(Photo from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

The Private Sector Development Blog points us today to this story from Microcapital about independent research firm Celent's prediction that the microfinance market will nearly double worldwide from currently $11 billion to $20 billion by 2008. See the press release here, though for the full report you have to be a subscriber.

In other microfinance news:

*PSDBlog also points us to word that microfinance godfather Muhammad Yunus has won the Seoul Peace Prize.

*Again, from Microcapital, Uganda's Microfinance State Minister is concerned that donations to microfinance institutions are not helping the poor, but are being used as a means to control economic growth.

*From CSR-News: The South African Social Investment Exchange.

*Get your frequent flyer miles: The Global Microcredit Summit 2006 will be held from November 12-15, 2006 in halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

*Robert Katz at WorldChanging on 'Minipreneurs' ....

*From Indian Raj ... Microfinance in India: Saving Life or Taking Life?

*And I seemed to have missed this story on microcredit in The Economist a few weeks ago during all this transition and moving, but in case you haven't seen it either I thought I'd point it out. This looks at the battles going on between loan sharks/moneylenders and microcredit institutions.

Moneylenders bad; microcredit good. That has been the common view about financial services in much of the Indian countryside. Traditional moneylenders charge extortionate interest rates to those in desperate need. Microcredit-providers, which are charities that lend tiny amounts to the poor without necessarily expecting to make a profit in return, are globally trendy and socially responsible. So it came as a shock earlier this year when the government of Andhra Pradesh, the Indian state where microcredit has spread fastest, accused some leading microfinance institutions (MFIs) of behaving no better than old-style usurers. The lenders say they are being defamed, in a row that raises questions about their future in the state.

All right, that's it for me for a couple of days. Will be back Friday, if not late on Thursday.