Female Bankers Thriving in Africa

[LAfrique]

Findings show banks led by women in Africa are thriving and have a higher repayment rate - allAfrica.com: Uganda - Rural Women's Banks Ease Tough Times

 

[Ropey]

It's the women who will pull Africa into modernity. (imo)

 

[LAfrique]

It's the women who will pull Africa into modernity. (imo)

Well, I welcome to lead! Though most men would like to believe it is a man's world, history, dating back to Biblical days, shows women have often been the movers and shakers of world events.

 

[Ropey]

Here in Canada, before women became Institutional officers there were many more beatings and mistreatment of prisoners. After they were allowed into the prisons this began to change. By the time the wardens were women, this severe treatment was pretty much an anomaly.

I know what you say.

 

[LAfrique]

Here in Canada, before women became Institutional officers there were many more beatings and mistreatment of prisoners. After they were allowed into the prisons this began to change. By the time the wardens were women, this severe treatment was pretty much an anomaly.

I know what you say.

I say: More power to women of strength!

 

[JStone]

It's the women who will pull Africa into modernity. (imo)

Well, I welcome to lead! Though most men would like to believe it is a man's world, history, dating back to Biblical days, shows women have often been the movers and shakers of world events.

muslimas, not so much

 

[LAfrique]

Long live innovative women of strength!

 

[PoliticalChic]

Findings show banks led by women in Africa are thriving and have a higher repayment rate - allAfrica.com: Uganda - Rural Women's Banks Ease Tough Times

Interesting article.

It fits the premises of the book by Dr. Dambisa Moyo, author of the New York Times Bestseller "Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How there is a Better Way for Africa."

Among her suggestions were:

a. Africa should continue to press for genuine free trade in agricultural products, with the US, EU and Japan scrapping the various subsidies they pay to the farmers, enabling African countries to increase their earnings from primary product exports.

b. They should encourage the spread of microfinance institutions of the type that have flourished in Asia and Latin America. And the advice of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, and grant the inhabitants of shanty towns secure legal title to their homes, so that they can be used as collateral. And make it cheaper for emigrants to send money back home.

 

[waltky]

Indians committing suicide over micro-finance debts...

Suicides in India linked to micro-finance debts
Saturday, February 25, 2012 - First they were stripped of their utensils, furniture, mobile phones, televisions, ration cards and heirloom gold jewelry. Then, some of them drank pesticide. One woman threw herself in a pond. Another jumped into a well with her children.

Sometimes, the debt collectors watched nearby. More than 200 poor, debt-ridden residents of Andhra Pradesh killed themselves in late 2010, according to media reports compiled by the government of the south Indian state. The state blamed micro-finance companies - which give small loans intended to lift up the very poor - for fueling a frenzy of over-indebtedness and then pressuring borrowers so relentlessly that some took their own lives.

The companies, including market leader SKS Microfinance, denied it. However, internal documents obtained by the Associated Press, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, independent researchers and videotaped testimony from the families of the dead, show that top SKS officials had information implicating company employees in some of the suicides.

An independent investigation commissioned by the company linked SKS employees to at least seven of the deaths. A second investigation commissioned by an industry umbrella group that probed the role of many microfinance companies did not draw conclusions but pointed to SKS involvement in two more cases that ended in suicide. Neither study has been made public.

Both reports said SKS employees had verbally harassed over-indebted borrowers, forced them to pawn valuable items, incited other borrowers to humiliate them and orchestrated sit-ins outside their homes to publicly shame them. In some cases, the SKS staff physically harassed defaulters, according to the report commissioned by the company. Only in death would the debts be forgiven.

Read more: Suicides in India linked to microfinance debts

 

[PoliticalChic]

Indians committing suicide over micro-finance debts...

Suicides in India linked to micro-finance debts
Saturday, February 25, 2012 - First they were stripped of their utensils, furniture, mobile phones, televisions, ration cards and heirloom gold jewelry. Then, some of them drank pesticide. One woman threw herself in a pond. Another jumped into a well with her children.

Sometimes, the debt collectors watched nearby. More than 200 poor, debt-ridden residents of Andhra Pradesh killed themselves in late 2010, according to media reports compiled by the government of the south Indian state. The state blamed micro-finance companies - which give small loans intended to lift up the very poor - for fueling a frenzy of over-indebtedness and then pressuring borrowers so relentlessly that some took their own lives.

The companies, including market leader SKS Microfinance, denied it. However, internal documents obtained by the Associated Press, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, independent researchers and videotaped testimony from the families of the dead, show that top SKS officials had information implicating company employees in some of the suicides.

An independent investigation commissioned by the company linked SKS employees to at least seven of the deaths. A second investigation commissioned by an industry umbrella group that probed the role of many microfinance companies did not draw conclusions but pointed to SKS involvement in two more cases that ended in suicide. Neither study has been made public.

