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Concluding Remarks - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia

Guest post by: African Development Bank

Article Overview: One of the most important outcome of the analysis in this paper has been that while most MFI programmes aim to reduce poverty and empower women through their programme, there is usually no clear implementation mechanism to fulfil these aims; they continue to be programmes with the same requirements and characteristics.

Concluding Remarks - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia

One of the most important outcome of the analysis in this paper has been that while most MFI
programmes aim to reduce poverty and empower women through their programme, there is usually
no clear implementation mechanism to fulfil these aims; they continue to be programmes with the
same requirements and characteristics. Furthermore, one of the major constraints in the discussion
of gender and micro credit is the inadequate and insufficient participation of the female clients
themselves in the design of the programmes. For example it would be better suited to define what
empowerment means to a certain group and then design the project to enable women to achieve
this empowerment level. Perhaps the second most important constraint is the insufficient empirical
evidence from Africa. The micro credit model most commonly replicated and known internationally
was to a great extent born in South East Asia and Bangladesh particularly. Thus, much of the
research and studies on successes, failures, weaknesses and opportunities of micro credit are
measured with this framework and context in mind. This is a mismatch which is most likely to
brand the African experience to be “inadequate”.
Micro-credit programs have progressively increased over the last decades in Africa. In comparison,
there is nearly no convincing and/ or comprehensive evidence to show that poverty has been
reduced sustainably amongst a certain group of clients. Indicators such as repayment rates and
“demand” for credit do not result in poverty reduction; they simply mean that there is a “need”, as
always, for more resources. Furthermore, repayments being made simply indicates that the clients
are in a position to payback, where and how they get that payback amount is not scrutinised.
Despite such evidence, micro-credit delivery programmes are on the rise, more than ever before.
In Malawi alone there are more than twenty nine micro-credit delivery programmes, projects and
institutions. Donors too are infatuated by micro-credit as the answer to all development problems.
However, they view it from a supply side scenario, and very little time is devoted to analyse ‘what
kind of credit is desired’ by the potential clients.
One of the misconceptions amongst practitioners is that an MFI targets the ultimate poorest of
the poor, the landless, the assetless, and the destitute. However, the paper has demonstrated that
for an MFI such a client profile will not ensure returns and increase profits, and it is precisely such
a beneficiary profile that is unattractive and unlikely to become a potential client. The changing
policy environment, thus, puts more pressure and competition for the scarce resources between
the poorest of the poor and the “not-so-poor”. This paper has highlighted the fact that since
development interventions put greater focus on, for example, export markets, trade promotion,
and medium scale farmers and entrepreneurs, the actual micro-credit clients are not the typical
‘hand-to-mouth’ poor.
The analysis in the paper has discussed the practices of MFIs as units in the business of delivering
finance and making profits or at least recovering investments and other costs. Through the analysis
of the different features of micro-credit, the paper has raised some questions and concerns on the
absolute validity of micro-credit as a poverty reduction mechanism. The factors analysed revealed
that there are certain undesired effects of micro-credit delivery, which may hinder the process of
poverty reduction. The paper underscored the concern that in the present system, micro-credit at
best may help to reduce the depth of poverty of a client and that too for an unsustainable time
period. This paper, thus raises some preliminary analytical issues which should be considered
carefully in future micro-credit interventions for poverty reduction. Moreover, the analysis of the issues also provide an outline of some areas for further investigations and research which can be
both policy and action oriented.
Finally, the paper has highlighted the fact that the micro-finance industry and the development
agents have become too slow in responding to the changes occurring amongst the poorest of the
poor. In this, the paper has shown that most MFI programmes have been replicating the loan
delivery mechanisms and strategies without critical evaluation of the needs of the clients.
The paper has also questioned the assumption that MFIs through delivering credit empower women.
Evidence from the field has shown that many MFIs in both Ethiopia and Malawi do specifically
