For the past 30 years, Microfinance has demonstrated its ability to lift people out of poverty across the globe. Yet, today’s worldwide development picture quite rightly demonstrates that poverty has many facets and that microfinance can’t be the unique tool in creating a dynamic and rapid development to solve this major issue. Indeed, the impact of credit lending to under-privileged people is limited in that it fails to create substantial export oriented businesses and jobs. This lack of connection to wider domestic and international markets does not allow for substantial growth and development which is vital when tackling wide scale poverty.
ICMSE believes that promoting entrepreneurship, not only at the lowest level but also amongst middle class populations, is crucial to bring about a substantial evolution. This is why it aims to act as a platform linking microfinance institutions and corporate businesses in a combined assistance to promote social businesses and support small and medium businesses in further growth. To achieve this aim, ICMSE is working on downscaling banking products, up scaling microfinance activities to support missing (what do you mean by missing middle?) middle and finding innovative ways to improve the integration of newly created enterprises to wider markets.