Mayada El-Zoghbi

Mayada began her career setting up inclusive financial institutions in various countries, including the Palestinian Territories, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo. In 2002, she founded a development consulting firm and led evaluation, research, and technical assistance projects in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

Today, Mayada is the managing director of KIT, an advocacy and research organization in the Netherlands. She began at KIT in November 2023 after four years with the Center for Financial Inclusion, where she transformed a once-struggling research department into a global inclusive finance advocacy organization. Prior to this, Mayada spent nearly 11 years with the World Bank Group’s think tank on inclusive finance, CGAP. There, she advised donors and development finance institutions, and led research on numerous issues such as the role of financial services in crisis environments, women’s financial inclusion, market systems development, and Shari’a compliant inclusive finance.

Mayada is frequently asked by media organizations, such as Reuters, the Financial Times, and others, to provide insight into the cashless economy, sustainable development, and digital economy.

By Mayada El-Zoghbi

Research

Getting Smart about Financial Inclusion

This Focus Notes discusses lessons learned through the implementation of the SmartAid Index--a tool launched by CGAP in 2007 to measure and improve the effectiveness of funders in supporting financial inclusion.
Research

Facilitating the Market for Capacity Building Services

This Focus Note addresses the question: what does it take to facilitate a sustainable, commercially viable market for capacity building services delivered to financial service providers?
Research

SmartAid Index 2014

This Technical Guide is aimed at funders interested in analyzing their effectiveness in financial inclusion. It describes the methodology of the SmartAid Index and explains how to use SmartAid.
Blog

Postal Networks: a Physical Link to the Digital Economy

The latest White Paper from the U.S. Postal Service exploring the potential to build its existing financial services products to help the poor is getting a lot of ink in the press, and rightfully so.
Blog

10 Things You May Not Know about Postal Networks

Postal networks have undertaken major transformations. They are increasingly leveraging their branch networks to play a role in financial services, and many are emerging as important gateways for financial inclusion of the world's poor.