Description

Dr.Tomoya Matsumoto, who is a development economist and works at National Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) located in Tokyo (www.grips.ac.jp/en ). He has been recently interested in rural development and particularly in the relationship with financial inclusion through mobile technologies such as mobile money.

With the interest in working for rural development, Professor Matsumoto along with his Phd student Hiroyuki Egami recently visited in Gaibandha, Northern part of Bangladesh.

During their visit here in Gaibandha, they stayed two days and visited different areas of Gaibandha and met different local professionals to discuss about various issues like contract farming, female education and mobile banking service in particular.

Very first day of their visit in February 2, 2017 they visited Local areas to discuss with local farmers, businessmen and mobile banking agents and customers.

They also visited Gidari unions, Gidari high schools and GUK area offices for learning from the locals, MF staffs and borrowers and also met school teachers for getting inside from them about female education, literacy rate and etc.

They also talked to local sharecroppers and farmers to learn about contract farming, sharecropping arrangements, traditional inheritance systems etc.

They took part in a formal introducing session, organized by Gana Unnyan Kendra (GUK) and discussed over various issues.

They also met MOMODa FOUNDATION project management team and Gaibandha Rural Development Foundation (GRDF) senior staffs for formal introduction as well.  

Earlier on the following day, they traveled to polashbari Upazila in Gaibandha to interview mobile banking agents and customers and flied to Dhaka from Saidpur airport on the same day.