INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CORPORATION
How World Bank unit’s goals were sabotaged by capture of SA grants
Asset owners drive inequality when they act with impunity and avoid accountability for their investee firms
Access to basic financial products — bank accounts, debit cards, and housing loans — is the cornerstone of prosperity. This is the sort of claim that soon-to-retire Net1 CEO Serge Belamant made several times in defence of a business model that wreaked devastation on the lives of possibly hundreds of thousands of SA’s most vulnerable citizens. But this claim is not Belamant’s. It belongs to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which boasts that, through its funding, it helps individuals as well as micro, small and medium enterprises to obtain the credit they need to grow and succeed. Financial inclusion is what the IFC’s $107m investment in Net1 is all about. It is a noble, if somewhat paternalistic, objective with a late 20th-century ring to it. To comparatively wealthy citizens of sophisticated economies, the concept of financial inclusion is such an accepted part of life, it’s taken for granted. Not to have it must mean undevelopment, so having it must surely lead to devel...
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