IPA Consumer Protection Quarterly

What's New and What's Next

---

New: Consumer Protection Research Initiative Multi-Country Workshops

Throughout June, Paul Adams and Lauren Perlik took the research initiative’s findings on the road to Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria. IPA hosted workshops in each country to share the wide-ranging package of consumer protection research methods and recent research results. The workshops provided attendees with the opportunity to discuss the findings, identify key consumer protection issues in their respective countries, and collaborate with other consumer protection organizations. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog to learn more about the workshops.

New: IPA Turns 20

On June 14, IPA and J-PAL both celebrated their 20th anniversaries in Washington, DC with a panel hosted by Heidi McAnnally-Linz (Global Lead for Policy & Partnerships, BRAC). Panelists included Dean Karlan (Lead Economist, USAID & Founder, IPA), Annie Duflo (Executive Director, IPA), and Iqbal Dhaliwal (Global Executive Director, J–PAL). The panelists discussed both organizations’ greatest achievements and what challenges lie ahead for the next 20 years. You can learn more about IPA’s Strategic Ambition and what we are aiming to accomplish through 2025 here. And stay tuned for other upcoming 20th anniversary celebrations and opportunities to engage further with other IPA staff and alumni.


 

New: IPA, the Government of Guinea Bissau, and the United Nations Development Programme Host a Capacity Building Workshop

During the sessions, which occurred from May 15-26, participants shared evidence on financial inclusion and jointly created development indicators to guide the Guinea Bissau's financing and investment decisions. Government participants used these insights to identify research ideas for the implementation of two new strategies, the Integrated National Financing Framework and the National Financial Inclusion Strategy.

New: RegTech Africa Conference on The Topic of Competition and Consumer Protection

On May 24, Paul Adams spoke alongside Dr. Mark Yama Tampuri Jr. (President, Ghana Fintech Academic Network), Jenny Radziwolek (CEO, Regxelerator), Mary Gichuki (Advocacy Manager, GSMA Mobile Money Programme), and Sheila Senfuma (Head of Programme, Digital Finance, Consumers International). The panel spoke about the proliferation of new digital credit products available to consumers and the need for consumer protection regulation to ensure good outcomes, even when there is healthy competition in the market.

What We've Been Reading

---

Article | Microcredit: Impacts and Promising Innovations: The more we look into the impacts of microcredit, the more they appear to evolve. While early evaluations of microcredit in low- and middle-income countries found that the classic microcredit model didn’t lead to transformative impacts, new research has found otherwise. This article from J-PAL explores the impacts of microcredit and promising innovations, such as targeting specific groups of people.

Article | Is Mobile Money Changing Rural Africa? Find out more from this field experiment, which follows the introduction of mobile money in rural villages of Mozambique using a randomized field experiment.

Blogs | Two blogs from the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor​​​​​​ (CGAP) and the Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI) on financial inclusion amid climate crises:

• Financial Inclusion: An Entry Point to Climate Adaptation for Funders: CGAP discusses how financial inclusion offers funders an opportunity to have an impact on climate adaptation.
• Climate Vulnerability and Financial Exclusion Go Hand in Hand—What Can Be Done? CFI focuses on the potential within our reach to help people prepare for the next disaster, by boosting their financial resilience through financial inclusion.

Blog | Tackling Gender Inequality through Improved Data Quality: How long will it take to reach full gender parity? According to the Global Gender Gap Report of 2022, it will take about 132 years. And the scarcity of data on gender specific-challenges isn’t helping. This blog from IDInsight explores the issues around data quality and what we can do to make improvements.

Brief | Promoting Fair Competition in the Digital Economy: Robust, fair competition matters. Market competition incentivizes firms to treat consumers fairly and provide products and services that respond to real customer needs. Read more on this topic in USAID’s technical brief.

Funding Opportunities

---

USAID Digital Frontiers Kenyan Financial Health and Protection Activity | Proposals due by Tuesday, July 18 at 5 PM ET. DAI, the implementer of the USAID-funded Digital Frontiers Cooperative Agreement, invites qualified organizations to submit applications to identify, implement, and/or scale solutions that mitigate the risks leading to, or resulting from over-indebtedness or a decrease in financial health associated with increased access to digital lending and digital financial services more broadly.

IPA and J-PAL's Displaced Livelihoods Initiative (DLI) | Proposals due by Friday, July 21, 2023: DLI supports rigorous impact evaluations, pilots, exploratory studies, infrastructure and public goods projects, and scaling work to inform policies and programs on sustainable livelihoods for displaced populations and host communities. Funding for DLI comes from the IKEA Foundation.

IPA’s Partnership for Tech (P4T) | Subsidized Research and Testing Partnerships in Edtech: While the initial request for interest closed in May 2023, new applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The program’s current focus is on supporting organizations in realizing the potential of digital approaches in primary and secondary education for improved learning outcomes.

---

Did you receive this newsletter from someone else and don’t want to miss out on the next one? Sign up to be part of our Consumer Protection Practitioner’s Network.
​​​​
If you’d prefer to not receive these Consumer Protection Quarterly emails in the future, you can manage your email preferences or unsubscribe here.