See the updated story: "Affinity MacroFinance receives top honors at international finance competition"

An innovative financing plan by a Results For Development Institute senior consultant that helps underwrite development projects in low-income countries has been named a finalist in the prestigious Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development competition, which will be held March 4-5 in Paris.

The project is spearheaded by David Stevens and called Affinity MacroFinance (AM). It has been designed to increase the amount of investment in a range of projects in health, education, micro lending, small business finance, insurance, and infrastructure in poor countries. With the potential to provide AAA guarantees to bond investors in up to 80 low and middle income capital markets, Affinity can offer a unique way to tap the nearly $1 trillion in these countries’ pension funds and provide low cost, fixed-rate, and long term funding for projects to spur economic growth and social gains for millions of poor people.

The Marketplace meeting is co-hosted by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank.

A major part of the event is the grant competition, which will make five awards of up to $100,000 for new ideas to increase the volume of financial flows contributing to development and to enhance their impact on the ground. Twenty finalists have already been chosen from a pool of over 800 submissions, among them the joint proposal from R4D and Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) on Affinity MacroFinance.

Stevens will join the other finalists at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, as they make their case before an independent international jury. The winners will receive pilot grants to implement their proposals, with the goal that successful pilots will be scaled up in other parts of the world.

For more information on Affinity MacroFinance, please contact:
David Stevens
dstevens9@nyc.rr.com

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R4D is a nonprofit focused on stimulating new ideas and catalyzing actions that reduce poverty and improve lives in low- and middle-income countries. This organization, based in Washington, D.C., works with development leaders, globally and at country level, to design and test solutions to pressing development challenges. R4D concentrates on engagements where it can translate ideas and evidence into sound policies and programs that enable countries and development partners to achieve results.

Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) is a multilateral financial institution that mobilizes resources from international markets to Latin America, in order to provide multiple banking services to both public and private clients of its shareholder countries. The Institution is committed to sustainable development and regional integration.