On March 1, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) invited IPA and other global thought leaders from AFI’s membership to convene a high-level conference in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on the future of financial inclusion and how to provide sustainable financial services to the last 1.7 billion unbanked.Estelle Plat (former IPA Country Director for Francophone West Africa) led a plenary presentation titled "Confronting the Global Gender Gap to Advance Women’s Economic Empowerment" and spoke on a panel on Green Financial Inclusion to an audience of policymakers, development partners, and private sector participants.

As part of the dissemination of European Union-funded research results under the Trust Fund, Interconsortia and IPA organized a half-day session where Professor Andrew Dillon of Northwestern University presented the descriptive data of a basic survey focused on the eastern and Boucle du Mouhoun regions of Burkina Faso.