AKAM was formally inaugurated in February 2005 by Aga Khan IV and the former president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn. The not-for-profit agency was created under Swiss law and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. It is governed by an independent Board of Directors chaired by the Aga Khan. AKAM brings together the financial services programming of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), at the lower end of the ladder, unifying and consolidating their objectives and principles of development under one institutional umbrella.