Rural Finance Research Conference: introduction and plenary sessions

Moving Results into Policy and Practice

What do we know about research on rural finance? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Ford Foundation and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), strongly believe that rural finance research is very important in supporting the development of sound financial markets around the world. However, they also believe that there has not been enough structured discussion and debate regarding the type and quality of recent research and its effectiveness in terms of how well results are being communicated, disseminated and used. In order to understand if things should be left as they are or if there is scope for improvement, an international conference is being held at the FAO headquarters in Rome from 19 to 21 March 2007.

The organisers hope to find out more about the contribution research is making to our understanding of key problems in rural finance. They want to explore to what extent research results are providing quality advice on the ways to address these problems and how well this information is being used by those who formulate and implement policies. Policies are powerful tools and exist at several levels. The conference, therefore, will address not only government policy but also the policies of central banks, financial institutions of all kinds, donor agencies and international development and cooperation organisations.

The conference is designed to be highly participative with 3 roundtable discussions taking place for each of the five core themes of the conference.


Discussion papers

   Theme 1: Understanding demand for rural financial products and services
   Theme 2: Expanding outreach of financial products and services in rural areas
   Theme 3: Improvements in operational management of rural financial institutions
   Theme 4: Advances in rural financial products and services
   Theme 5: Enabling environment and policies for rural financial markets


Would you like to comment or ask a question?
In order to widen the debate, those of you who are unable to attend the conference in person are invited to read the papers and reports posted here in the RFLC, and send your comments or questions to the: Conference organisers. These will be forwarded to the relevant discussant to raise during the roundtable discussions.

Source: Rural Finance Learning Centre