A three days sub-regional workshop of West Africa English speaking countries hosted by the Central Bank of The Gambia on the theme "Innovations in addressing Rural Finance Challenges in Africa", began yesterday at the Paradise Suites Hotel in Kololi.

The three-days gathering is expected to cover areas, such as innovations in addressing rural finance challenges, climate change-challenges and opportunities as well as using alternative business channels to bank the unbanks.

Speaking at the opening session, Momodou Bamba Saho, Governor of the Central Bank of The Gambia said micro finance is widely recognised as one of the tools in the fight against poverty as it can empower poor people in improving their livelihoods.

He maintained that, limited access to finance lowers the welfare and hinders poverty reduction and the emergence of an economically active middle class. More fundamentally, he added, inadequate financial services constrains economic growth.

"Financial institutions need to win the confidence of their clients and the authorities to succeed. As a stakeholders of the financial sector, I believed it is our collective goal in ensuring stable and vibrant financial systems is our various countries that play a significant role in wealth creation. For improved performance and sustainability, micro-finance players need an appropriate legal and policy framework for an orderly growth and development of the sub-sector" he said.

Governor Saho was then quick to announced that the Gambia have made a significant progress in terms of creating an enabling environment for a sound and sustainable micro finance sub-sector.

Edmund Mkwawa, vice-chairman of the African Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (AFRACA) said the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programm were designed to address the four maladies assumed to underlie all economic ills in Africa such as poor governance, excessive government interference, excessive government spending and government interference, and too much state ownership.

According to him, belt tightening, privatisation, liberisation and good governance became the order of the day. AFRACA's chairman then outlined the plans for 2015 Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty by half noting that Africa could be the first generation to outlaw the kind of extreme, stupid poverty that sees a child die of hunger in a world of plenty or of disease preventable by twenty cents inoculation.

Ms Mbita Nandazi, secretary general of (AFRACA) observed that, holding these sub-regional workshop, AFRACA recognises the challenges inherent in providing financial services to rural areas. "We are all aware that rural areas are characterized by higher transaction costs for both financial institutions and their clients, higher systematic risks, more volatile cash flows and a lower risk-bearing ability and the house holds are more vulnerable since they live in areas with normally sluggish economic growth due to other constraints resulting in these areas experiencing higher incidences and depth of poverty than their counterparts in urban areas", she explained.

As a continent network established in 1977, the African Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (AFRACA) is an association of financial institutions involved in promoting and providing financial services to rural population in Africa.

AFRACA membersip stands at 90 institutions comprising Central Banks, Commercial Banks, Agricultural and Development Banks, Micro-finance Institutions and their networks.