Micro-finance improves lives of rural people

AS efforts are being made to incorporate the poor – mainly those from rural areas – into the mainstream and formal banking sector, some of the country’s disadvantaged are not sitting on their laurels waiting for miracles.

Many rural people – with assistance from organisations like Rural People’s Institute for Social Empowerment (RISE) Namibia – have taken charge of their lives by establishing village banks and financial schemes which benefit members by providing capital and loans in an organised manner, and improving their financial knowledge. This is a story which is often untold, as people in the rural areas are often depicted as those languishing in poverty with no ideas to better their lives.Micro-finance practitioners, mostly from villages in the northern and southern regions, have gathered in Windhoek to discuss matters affecting their operations and to find new models for effective financial service delivery.A three-day workshop, which started yesterday, has brought together members of savings and credit associations (SCAs) from the Kavango, Caprivi, Oshana, Oshikoto, Omusati, Ohangwena, Karas and Hardap regions.The SCAs were borne out of the realisation that uneducated, unemployed and poor people were unable to access loans from commercial banks and were continually financially marginalised.The workshop was organised and is being conducted by the Rural People’s Institute for Social Empowerment Namibia.In an interview with The Namibian on the sidelines of the workshop, a micro-finance expert operating in the North, Fredreka Luanda, said SCAs had improved the lives of the often marginalised rural women.As an initiator of the GTZ sponsored ‘Koshi yomuti’, Luanda said the SCA project involved rural women based in the Ohangwena, Omusati, Oshikoto and Oshana regions.”These SCAs have improved the living standards of members who are mostly women.They now have been presented with opportunities …and are contributing towards poverty alleviation,” she said.The hairman of the Omusati Regional Farmers Cooperative, Henrick Hafeni Hasheela, told The Namibian that since coming into being in 1999, the association, made up mostly of subsistence farmers, had grown from 130 members to 949 this year, of which 549 are women farmers.With access to capital through the cooperative’s community bank, Hasheela said a lot had been achieved to help the small-scale farmers improve their agricultural activities and in turn their lives.In the Mashare constituency of the Kavango region, over 200 people have become credit scheme operators since the pilot project was introduced late last year.The pilot will also be introduced to the Mukwe and Kapako areas in the same region.Rise Namibia Director Pintile Davids said lack of access to money made the poor extremely insecure and curtailed the improvement of their lives.”Development finance, village banks, credit schemes and many more other models came into being as a result of market failure, whereby the formal sector banks and insurance companies are finding it not profitable and risky to go down market where 65 per cent and more of the Namibian population reside,” said Davids.He said SCA members were now exploring other ways of creating synergies between the formal and informal sectors for efficient, broad-based financial service delivery.This is a story which is often untold, as people in the rural areas are often depicted as those languishing in poverty with no ideas to better their lives.Micro-finance practitioners, mostly from villages in the northern and southern regions, have gathered in Windhoek to discuss matters affecting their operations and to find new models for effective financial service delivery.A three-day workshop, which started yesterday, has brought together members of savings and credit associations (SCAs) from the Kavango, Caprivi, Oshana, Oshikoto, Omusati, Ohangwena, Karas and Hardap regions.The SCAs were borne out of the realisation that uneducated, unemployed and poor people were unable to access loans from commercial banks and were continually financially marginalised.The workshop was organised and is being conducted by the Rural People’s Institute for Social Empowerment Namibia.In an interview with The Namibian on the sidelines of the workshop, a micro-finance expert operating in the North, Fredreka Luanda, said SCAs had improved the lives of the often marginalised rural women.As an initiator of the GTZ sponsored ‘Koshi yomuti’, Luanda said the SCA project involved rural women based in the Ohangwena, Omusati, Oshikoto and Oshana regions.”These SCAs have improved the living standards of members who are mostly women.They now have been presented with opportunities …and are contributing towards poverty alleviation,” she said.The hairman of the Omusati Regional Farmers Cooperative, Henrick Hafeni Hasheela, told The Namibian that since coming into being in 1999, the association, made up mostly of subsistence farmers, had grown from 130 members to 949 this year, of which 549 are women farmers.With access to capital through the cooperative’s community bank, Hasheela said a lot had been achieved to help the small-scale farmers improve their agricultural activities and in turn their lives.In the Mashare constituency of the Kavango region, over 200 people have become credit scheme operators since the pilot project was introduced late last year.The pilot will also be introduced to the Mukwe and Kapako areas in the same region.Rise Namibia Director Pintile Davids said lack of access to money made the poor extremely insecure and curtailed the improvement of their lives.”Development finance, village banks, credit schemes and many more other models came into being as a result of market failure, whereby the formal sector banks and insurance companies are finding it not profitable and risky to go down market where 65 per cent and more of the Namibian population reside,” said Davids.He said SCA members were now exploring other ways of creating synergies between the formal and informal sectors for efficient, broad-based financial service delivery.