Top Blog Posts of 2024
As 2024 comes to a close, it’s time for our annual roundup of the year’s most popular blog posts. As always, we hope that you’ve found the CGAP blog to be a useful resource for expert insights on the latest developments in financial inclusion, along with timely research, data, and new ideas.
2024 underscored the critical role of financial inclusion in addressing global challenges like climate change, food insecurity, and inequality. From climate adaptation and gender equity to responsible digital finance and support for micro and small enterprises, the focus of our blogs this year was on maximizing the impact of financial inclusion to create meaningful, lasting change.
Our bloggers discussed the role of inclusive finance in mobilizing resources for climate adaptation and mitigation (including how financial services can help build more inclusive carbon markets), how inclusive finance can promote food security, the importance of fostering competition among digital financial service providers to improve choices and quality for consumers, how understanding the relationship between financial inclusion and stability is imperative for policymakers to advance both goals, and much more.
We also continued to look at the importance of safeguarding consumer data to prevent fraud and misuse, the critical role of financial services in supporting MSEs, gender-disaggregated data as the cornerstone for designing strategies and interventions that increase women’s use of financial services, and trends in digital credit in West Africa.
Check out our audience's favorite topics (and more) below.
1. Financial Inclusion 2.0: Embracing a New Outcome Agenda
Financial inclusion is a key enabler for development outcomes and a foundational element to improve livelihoods and build resilience in an ever more vulnerable and turbulent world. This blog is part of CGAP’s Financial Inclusion 2.0 initiative, which launched in 2024. The initiative is a three-year sector-wide effort to improve our understanding and measurement of the impact of financial services.
2. Open Finance Can Reduce Financial Inclusion Gaps: Here’s How
Open finance can be a transformational enabler to unleash the power of data to increase financial inclusion. Data-driven strategies and open finance ecosystems can revolutionize access to financial services, especially for underserved communities.
3. Navigating Compound Crises: Microfinance Learnings From Lebanon
Lebanon has faced a recent string of compounding crises, crippling GDP and decimating the Lebanese currency. Al Majmoua MFI survived the freefall and, in this blog, offers valuable insights into the diversity of measures that can be taken in the face of crises.
4. Financially Including Young Women: Gains for a Generation
The final blog in a series with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this piece spotlights what CGAP and BMGF have learned about the dynamics of young women’s financial exclusion and new initiatives to tackle the gender gap at its source in young adulthood.
5. Facing Climate Events in Nigeria, Farmers Left With Scarce Options
Based on interviews with hundreds of farmers in Nigeria, this blog unpacks how households use financial services in responding to climate events.
6. How Can Insurance Help Build a Green, Resilient & Inclusive Future?
To ensure those living in poverty benefit from emerging models in insurance, the financial inclusion sector needs to focus beyond traditional risk transfer and look at broader risk management. This blog outlines three priorities for driving systems change in inclusive insurance.
7. Decoding Financial Inclusion Gaps Between Young Men and Women
A CGAP study revealed a gender gap in financial service adoption among youth in low-income countries. In this blog, Findex 2021 data was analyzed to better understand the factors driving these disparities.
8. Can What Remains of Sudan’s Financial System Be Used to Fight Famine?
December 4, 2024, marked 600 days of war in Sudan, one that has caused famine, mass displacement, and lost income. Cash transfers can save lives but need a functioning financial system to work – this blog argues that protecting Sudan’s financial sector now is key.
9. Everyone Loves Drama: Changing Financial Norms With Edutainment
Edutainment does more than entertain. It shapes our understanding of the world and sparks change – and even the use of financial services. Compelling characters in engaging stories can increase account ownership, savings, and financial planning. This blog comes from ABERA, a partnership between CGAP and IDH that aims to elevate gender-inclusive and climate-smart approaches in agriculture and rural contexts and measure their impact on business performance
10. Charting the Path to Belém: Inclusive Finance Is the Key to Climate Action
Talks around climate finance dominated COP29, but sourcing funding is only one part of the puzzle. Now the NCQG – the newly agreed global funding target – has been agreed upon, and focus should move squarely to how the money will be disbursed and to whom.
Add new comment