The focus will be the creation of an enabling policy environment that will allow a complete, competitive, and deep rural financial market to emerge. The main activities will be: (a) participation by the RF specialist in coordinated development partner discussions with governments and central banks in relation to the policies, laws and regulations needed to facilitate mobilization of small deposits and protect small savers; and (b) supporting rural finance institutions to enable them to effectively engaging in dialogue with the decision makers on rural finance issues.  Such engagements will depend on high quality outputs emerging from the research agenda; and will be conducted within the framework of IFAD's relations with its partner governments, and in close collaboration with the other players in the KMP. The Rural Finance Specialist will work closely with the IFAD Country Presence in the various countries to desiimante the findings of its research work. Another channel is to partners with AFRACA and other networks in the regions to provide an avenue for wider dissemination of the findings.