The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development offers a masterplan to create a better world for the people and the planet. It’s scale and ambition, however, requires new development partnerships supported by adequate financial and technical resources. As a response, development practitioners started to explore alternative and complementary innovative instruments to finance the SDGs -one of which is the prospects for increased cooperation and coordination between Islamic finance and impact investing. To date, however, the academic and development literature has lacked a systematic exploration of this promising collaboration between Islamic finance and impact investing. This present study attempts to fill this gap by developing the first knowledge product to increase awareness on this collaboration. I for Impact attempts to raise awareness on the compatibility between Islamic finance and impact investing. It reviews recent developments and key factors for growth, pinpoints similarities between the two sectors, and makes policy recommendations for development actors to create the conditions for the two sectors to benefit from each other.

This publication is a sequel to the OECD 2015 report on social impact investment (SII), Building the Evidence Base, bringing new evidence on the role of SII in financing sustainable development.

Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world. Taking into account also its endowment and potential economic resources, the Islamic banking industry in Indonesia was expected to take on an important role in facilitating more financial resources and to contribute to the internationalization of the Islamic mode of financing particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the reality is far from the expectation. This book aims to clarify the causes and fundamental constraints leading to the extraordinarily low level of Indonesia’s Islamic financial deepening. The authors draw on the traditions of Institutional Economics which are concerned with the rules or mechanisms of creating the 'incentive' and 'threat' for economic players because the rules (institutions) would matter as the determinant for economic development and economic efficiency. This book offers a fairly new analytical lens by hypothesizing that Islamic banks must earn additional profit– the authors coined as ‘Islamic bank rent’ - to maintain their franchise value as prudent Shari’ah-compliant lenders when compared to conventional banks. The authors argued that insufficient provision of the Islamic bank rent opportunity may have caused the Indonesia’s Islamic banks the opportunity to learn and improve their skill and capacity for the credit risk management. The book also offers evidence in support of implementing economic and affirmative policy necessary for incubating and developing the Islamic banking industry in Indonesia and making Indonesia an international Islamic financial hub in the Asia-Pacific region. This book will be a useful resource for policy makers and researchers interested in Islamic banking in Indonesia.

Recovering Environmental and Economic Traditions in the Islamic World is an interdisciplinary volume that interrogates varied approaches to environmental and economic thought in classical Islam and in a few contemporary case studies. The contributions in this volume critique the dominant economic system and its perspective on the environment as a commodity across the boundaries of multiple intellectual traditions and academic fields. The book analyses both historical trajectories and modern schools of thought while simultaneously exploring ethical applications to environmental and economic discourses as a tool of critique. In this context, the authors conceptualize and treat these discourses as polyvalent and enmeshed with various political, ethical, and cosmological perspectives and vistas.

The Palgrave Handbook of International Communication and Sustainable Development is a major resource for stakeholders interested in understanding the role of communication in achieving the UN’S Sustainable Development Goals. Bringing together theoretical and applied contributions from scholars in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and North America, the handbook argues that communication is a key factor in achieving the global goals and suggests a review of the SDGs to consider its importance. Reflecting on the impact of COVID-19, it highlights the need for effective communication infrastructure and critically assesses the 2030 agenda and timeline. Including individual SDG and country case studies as well as integrated analysis, the chapters seek to enrich understanding of communication for development and propose crucial policy interventions. It is critical reading for researchers as well as policy makers and NGOs.

The growth of Islamic finance today is significant, making it timely to meet the market demand across the world and particularly for Muslim countries by producing a cryptocurrency model under the Shari’ah ethical principles. This book addresses core components of cryptocurrency within the Maqasid al-Shari’ah in enabling students, academics, users, traders, issuers, promoters, facilitators, managers, regulators, decision makers, blockchain technology providers, financial authorities, and other relevant professionals to understand Shari’ah cryptocurrency and its practical mechanisms. Among the issues covered are corporate understanding, global phenomena and world view, the Shari’ah model, SWOT analysis, innovation, conventional practices and the Halaldichotomy, regulatory standards, blockchain and its technological paradigm, practicality, establishment, and operational mechanisms, Zakat and Waqf through cryptocurrency, risk factors, and takaful solution. This book establishes a Halal alternative model of cryptocurrency management within the Maqasid al-Shari’ah to meet the contemporary global market demand.

This book is the first ‘groundwork’ on Muslim NGOs in contemporary Ghana. It builds upon a database of more than 600 Muslim non-profit associations, foundations and grass-roots organisations whose activities are traced through extensive use of social media. The first part of the book scrutinises the varieties of their activities and operational spaces, their campaigns and target groups, alongside their local, regional, national and international connections. The second part analyses contemporary debates on infaq, sadaqa, waqf and zakat as well as Islamic banking and micro-finance schemes for promoting social welfare among Muslim communities in Ghana.

This book addresses the discourses, agendas and actions of Muslim faith-based organizations and activists to empower Muslim communities in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The individual chapters discuss how traditional Muslim welfare and charity institutions, zakat (obligatory or mandatory almsgiving), sadaqa (voluntary almsgiving and donations) and waqf (pious endowments), are used to improve social welfare, focusing on instrumentalization and institutionalization in the collection and distribution of zakat. The book includes case studies from West Africa (Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal), the Horn of Africa (Somalia) and East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), highlighting the role and interplay of local, national and international Sunni, Shia and Ahmadiyya Muslim faith-based organizations and NGOs. Chapters "Muslim NGOs, Zakat and the Provision of Social Welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Introduction" and "Discourses on Zakat and Its Implementation in Contemporary Ghana" are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The proactive engagement of the private sector was critical to accelerate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Inevitably, private finance will become even more central in the concerted effort to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to their ambition. Private investment decisions in both the real economy and in the financial sector should move the world towards the aspirations set out in the 2030 agenda. This means going far beyond philanthropy and voluntary corporate social responsibility, important though they are. It is a matter of steering the investment decisions that private actors make every day. In the context of the Financing for Development debate, this discussion paper reflects on the latest trends and makes recommendations to: 1. Establish an enabling regulatory environment for the private sector to invest in the SDGs; 2. Introduce “Smart” public incentives to fasten the realignment of private finance to the SDGs; and 3. Foster change in company and consumer behaviours to transition to inclusive and sustainable markets.