Both reports said SKS employees had verbally harassed over-indebted borrowers, forced them to pawn valuable items, incited other borrowers to humiliate them and orchestrated sit-ins outside their homes to publicly shame them. In some cases, the SKS staff physically harassed defaulters, according to the report commissioned by the company. Only in death would the debts be forgiven.

Read more: Suicides in India linked to microfinance debts

OMG....Walt....ya just can't win!

Well, then, how about leaving the government in charge, some social justice?
Check this out:


"SOCIALISM KILLS: THE COST OF DELAYED ECONOMIC REFORM IN INDIA
As the world approaches the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, it is worth investigating the costs borne by countries like India that did not become communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model, says Swaminathan Aiyar, a research fellow with the Cato Institute.

For three decades after its independence in 1947, India strove for self-sufficiency instead of the gains of international trade, and gave the state an ever-increasing role in controlling the means of production, says Aiyar:
These policies yielded economic growth of 3.5 percent per year, which was half that of export-oriented Asian countries, and yielded slow progress in social indicators, too.
Growth per capita in India was even slower, at 1.49 percent per year.
It accelerated after reforms started tentatively in 1981, and shot up to 6.78 percent per year after reforms deepened in the current decade.

What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators? In "Socialism Kills: The Cost of Delayed Economic Reform In India," Aiyar seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates" and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators.
He finds that with earlier reform:

14.5 million more children would have survived.
261 million more Indians would have become literate.
109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line.

The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy, says Aiyar. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither."
Socialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India | Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar | Cato Institute: Development Briefing Paper

 

[LAfrique]

Findings show banks led by women in Africa are thriving and have a higher repayment rate - allAfrica.com: Uganda - Rural Women's Banks Ease Tough Times

Interesting article.

It fits the premises of the book by Dr. Dambisa Moyo, author of the New York Times Bestseller "Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How there is a Better Way for Africa."

Among her suggestions were:

a. Africa should continue to press for genuine free trade in agricultural products, with the US, EU and Japan scrapping the various subsidies they pay to the farmers, enabling African countries to increase their earnings from primary product exports.

b. They should encourage the spread of microfinance institutions of the type that have flourished in Asia and Latin America. And the advice of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, and grant the inhabitants of shanty towns secure legal title to their homes, so that they can be used as collateral. And make it cheaper for emigrants to send money back home.

I do not get why Africa appears to be regressing into deep poverty. Africa is so rich in natural resources that I just cannot understand why the Continent continues to be in poverty, while imperialists thrive from Africa's wealth.

As per micro-economy: I grew up as a child in an African nation where micro-economy was norm. By age 8, I was an established entrepreneur by right. Would you believe as of age 6 until I returned to the US, I always had my own money and never asked my parents for anything (though my parents made sure I had all I needed)?

My kinfolks were into Agriculture and Commence, and I simply learned the basic skills of my folks and capitalized on that which was readily available to me. By age 16, I had saved over equivalent of US $1,500 back then. I probably must have been the wealthiest child in the world by my own right.

 

[waltky]

Thanks to the internet, now anyone can be a microinvestor...

Internet Opens World to Microloan Investors
March 05, 2012 - The Internet is linking entrepreneurs in the developing world with investors in industrial nations through sites that broker small “people-to-people” loans. These so-called microloans go to family-owned businesses in Africa, Asia and other areas.

A $2 loan lets a woman in Burundi start a business brewing banana beer, and a $65 loan helped a woman in Pakistan start an embroidery business that now supports 30 local families. These small entrepreneurs are featured in a multimedia exhibit called Half the Sky at the Skirball Cultural Center. Photographs, art and videos explain the plight of poor women in developing countries and how microloans are helping them. Corporate donations to the center provide each visitor to the exhibit with $1 to get them started as investors. With help from a volunteer, this man has just invested in a small business in Africa.

The Internet microloan site Kiva is one of several partners in the project. Kiva's own website at www.kiva.org lets people invest small amounts of money in entrepreneurial projects from their homes, or any place with an Internet connection. The organization works through local micro-finance institutions in developing countries, and notes proudly that its clients’ repayment rate is over 98 percent.

Writer Bob Harris has invested in nearly 4,000 small businesses, and has visited many of them while researching a book about Kiva. “It's everything from clinics to schools to farmers, crafts people, urban transportation people - taxi drivers - pretty much anything you can come up with,” Harris said. Some investors, like Armenian-American computer consultant Peter Tashjian, focus on a single region. He lends to Armenians so that those in cities can expand their businesses, and those in the countryside can buy an extra cow or sheep. “And they actually are able to feed their families and make extra cheese and milk to sell in the markets,” Tashjian said.

