Social Performance Management in Microfinance: Practices, Results and Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa

In 2018, ADA and Cerise joined forces to carry out a global study of the database of SPI4 audits collected since 2014 in order to establish a general review of the social performance management (SPM) of financial service providers throughout the world since the launch of the SPI4 tool. The aim of this study is to shed light on the type of financial service providers which carry out a social performance audit, to identify the main strengths and weaknesses of these actors in terms of SPM, and to analyze the potential complementarities of social and financial performances. While the original study covers all of the audits submitted to Cerise1, this document will focus exclusively on the sub-Saharan Africa region.

The objective of the study is to encourage an increasing number of financial service providers to assess and to improve their practices and to provide information to the organizations which support them on their specific needs in terms of training, assessment and close support in relation to SPM.