Making Finance Work for Africa Partnership
The Partnership for Making Finance Work for Africa is a major initiative to support the efforts of African countries to boost economic growth and fight poverty by encouraging and facilitating development of the financial sector.
The Partnership focuses on the need to ensure that African countries develop dynamic, well-run and efficient national and regional financial services and banking systems.
Financial sector development can play a major role in increasing private investment and creating jobs, raising incomes and providing opportunities for people to improve their lives and finances – at home and in business.
Encouraging growth in the financial sector is a task for African governments and public bodies, as well as development partners, the private sector and non-governmental organisations.
Making Finance Work for Africa draws on a wide range of contributors, including African governments and major partners such as the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the German Development Corporation (GTZ), the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Financial Sector Reform and Strengthening Initiative (FIRST), the French Development Agency (AFD), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).
The Partnership aims to combine expertise and experience in financial sector development, to increase awareness and knowledge and adapt best practices and policy advice to suit local conditions.
Making Finance Work for Africa encourages action. As well as monitoring and tracking financial sector development, the Partnership works to support African public and private sector initiatives and efforts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of development partner support.
Africa’s regional financial sectors are far from achieving their potential and a lack of access to financial services – or their relatively high cost – hampers growth and limits opportunities for Africans to improve their own lives.
The Partnership works to promote better cooperation, communication and coordination to maximise the impact of diverse, individual financial sector development efforts.
Making Finance Work for Africa also aims to ensure that national and regional development plans recognise the sector’s importance in promoting economic growth.
Priorities include working to identify obstacles and encouraging countries to draw up strategies to overcome these. The Partnership also aims to assess financial sector development progress and share the results of such efforts among those dealing with similar difficulties.
The Making Finance Work for Africa Partnership Secretariat, which coordinates the Partnership’s activities, is hosted by the African Development Bank in Tunis.