19 Nov 2024
Over 660 attendees from over 55 countries, and more than 100 speakers over 30+ sessions
Over 660 attendees from over 55 countries, and more than 100 speakers over 30+ sessions
Rural Finance Initiative (RUFI) from Uganda wins €100,000 European Microfinance Award 2024
‘Microinsurance & Inclusive insurance’ announced as 2025 Award topic
Launch of e-MFP publications ‘Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People’ and ‘Members’ Spotlight’
Selected EMW2024 sessions live-streamed and recorded
European Microfinance Week 2024 (EMW2024) concluded Friday at Luxembourg’s Abbaye de Neumunster with a closing plenary entitled 'Is Fintech Really the Future?', an interactive fireside chat with Nasir Zubairi from Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT), Sahana Arun Kumar from Amarante Consulting, moderated by e-MFP’s Sam Mendelson, and with various live polls for the audience, which expressed opinions on the institutional and partnership models likely to endure, which risks to clients are most significant, which technologies provide the greatest opportunities, and which led to a forthright exchange on issues of price, value and mission.
This fast-paced session closed EMW2024, which involved a record attendance across a wider range of topics and formats than ever before. In her closing remarks, e-MFP Chairperson Lucia Spaggiari noted the ubiquity within the conference of the European Microfinance Award topic of ‘Advancing Financial inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People’, and the importance that work on that topic endures beyond the conference, building on the considerable momentum this year’s Award has generated. She observed a welcome sense as well that this conference had been particularly solution- rather than challenge-focused and reflected that this would be the last ‘European Microfinance Week’; an upcoming re-brand will bring a new name for a refreshed event.
This closing plenary immediately followed the pitch session for the 7th edition of the Catapult Inclusion Africa, a unique week-long bootcamp fully dedicated to African Fintech and financial inclusion, and which for the first time was incorporated into EMW via a partnership with LHoFT. The pitch session involved pitches from six startups that had the chance to be mentored by e-MFP members with expertise in venture capital and impact investing - and reflects a growing and very welcome convergence between the fintech and financial inclusion sectors, including at EMW.
EMW2024 welcomed more than 660 attendees (over 200 of whom joined online) to over 30 sessions – plenaries, breakouts, closed-door roundtables and Action Group meetings – organised across several thematic streams, including digitalisation, client protection, green inclusive finance, and “Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People” – the topic of the European Microfinance Award 2024. There were over 25 workshops, closed meetings, and open breakout sessions within these broader themes, and some notable additions this year: an innovative geodata workshop with participation of the Luxembourg Space Agency; a meeting for the third year running of the Community of Practice of the Roadmap for Financial Inclusion of Refugees; and the new e-MFP Gender Lens Investing Action Group had its first EMW session – as well as the inaugural Catapult pitch session at EMW. More than half the sessions were streamed to an online audience and recorded, and many involved remote speakers as well.
EMW2024 also saw the launch of two new e-MFP publications on the topic of forcible displacement. The first is Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People: Insights from the EMA2024 - the latest in its annual series of publications that introduces the subject landscape, explores the role of the inclusive finance sector and presents case studies and insights and lessons learned from that year’s European Microfinance Award (EMA). And the second is the Members’ Spotlight 2024 which presents what 14 different e-MFP members have been doing in this field.
On Thursday there was the ceremony for the €100,000 European Microfinance Award on Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People, won by Rural Finance Initiative (RUFI) from Uganda. RUFI, founded in South Sudan in 2008, expanded to Uganda in 2016 to serve South Sudanese and DRC refugees, alongside local communities. With 80% of its staff being forcibly displaced persons, RUFI offers financial services like loans for groups, individuals, and farmers, as well as green energy financing. Through its REMEDY incubator, RUFI trains and funds refugee businesses. It also advocates for refugee needs, collaborating with local leaders to secure resources and promote community cooperation.
Generously hosted by the European Investment Bank (EIB), the ceremony involved films and interviews with representatives from the three finalists: RUFI, Al Majmoua from Lebanon and FATEN from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The ceremony also involved an interview with Claire Lossiané from Yikri in Burkina Faso – winner of the 2023 Award on ‘Inclusive Finance for Food Security & Nutrition’ who updated the audience on the progress of that initiative in the past year; remarks from Mr. Georges Ternes, Director for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs - Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Defense, Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade (MFA), and a keynote speech by Ms. Kelly Clements, Deputy High Commissioner of the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR. The event concluded with an address by HRH the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, President of the High Jury during which she announced RUFI as the winner of the first prize and presented the Award to RUFI’s CEO Yengi Lokule.
The ceremony concluded with the announcement that the topic of the 2025 Award would be ‘Microinsurance & inclusive insurance’.