Child and Youth Finance International (CYFI) Final Event
Handover Ceremony of the Global Inclusion Awards
11 December 2019
Amsterdam, Holland

Speech by AFI Executive Director Dr. Alfred Hannig upon accepting the handover of the Global Inlcusion Awards

Vote of thanks: AFI profoundly appreciates and acknowledges CFYI for its confidence and trust to hand-over the GIA to AFI. We congratulate CFYI for all their achievements and completing a very successful mission. Without their important advocacy support the global discourse on financial inclusion and youth would not have move forward. In a way, we do not only highly appreciate their work, we also see this as a start-up in the development world that has developed a very successful project which is now disseminated to other providers in this space after the successful completion of the mission. I also wanted to mention how much AFI members appreciate the work of the CFYI. This has been confirmed in direct interactions with members at various occasions.

Synergy: The GIA hand-over comes at the right time for AFI and its synergetic to AFI’s mission and objectives. As you are aware, AFI is a global network of financial regulators for advancing financial inclusion with a holistic approach of ensuring that no one is left behind, has programs for advancing financial policies and regulations for including disproportionately excluded population-Youth being part of this group. The recent, AFI Global Policy Forum, witnessed AFI member members endorsement of the Kigali Statement (September 2019) that advances workstream on Youth Financial Inclusion. The foundation to take to develop this work stream further has been built through the establishment of the key work streams on NFIS, DFS, SME Financing, Data Collection, and Financial Education. Youth and Financial Inclusion will be addressed by all  these work streams.

Commitment: AFI is committed to continue elevating the Global Inclusion Awards in advancing Youth financial inclusion, and we expect to commence the awards in 2020 Global Policy Forum together with AFI’s Awards that instil best practices in the network and beyond in high impact financial inclusion policies.

Collaboration: AFI will continue to collaborate with its partners, developed country regulators and international development community in advancing financial inclusion policies and regulations as well as acknowledging best practices through provision of Awards. AFI will also be open to collaborate with knowledge sources and partners CYFI has successfully worked with. We value the existing networks and collaborations.