Mutual Guarantee Associations for Small and Micro-entrepreneurs: Lessons Learned from Europe and Africa
Author(s)
De Gobbi, Maria Sabrina
Abstract
We examine a range of six African microfinance institutions with a view to assessing and if possible enhancing their poverty impact. The impact of microfinance loans is variable between institutions, with a tendency in particular for savings services to be taken up by people well below the poverty line, especially in South Africa and Kenya. However, many benefits to the poor from microfinance programmes, in Africa at least, are likely to come via an indirect route, via ‘wider impacts’ or ‘spin-offs’, rather than by through direct impacts on borrowers. We examine, in a non-rigorous way, the magnitude of wider impacts, and in a concluding section examine how they may be developed and expanded by means of institutional and policy initiatives.
