As some of you may remember in December I traveled to Afghanistan with colleagues Mark Rolston and Cara Silver to explore attitudes to savings and risk. The project was funded by the IMTFI with generous support from frog.

It started out as a fairly typical homes-streets-markets project exploring the financial inclusion space all be it with a higher risk profile than most – the situation seems to have deteriorated since my last visit, and we kept pushing our own comfort levels (for my co-researchers it was their first visit to Afghanistan). It rapidly became clear that the following the money, peoples attitudes and strategies with investing and saving, revealed their confidence or otherwise in the future of their country. Interesting stuff particularly when considering the geo-political issues around the US/ISAF troop pull out.

The first public presentation of the research, hosted by the CGAP at the World Bank is here.