Bob Harris got involved in microlending after exploring the world as a travel writer and seeing poverty in the shadow of exclusive resorts. He has inspired a loose-knit group on the Kiva website called Friends of Bob Harris, whose members have invested more than $1.6 million. “And everybody who does it for any length of time and reinvests the money, it’s really kind of cool … Let’s see, the bicycle delivery guy in Nicaragua paid me back. I think I’ll invest in this student in the Philippines,” Harris said. These people say the Internet has forged new links, both social and commercial, that help others around the world pull themselves out of poverty.

Source

 

[PoliticalChic]

Findings show banks led by women in Africa are thriving and have a higher repayment rate - allAfrica.com: Uganda - Rural Women's Banks Ease Tough Times

Interesting article.

It fits the premises of the book by Dr. Dambisa Moyo, author of the New York Times Bestseller "Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How there is a Better Way for Africa."

Among her suggestions were:

a. Africa should continue to press for genuine free trade in agricultural products, with the US, EU and Japan scrapping the various subsidies they pay to the farmers, enabling African countries to increase their earnings from primary product exports.

b. They should encourage the spread of microfinance institutions of the type that have flourished in Asia and Latin America. And the advice of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, and grant the inhabitants of shanty towns secure legal title to their homes, so that they can be used as collateral. And make it cheaper for emigrants to send money back home.

I do not get why Africa appears to be regressing into deep poverty. Africa is so rich in natural resources that I just cannot understand why the Continent continues to be in poverty, while imperialists thrive from Africa's wealth.

As per micro-economy: I grew up as a child in an African nation where micro-economy was norm. By age 8, I was an established entrepreneur by right. Would you believe as of age 6 until I returned to the US, I always had my own money and never asked my parents for anything (though my parents made sure I had all I needed)?

My kinfolks were into Agriculture and Commence, and I simply learned the basic skills of my folks and capitalized on that which was readily available to me. By age 16, I had saved over equivalent of US $1,500 back then. I probably must have been the wealthiest child in the world by my own right.

Why, Moyo asks, “is it that Africa alone among the continents of the world seems to be locked into a cycle of dysfunction? Why in a recent survey did seven out of the top 10 ‘failed states' hail from that continent?” Moyo, a Zambian economist educated at Oxford and Harvard, who has worked for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs, believes that foreign aid is the root cause of the spiral that has led Africa into its present situation.

1. Dr. Moro asks why the majority of sub-Saharan countries ‘flounder in a seemingly never-ending cycle of corruption, disease, poverty and aid-dependency,’ despite the fact that their countries have received more than $300 billion in development assistance since 1970. And her answer is that African countries are poor precisely because of all that aid!

2. The most aid-dependent countries have exhibited an average annual growth rate of minus 0.2 per cent. Between 1970 and 1998, with aid to Africa at its peak, the poverty rate in Africa rose from 11% to a staggering 66%.

3. Deep in every liberal sensibility is a profound sense that in a world of moral uncertainty one idea is sacred, on belief cannot be compromised: the rich should help the poor, and the form of that help should be aid.

4. The notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so, is a myth. Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid: misery and poverty have not ended but have increased. Aid has been and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world.

5. With the rise of neo-liberal thinking, that African governments should liberalize their economies in favor of the laissez-faire paradigm, which encompassed, and acknowledged the importance of private markets, a model that worked well in the Asian tigers, there was a missing ingredient. Many of these newly capitalized nations were hardly conversant with the stability and transparency necessary for success. The movement took a turn toward ‘corruption.’

a. Moyo believes that dependency on aid “undermines the ability of Africans, whatever their station, to determine their own best economic and political policies”.

 

[LAfrique]

"Dependency on aid undermines the ability of Africans." I agree.

Spoon-feeding any group of people does not help them at all. I believe those seeking to reach-out to the poor should do so by providing them with necessary tools and technology to help them thrive for themselves. Indefinite welfare programs kill the survival spirit of people and render people dependent.

 

[old navy]

I do not get why Africa appears to be regressing into deep poverty. Africa is so rich in natural resources that I just cannot understand why the Continent continues to be in poverty, while imperialists thrive from Africa's wealth.

I wondered the same while looking at a western setting sun in the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia in 1996. I could have been in California until looking down the undelevoped coast that had untreated sewage draining into the Atlantic. Cholera, civil strife, drugs, corruption, rape and murder, malaria, and miriad other diseases have kept the continent down.

Whenever a program such as birth control, HIV prevention, or village sanitation is started, it is the women that get it done. Problem is, the men always screw it up. Rape, murder, control, unsafe sex, and old habits that die hard, have and will mess up life for Africans and keep them from reaching their potential.