Topic: Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on microfinance in two countries.

Against the backdrop of the purpose of microfinance, which is to finance the livelihood, health care, education, housing improvements, small business creation, selected micro-entrepreneurial aspirations and other needs of populations living in poverty or near-poverty levels, and who are not served by the traditional financial institutions, you are required to undertake the following.

Required to research the operation of microfinance in two significant countries (selected from different continents) in recent years and produce a report which:

a. Describes the structure and operation of microfinance and MFIs in the two selected countries;

b. Outlines the impacts of COVID-19 on each of the two selected countries as a whole, considering numbers of coronavirus cases, deaths and recoveries in the population, changes in real GDP, employment, inflation, interest rates and government and health care responses;