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
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
It's the women who will pull Africa into modernity. (imo)
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.