The SME Finance Inflection Point - Keynote Address

The SME finance gap has reached trillions of dollars and continues to widen, even as 1.2 billion young people are set to enter emerging market workforces over the next decade—far outpacing job creation. This points to a deeper challenge: not just a financing gap, but a jobs and growth imperative centered on SMEs. In response, global initiatives such as World Bank Group's AgriConnect, Mission 300, and the IFC 2030 Jobs Agenda are expanding access at scale—strengthening market linkages and value chains, extending energy infrastructure, and mobilizing private capital to support enterprise growth. Yet access alone is not enough. The real question is whether these efforts enable SMEs to translate opportunity into productivity, scale, and employment. SMEs sit at the heart of this transformation—connecting farmers to markets, turning electricity into economic activity, and converting capital into jobs.

This keynote sets the strategic tone for the Forum by shifting the conversation from diagnosing gaps to accelerating solutions—focusing on how better alignment between infrastructure, markets, and capital can enable SMEs to grow at scale, drive job creation, and deliver inclusive economic impact.