IFC announced an investment for the National Bank of Iraq to support the growth of smaller businesses in Iraq and help them create jobs and overcome challenges, including from COVID-19-related disruptions.

Richway beat a host of other banks at the International Standards Excellence Award 2021, to take home the Award for performing exceptionally in a tumultuous year characterized by the negative impacts of COVID-19 pandemic.

The investment aims to support a resilient recovery by promoting business growth, creating jobs, and fostering financial inclusion.

The four-year partnership will help expand access to long-term local currency finance in Rwanda for key sectors such as housing, agribusiness, and smaller businesses.

The fourth and final SME Finance Loans for Growth (LFG) impact report shows how SMEs in emerging and frontier markets benefit from access to finance, as well as how they were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

REGMIFA, the Regional MSME Investment Fund for Sub-Saharan Africa, has attracted a further $10 million from Dutch-based entrepreneurial development bank FMO.

This webinar featured a conversation with three young women entrepreneurs from across Africa and Asia to provide ground-up insights, and lessons learned while navigating their enterprises through COVID-19.

This report shows how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging and frontier markets benefit from access to finance, as well as how they were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Facebook is expanding its women-empowerment focused initiative, SheMeansBusiness, to bolster the financial inclusion and resiliency of women-led businesses in Pakistan. 

The European Investment Bank (EIB) extended a $50 million line of credit to Bank of Palestine to support the resilience of the Palestinian private sector through on-lending to local SMEs, as part of Team Europe’s overall response to the Covid-19 crisis.