Ms. Zahia Lolila-Ramin joined IFC in January 2007 as Program Manager for South Africa SME Banking program based in Johannesburg South Africa. Prior to this she was consulting for the World Bank as Technical Coordinator for Trade Finance program covering COMESA region in Africa based in Washington DC. Her career has been mainly in consulting for international organizations. She has Bachelor of Commerce in finance/marketing from the University of Dar-Es-Salaam and an MBA in Finance from Maastricht School of Business (NL) . She has more than 12 years of professional experience in the field of access to finance for SMEs and development finance in Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Middle East and USA. She is passionate about rural finance and bank down-scaling. She worked as a technical advisor and managed financial and private sector programs at international level with consulting firms, donors, regional and international financial institutions including; USAID contractors – (Chemonics International, Weidemann Associates Inc, Barents KPMG Group), the Arab Foundation for Enterprise Development in Egypt (AFED), the African Development Bank (AfDB), ILO/UNDP, DANIDA, Dutch Development Corporation (SNV). She spent six years in West Africa working closely with the Central Bank - BCEAO, commercial banks, bankers associations and microfinance umbrella associations in the UEMOA region.