Hi Hugh, no, I had not heard of this initiative, but I'm not sure what point you are making (other than perhaps self-promotion) in bringing up one small initiative against a backdrop of massive microcredit sector failure in South Africa. I mean, South Africa's sophisticated first-world banks and their CEOs have been making huge profits from their engagement with microcredit. However, their profit-driven focus has mainly been upon serving poor black South African consumers to temporarily and unsustainably bump up their spending on needed consumer goods. But there was also a focus, even more unforgivably, on working with other 'perfect targets' like the financially illiterate miners in Rustenberg, who were a a result programmatically over-indebted over several years, which was a factor that contributed to their growing anger and resentment and ultimately strike action that ended with the 'Marikana Massacre' in 2012 when 34 miners were shot to death at close range by the South African police. Meanwhile, industrial and agricultural development is seriously faltering in South Africa on account of a desperate shortage of working and investment capital for long-term projects that will employ the poor in meaningful growth-oriented industrial and agricultural activities. So what one small initiative can do is surely not the issue when set against a background of such a disastrous misallocation of capital, wouldn't you agree?
Milford
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Posted by: milford bateman <milfordbateman@yahoo.com>
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