Anideepa Begum - microentrepreneur and mother of five has just received her fourth loan from Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) – a microfinance fund disbursement organisation working with local partners in Bangladesh.
It led to the creation of the village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) model, which I see as a great example of sustainable microfinance and something that makes a big difference for a relatively modest investment.
Mike Warmington, microfinance partnerships manager, One Acre Fund, London, UK, @oneacrefund Individuals are limited without finance: The sustainable development goals are about unlocking the bottlenecks that are preventing individuals from reaching their potential – access to education, access to water/sanitation, global health challenges.
In his speech to microfinance experts at the symposium in Turin, Masiyiwa recounted a story about the judge in Zimbabwe who granted Econet Wireless's licence in 1998, saying that 70% of people in the country had never heard a telephone ring.
@BRACworld Scott MacMillan handles north American communications for BRAC, focusing on girls empowerment as well as microfinance, education, healthcare, legal services and human rights.
Even many of his own constituents appear fed up with him as their MP: he will have to fight to keep his seat in Amethi, in Uttar Pradesh (UP .His "passions", say those close to him, include tinkering with the structure of Congress's youth wing to make it more democratic, crowd-sourcing the party manifesto, and a big, but largely unnoticed, women's microfinance project in UP.
In Africa fees can amount to 20% of the money sent.At their destination savings often end up under the mattress rather than channelled into microfinance schemes, for instance, as many development experts have long hoped.
Nearby, another beneficiary of a microfinance scheme has opened a shop selling beer, crisps (potato chips) and sweets.
Since then several studies have found limited or no benefits from microfinance, and in 2011 (for different reasons) a new government forced Mr Yunus to resign from the bank he had founded.Now the pattern has been broken: on April 6th the government took one more step in its assault on the bank by taking the power to appoint its own board members away from Grameen and giving it to the central bank.
But the last thing microfinance needs is more money unthinkingly thrown at it.
THE loans that microfinance companies make may be tiny but their ambitions can be vaulting.
