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Micro-Start Program: Local Technical Services Provider - Impact Study of the Zakoura Microcredit Program

Written by: United Nations Capital Development Fund

Article Overview: Zakoura Micro-Crédit (ZMC) is the microfinance arm of the Zakoura Foundation, a national NGO devoted to increasing the quality of life of the most underprivileged Moroccans. ZMC provides credit and training to a target market of economically disadvantaged women using a solidarity group methodology. Between its founding in 1995 and September 2000, ZMC had disbursed 82,814 loans totaling 121,489,000 Dirhams. Its current repayment rate is 99.69%

Micro-Start Program: Local Technical Services Provider - Impact Study of the Zakoura Microcredit Program

Summary of Results and Main Recommendations of the Study


Institutional Framework


Zakoura Micro-Crédit (ZMC) is the microfinance arm of the Zakoura Foundation, a national NGO devoted to increasing the quality of life of the most underprivileged Moroccans. ZMC provides credit and training to a target market of economically disadvantaged women using a solidarity group methodology. Between its founding in 1995 and September 2000, ZMC had disbursed 82,814 loans totaling 121,489,000 Dirhams. Its current repayment rate is 99.69%.


Goals of the Study


ZMC is a participant in the UNDP’s MicroStart program, which provides training and technical support to promising microfinance institutions around the world. This impact study was conducted by the Local Technical Service Provider (LTSP) DIS .


From ZMC’s point of view, the study had four main objectives:


To better understand their clients’ requirements in terms of products;

To allow them to assess client satisfaction;

To evaluate the impact of the program on clients’ lives and businesses; and

To understand the reasons clients leave the program.

The results of the study will be used to “prove and improve”: to develop an objective sales argument about the impact of ZMC, useful for both management and external partners; and to develop a set of recommendations for enhancing the institution’s operations and impact. To that end, the study analyzes ZMC’s impact at three levels: on clients’ enterprises, on their households, and on clients as individuals. In order to gauge these effects, we utilized “Learning from Clients: Assessment Tools for Microfinance Practitioners – Draft Manual” (AIMS Tools) developed by the SEEP Network. These tools include a series of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods.


This report is divided into two parts. The first part gives a description of the context of the study, lays down the hypotheses to be examined and presents the methodology to be employed while collecting information during the surveys.
The results of the study are presented in the second half. Rather than presenting them in a linear fashion by giving the results for each of the tools used, we chose to combine all that we had learnt from each of the tools and present the results thematically, divided into chapters and sections.
Here, we shall give a summary of the most salient results and then sum up the main recommendations.

Micro-Start Program: Local Technical Services Provider-
Impact Study of the Zakoura Microcredit Program
Fouzi MOURJI
(December 2000)

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Article Tags: assessment tools, client satisfaction, clients requirements, disadvantaged women, external partners, group methodology, hypotheses, impact study, institutional framework, microfinance institutions, microfinance practitioners, microstart, moroccans, national ngo, qualitative evaluation methods, repayment rate, solidarity group, target market, technical service provider, zmc



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