The paper draws on five case studies to explore potential benefits and barriers to horizontal networking to promote impact assessment of microfinance. The papers main aim is to stimulate further discussion of this issue. But some tentative conclusion are drawn about factors likely to contribute...

There is already substantial evidence to suggest that microfinance has polarising effects (Buckley, 1997, Copestake, 2002, Hulme, 2000 Marr, 2002; Wright, 2001). This should come as no surprise. Whilst every effort should be made to reduce negative impacts, it is inevitable that some clients will...

This paper considers impact assessment (IA) for a specific microfinance organisation working in an uncertain environment. It argues that there are significant learning points both for new clients and for the organisations who supply their services and products, which can result in improved, more...

This paper is based on work conducted by Imp-Act - a three-year action-research programme aiming to improve the quality of microfinance services and their impact on poverty. Learning from the experiences of 30 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in four continents, Imp-Act is developing and...

Assessment of the poverty level of microfinance clients is important for both practitioners and donors. For practitioners, increased understanding of the target market and whether it is being reached can help in the design of financial services better suited to the needs of different groups of...

This paper is about microfinance and its contribution to the eradication of poverty for millions of the world's poorest people. The Millennium Development goals set a critical challenge of halving absolute poverty in the world by 2015. Microfinance can make an important contribution to these...