We provide small loans (otherwise known as microloans), basic business training and continuing guidance to groups of women in sub-Saharan Africa. This enables them to develop self-sustainable livelihoods, feed, clothe and educate their families, and work their way out of the poverty trap. We now have twenty offices in Malawi and have made microloans to 17,000 women. We have recently begun operating in Namibia and Zambia as well.

19th February 2010

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Microloan Foundation and Agriculture

From: Muzungu in Kasungu

Daniella in Kasungu

n a slightly separate vein from my usual social performance management work, I’ve also been involved in setting up a partnership between MicroLoan Foundation and a local charity based in Mchinji, who focus on agricultural sustainability and food security for the most vulnerable. An agreement is being worked on whereby they provide the agricultural training and support and help groups access markets and form associations. MicroLoan will work in the same geographical area, providing its clients with loans and group dynamics/leadership training. The idea is that the most vulnerable in this area of Mchinji therefore benefit not only from better agricultural skills, but have more access to credit to buy inputs (like fertilizer) and support to market their produce more effectively after harvest.

To introduce the local charity to MicroLoan Foundation’s way of working, we went to visit a ‘tilime’ group. This is a special kind of MicroLoan group, who are given a loan not to invest in their business, but to spend on agricultural inputs. It’s made during the rainy season when most people are planting their fields. This particular group welcomed us in matching group chitenges (the colourful cloth women use as skirts) and exuberant singing and dancing! They told us that they used their loans for fertilizer to grow maize, legumes and groundnuts, and that their fields are flourishing. One lady informed us that this is her fourth loan, though her first time loan. With the first loan’s profits she managed to invest in a goat, with the second a bicycle, with the third she extended her house, and now she is expanding her area under cultivation with the tilime loan. The sense of group solidarity was undeniable. Recently when one member was bitten by a snake and forced to stay in hospital for a month, the remainder of the group tended her fields for her, harvested her crops and assisted her family.

http://muzunguinkasungu.blogspot.com/2010/02/agriculture-and-microloan-foundation.html

Microloan Foundation