In the past decade, microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low-income households while maintaining high repayment rates--even without requiring collateral. The programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services, and millions of poor households are served globally. A growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success--particularly the use of group-lending contracts with joint liability. For the most part, however, high repayment rates have not translated into profits, and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture. In describing emerging tensions, the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group-lending contracts, the measurement of financial sustainability, the estimation of economic and social impacts, the costs and benefits of subsidization, and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit. The promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence, and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion.

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The microfinance promise

The Future of Small Farms: New Directions for Services, Institutions and Intermediation

In sub-Saharan Africa, there is fairly broad agreement that increased investment in key public goods such as roads and communications infrastructure, agricultural research and water control will be required if revitalised agricultural development is to take place. However, it has proved more difficult to reach agreement on what needs to be done to improve the performance of agricultural markets. In this article we set out an agenda for investment and policy reform in this area, providing a brief theoretical examination of the co-ordination problems involved before examining in turn demand and supply constraints affecting smallholder farmers, and policies for price stabilisation and the co-ordination of support services. We also argue that increased attention needs to be paid to governance issues.

Overcoming Market Constraints on Pro‐Poor Agricultural Growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Making Finance Work for Africa presents a coherent policy approach that addresses African priorities and can work in African conditions. It challenges the applicability of some conventional views on a range of issues from securities markets and banking regulation to the organization of microfinance institutions. The authors identify promising trends from across sub-Saharan Africa and pinpoint shortcomings. The book will be useful to policy makers, bankers, financial analysts, and economists working in Africa.

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Making finance work for Africa

This book focuses on how the demand for microfinance can be met on a global scale. It documents the contributions of institutions and of people who have led the development of commercial finance for the poor, and it analyzes the principles on which the microfinance revolution is based. In sum, this work offers a detailed overview of the development of microfinance over the past 20 years; a global view of microfinance in the developing world (largely excluding Eastern Europe); a thesis on the future path of microfinance; a coherent theory about microfinance--why it works when so many other development interventions fail; detail on a number of important microfinance topics--such as informal moneylending and savings; an important study on, and lessons from Indonesia, with detailed analysis of Bank Rakyat Indonesia; and, brief studies of many other microfinance institutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

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The microfinance revolution

Although governments have traditionally used subsidized credit programs to promote agricultural growth, this approach has generally failed to improve incomes and alleviate poverty in rural areas. It has also led to the mistaken belief that rural credit programs cannot be profitable. A new approach seeks to raise standards of living in rural areas by casting the government in a very different role- one of setting a favorable legal and policy environment for rural financial markets and addressing specific market failures cost effectively through well-designed and self-sustaining interventions. There is evidence that this approach can be highly successful. The village bank system of bank Rakyat Indonesia has shown that financial services can be extended to millions of low-income rural clients without relying on subsidies. Indeed, the program has generated enormous profits for the bank by using simple, innovative, and largely replicable techniques.

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Jacob Yawn

Papers

Promoting Efficient Rural Financial Intermediation