Conference on global financial inclusion

The event will be moderated by Sander de Kramer.

Zemzem Shigute Shuka is Assistant Professor of Global Health and Development at the ISS and a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Development and Policy Research, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Her research interests are in community-based development interventions, human capital investments, labour markets, global health, and in the impact evaluation of social protection programs.

Mansoob Murshed is Professor of the Economics of Peace and Conflict at the ISS. His research interests are in the economics of conflict, political economy, resource abundance, aid conditionality, macroeconomics, and international economics.

Robert Lensink is Professor of Finance and Financial Markets at the University of Groningen, a Fellow of the Institute for Economics, Econometrics and Finance (IEEF), and a Professor Extraordinary at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is also a Resource Person for the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) and an Associate Researcher at the Centre for European Research in Microfinance. His research interests include microfinance, gender studies, finance and development, impact analyses, and experimental economics.

Isabelle Guérin is Research Director at the Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Sorbonne University/Paris I, France. She is also a research associate at the Centre for European Research in Microfinance and at the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. As a socio-economist, she has published extensively on financial inclusion, the links between finance and inequalities, and the connections between financial practices and employment. Her approach blends critical political economy and a moral economy framework. Her latest book is The indebted woman: kinship, sexuality and capitalism (Stanford UP, 2023).

Rael Onyango, (PhD), is a research associate at Aga Khan University in Nairobi-Kenya, specializing in financial economics, Innovative finance, and sustainable development. She holds a PhD from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where her research provided critical insights into the interplay between business financing and micro-enterprise performance, examining how financing models shape entrepreneurial success in resource-constrained settings. She also holds an MSc in Financial Economics and a BSc in Economics and Statistics.

Rael’s areas of interest are: sustainable finance (innovative and blended financing); economic valuations; intersection of economics and environmental sustainability (i.e. climate finance and green economy strategies); circular economics and health economics.

Eric Holterhues has 25 years of experience in impact investing. He worked for 17 years at Triodos Bank and Triodos Investment Management in various roles: senior account manager corporate finance, fund manager and in various management positions. From 2017 to 2023, he was Managing Director of Oikocredit Netherlands. 

Since the end of 2023, he has been director of Partnerships for Impact at FMO. FMO is the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank. It is the mission of FMO to enable entrepreneurs to increase inclusive and sustainable prosperity. The Partnerships for Impact (P4i) department is responsible for mobilizing third party capital to FMO's investments to scale up the total capital invested in emerging and frontier markets. Next to his position at FMO, he is also a member of the Dutch Senate.

Ging Ledesma currently serves as Strategic Advisor for Impact and Social Performance in Oikocredit. She joined Oikocredit’s Southeast Asia office in Manila in 1999 and moved to Oikocredit’s office in Amersfoort, the Netherlands in 2005. 

In her 27 years with Oikocredit she has served in a number of other positions: Regional Director Southeast Asia; Director for Social Performance and Credit Analysis; Director for Investor Relations; Director Strategy and Sustainable Impact and Interim Managing Director. She has also served on the Managing Board and the Executive Committee of Oikocredit International.  

Ging has also served on the Board of the Social Performance Task Force and on MfTransparency – two organizations leading the promotion of ethical, responsible financial inclusion. Ging has a degree in Business and Finance from the University of the Philippines. 

Adenike Fapohunda is a lawyer pursuing an MA in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies with a specialization in governance and development policy. She has worked on financial inclusion and the intersection of gender and development.

Anand Kole is pursuing the MA in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies with a specialization in economics of development. He has a Master's in Economics from NMIMS University, India, where his thesis focused on understanding the factors affecting credit uptake from Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in tribal states of Orissa and Jharkhand. He also holds a BA in Economics, Political Science and Sociology. 

He has previously worked as a credit rating analyst for public finance entities in Europe as well as has experience in policy research and academics. Anand is also currently working as a research assistant at ISS in various subjects revolving around water. His research interests lay in water economics, development theories, behavioral economics, public finance, policy analysis, community economics with a focus on India.