target women as clients. However, this is mainly due to the fact that the characteristics of these
micro, short repayment period loans, are best suited to female clients. But the empowerment
process which is assumed to occur as a result of these loans, is impeded by the micro size of the
loan, the small returns from the use of the loan, and the fact that the returns themselves are still
not always the major contributor to the family income in the case where the husband is also
earning an income. However, it was also noted that some indicators of empowerment could be
verified in the case where the woman benefited from at least the fifth cycle of the micro-credit. In
this case the accumulated benefits of the previous loans and their incomes, as well as the increased
experience of the female in managing the loan efficiently contributed to her increased and
autonomous decision-making powers in the household and the community affairs.
The paper has also demonstrated that the features that makes micro-credit ‘suitable’ for the poor
are to a large extent themselves responsible for the inability of the female clients to expand their
businesses, or graduate to bigger loans, and eventually be socially and economically empowered.
These features create the environment which will limit the female borrower to accessing the same
kind and amount of loan whenever the need arises. Therefore, the paper has indicated that in
order to achieve poverty reduction through the micro-credit, the characteristics of such microfinance
loans need to be reviewed and adjusted to the contextual needs of the poor, since the
poor and in particular women are not a homogenous group. Furthermore, the paper has demonstrated
that empowerment is not an automatic result of accessing micro-credit. Therefore, an empowerment
process will only be initiated through specific and targeted gender and empowerment training
both for the MFI staff and for the female borrowers. For example, it was seen that in the cases
where such training was provided, in donor designed MFI programmes in Malawi, women’s
awareness to themselves, to their use of the income, as well as management of community and
other out-of-home affairs was much more effective and carried out with greater confidence, than
otherwise was verifiable.
The findings of this paper have certain implications for the design of future micro-credit
interventions for poverty reduction as well as gender and empowerment. Firstly, proposed microcredit
interventions should undertake a thorough investigation and invite the complete participation
of the targeted communities and in particular record the voice of the women. Most rural
communities in Africa do practice some type of micro-credit lending and repayment, whether it is
an informal rotating savings group, or with the informal money lender, or any other form unique
to a specific context. Therefore, new and more formal micro-credit interventions will be able to
learn a lot and as well improve efficiency in targeting the clients, initiating an empowerment
process, and as well as reducing poverty by understanding and including local knowledge and best practices. Furthermore, more emphasis should be put on identifying the poor and their life
characteristics in order that the programme meets their specific needs. Secondly, each new
intervention should develop and include a set of monitoring indicators on the performance of the
micro-credit programme vis-à-vis poverty reduction and gender and empowerment process; these
indicators should be identified by the target clients and communities. Furthermore, the intervention
should include a mechanism which will allow changes and modifications to be made in the
programme when the implementation does not meet targeted and planned indicators. Thirdly,
gender roles and empowerment sensitisation training should be a standard compulsory activity in
all micro-credit delivery programmes. Last but not least, micro-credit programmes, because of
their potential for wide rural outreach, should be used as a platform to address major development
challenges which may have a negative impact on the performance and progress of the microcredit
loans by clients. These challenges are mainly, raising awareness and mitigating the spread
and impact of HIV/ AIDS in a targeted community, and designing a programme activity on providing
functional literacy and alphabetisation.

ECONOMIC RESEARCH PAPERS
NO 74
(January 2003)
Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia
by
Sunita Pitamber

Related Articles
  Savings Mobilisation: Tenets of Micro-credit for Poverty Reduction
  Group Mobilisation: Tenets of Micro-credit for Poverty Reduction
  Abstract - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia
  Micro-finance Policy and Development Framework: Malawi
  Introduction - Abstract - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia

Article Tags: african experience, aims, bangladesh, constraint, constraints, credit delivery, decades, donors, empirical evidence, female clients, implementation mechanism, malawi, mfi, micro credit, mismatch, poverty reduction, repayment rates, repayments, south east asia, successes failures



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