MIX Market: MIX (Microfinance Information Exchange), today launched the Africa Map of Financial Inclusion for the Poor (africa.mixmarket.org) to help practitioners and policymakers better understand access to finance in Africa.

El 28 de septiembre del 2011, MFTransparency organizará un webinar para lanzar los datos sobre precios transparentes de microcrédito recolectados en el marco de la Iniciativa de Transparencia de Precios en Colombia.

On September 27, 2011 MFTransparency will host a webinar to launch the transparent microloan pricing data collected in the Transparent Pricing Initiative in Rwanda.

MFTransparency’s Financial Education Program is focused on developing a set of financial education materials addressing clients’ ability to make decisions about borrowing based on the prices of microloans.

In September 2011 MFTransparency launched the Transparent Pricing Initiative in Ethiopia with a series of presentations at the 5th African Microfinance Conference and the SEEP African Regional Summit. View these presentations here.

Microfinance Focus: MFTransparency and the Association of Ethiopian Microfinance Institutions (AEMFI) will launch the Transparent Pricing Initiative in Ethiopia on September 20.

On September 20, 2011, MFTransparency and the Association of Ethiopian Microfinance Institutions (AEMFI) will launch the Transparent Pricing Initiative in Ethiopia, funded by MicroNed. The launch will take place in conjunction with the 2011 African Microfinance Conference.

MFTransparency is increasingly building our education and training program, offering materials and tools, technical assistance and workshop sessions to a range of microfinance industry stakeholders. Recently this has included a special policy workshop for the Bank of Zambia, training sessions for Grameen Foundation’s Bankers without Borders and collaboration with other industry initiatives such as Oikocredit’s social performance sessions in Accra, Ghana and the Microfinance Council of the Philippines’ (MCPI) annual conference.

MicroCapital: Mr. Chuck Waterfield, founder and CEO of MFTransparency, recently contributed to the CGAP blog to suggest ideas for regulations that could encourage more transparent pricing in microfinance. He points out that most markets in which microfinance institutions (MFIs) operate lack the “Truth-in-Lending” legislation, thereby enabling them to “mask their prices” and leading to a complex pricing system.