Critical History of Poverty Finance - Colonial Roots and Neoliberal Failures

'The definitive account of the history of poverty finance' - Susanne Soederberg

Finance, mobile and digital technologies - or 'fintech' - are being heralded in the world of development by the likes of the IMF and World Bank as a silver bullet in the fight against poverty. But should we believe the hype? 

A Critical History of Poverty Finance demonstrates how newfangled 'digital financial inclusion' efforts suffer from the same essential flaws as earlier iterations of neoliberal 'financial inclusion'. Relying on artificially created markets that simply aren't there among the world's most disadvantaged economic actors, they also reinforce existing patterns of inequality and uneven development, many of which date back to the colonial era.

Bernards offers an astute analysis of the current fintech fad, contextualised through a detailed colonial history of development finance, that ultimately reveals the neoliberal vision of poverty alleviation for the pipe dream it is.

Acknowledgements

Acronyms

Introduction

Part I. Poverty finance and the antinomies of colonialism

1. A colonial problem

2. Poverty finance and nascent neoliberalism

3. Structural adjustment, backlash, and the turn to the local: Explaining the rise of microfinance

Part II. Making markets for poverty finance

4. Commercialising community: Experiments with marketisation

5. From microcredit to financial inclusion

Part III. Innovation to the rescue?

6. The forever-latent demand for microinsurance

7. Fintech and its limits

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index