Kenya has been honoured to host the 14th Africa-Middle East Regional Micro-credit Summit, which President Kibaki opened on Wednesday.

Despite all its problems, Kenya has regained its place as a choice venue for international conferences. Conference tourism is a vital niche that should be fully incorporated into our tourism marketing campaigns.

But no tourism destination can be successfully sold when the global image of the country is one of conflict, instability, corruption and crime.

Kenya must seriously drive the constitutional, structural and institutional reforms required to ensure long-term peace and stability.

There are other lessons from the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The summit is a recognition of Kenya's pioneering efforts in micro-finance as a key plank in economic development strategies.

The summit was honoured to host Prof Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh, Nobel laureate and founder of the Grameen Bank.

Prof Yunus is recognised globally for demonstrating that lending to the poorest of the poor is not just fashionable, charity or a moral statement, but also economically viable.

The Nairobi conference, therefore, provides the ideal opportunity to reflect on the ideals on which Grameen Bank was founded.

Kenya, like many other developing countries, is littered with micro-finance institutions that have abandoned their original calling.

Many of them have become part of the formal banking sector, obsessed with the competition for profits and expansion rather than in the provision of affordable credit to the unbanked social classes.

Many of them are micro-credit institutions only in name because they are no different from big banks in the interest rates they charge, the class of customers they seek out and the requirements they impose before considering credit.

That is why those gathered at the Nairobi summit must engage in deep soul searching on whether they remain true to the moral and philosophical underpinning of the micro-finance movement.