Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Developmen

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Posted On: 19-Feb-2010 07:34:57 By: Ch. Narendra
World Bank Foster New Financing Solutions for Development

The Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development, organized by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Bank, will be held March 4-5, 2010 in the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in la Villette, Paris. The goal of this international event is to foster the creation of new financial mechanisms to better address development challenges at the global, regional, or local levels.

The two-day event includes policy and technical workshops, a marketplace, and presentations showcasing innovative initiatives designed to meet current development challenges. During the event, the five winners of a grant competition on innovative financial solutions for development will be selected. They will each receive grants of US$100,000 to implement their proposals. For more information, see www.fininnov.org.

Giving impetus to innovative financial solutions for development

The Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development seeks to highlight new mechanisms and approaches to meet the challenges of financing for development at the global, regional, or local levels.

The Marketplace is motivated by the growing complexity of development challenges that require innovative financial solutions involving a host of stakeholders and instruments.

As AFD Managing Director Jean-Michel Severino explains, “we are witnessing a complete transformation of Official Development Assistance in terms of its objective, actors, and instruments. Over the past ten years, international assistance has been extended to such new areas as climate change and is mobilizing new private actors who are operating alongside States.”

According to World Bank Group Managing Director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, “Innovative finance not only helps bring additional resources to developing countries, it also makes the delivery of development finance more efficient and results-oriented. The World Bank Group has pioneered a range of innovative finance instruments which has helped developing countries immunize women and children, combat the effects of climate change, develop clean technology and access capital markets for catastrophe insurance.The Marketplace provides an opportunity to further explore new ideas and solutions to help developing countries help their people. “

According to Bill Gates, “The key role of our foundation is to invest in innovations that would not otherwise be funded. This draws not only on our backgrounds in technology but also on the foundation’s size and ability to take a long term view and take large risks on new approaches. When we think about innovativefinancing , we have the same approach: how to draw in imaginative new partners, make aid budgets go further, and bring more resources into fighting poor health, hunger and poverty.”

The objectives of the Marketplace are to:

- Advance the agenda on innovative financial solutions for development;

- Facilitate knowledge-sharing and learning, including the exchange of lessons between developing countries (South/South learning) and to review the most effective approaches in terms of impact and efficiency; and

- Spur the introduction of innovative financial mechanisms in order to meet development challenges of varying dimensions.

The two day event

More than 1,000 participants are expected to attend, among them development practitioners, donors, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, academicians, representatives from a range of financial institutions, and policymakers.

The event will revolve around workshops, presentations by the 20 selected finalists of the grant competition, other case study presentations, and one-on-one sessions with financial experts. The emphasis will be on knowledge sharing and learning.

The event, to be opened by Christine Lagarde, French Minister of Economy, Industry, and Employment, will bring together leading experts on these issues. The speakers will include:Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Managing Director, The World Bank Group), Jean-Michel Severino(Director General, Agence Française de Développement), Geoffrey Lamb (Managing Director, Public Policy Operations, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Philippe Douste Blazy (Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Adviser to the Secretary General on Innovative Financing for Development, Chair of the Board of UNITAID), Rachel Kyte (Vice President, International Finance Corporation), Eckhard Deutscher (Development Assistance Committee Chair, OECD), and His Highness the Aga Khan.

A grant competition to generate innovative finance solutions

The final round of the grant competition on “innovative financial solutions for development”, a key component of the Marketplace, will take place during the event. Out of some 800 proposals submitted to the grant competition, 20 finalists were invited to the event in Paris. The five winners to be selected from among these 20 finalists will receive a grant of US$100,000, each to implement their projects. The finalists will present their proposals to a jury of ten development specialists.

The organizers sum up the event as follows:

“The objective of this Marketplace is to showcase the wealth of innovative activity in the area of financing mechanisms for development. We hope that the competition, to be held during this event that will serve as a veritable wellspring of innovative ideas, will pave the way for other initiatives and provide impetus in this area.”

Submissions include proposals from:

– The Center for Innovative Financial Design, India for a new “savings card” that has the characteristics of a consumption good, giving savers a “shopping experience” while saving.

– The International Food Policy Research Institute and Nyala Insurance S.C. for a system of simple weather securities with fixed payments to improve the welfare of millions of rain-dependent farmers in Ethiopia.

– Crimson Capital Corp., which proposes to bring Purchase Order Finance (POF) to the Northern Amazon region in Bolivia, providing early-stage working capital for bio-trade value chains.

(The list of the 20 finalists is available on the Marketplace website: www.fininnov.org.)

The 20 proposals were submitted by a wide range of organizations, including local NGOs and private players from developing countries. These proposals were selected from a pool of 800 submissions following evaluation by 110 specialists in the innovative finance and development fields.

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His Highness the Aga Khan addresses the Marketplace
on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development

Paris, 4 March 2010 - His Highness the Aga Khan delivered introductory remarks at a conference in Paris co-hosted by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank. The Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development seeks to garner and highlight fresh ideas on financial solutions for development. It is dedicated to innovative financial mechanisms for better mobilizing, channeling, and using funds. The conference brings together an internationally diverse set of hundreds of development practitioners, donors, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, academics, representatives from a range of financial institutions, civil society, and policy makers.

from akdn.org

http://www.akdn.org/photos_show.asp?Sid=159


His Highness the Aga Khan with Jean-Michel Severino, Director General of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD). The AFD is France’s international development agency, and was a co-sponsor of the Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development. - Photo: AKDN / Gary Otte



His Highness the Aga Khan addresses the Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development in Paris on 4 March 2010. - Photo: AKDN / Gary Otte