial inclusion for forcibly displaced persons, and work at the regional level in Africa, Arab Region and elsewhere.
• Omidyar Network who has supported AFI’s transition to independence and the rollout of AFI’s global workstream on FinTech/Reg-Tech.
• International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada for supporting AFI's work on gender, digital finance, consumer protection and financial inclusion data, and for IDRC's integral role in enabling the launch of AFI's Regional Initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean.
• The French Development Agency (AFD) for their support in scaling up digital finance in Africa and beyond.
• Data2X for providing two small pilot grants to support the collection of sex-disaggregated data.
• More recently, AFI received funding from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMU) to implement a new work stream on Financial Inclusion and Climate Change.

AFI also recognized current private sector partners that have significantly raised awareness among AFI members of emerging technologies, innovative products and services and regulatory opportunities and risks, particularly in digital financial services. These partners are Visa, Mastercard, GSMA, TransferTo and Letshego.

AFI recognized official knowledge partners with whom we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and official letter of cooperation: Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and African Development Bank (AfDB).

AFI also gives special recognition to the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) for being the organization's long-term partner in a number of areas, including technical cooperation, support at the country, regional and global level, and host institution for AFI until 2016.

There are many other valuable partners and stakeholders that have helped AFI and its members develop and implement successful financial inclusion policies. We look forward to formalizing collaboration agreements that will create more opportunities for cooperation and benefits for our members.