Microfinance Practice: RE: [MFP] Re: Fwd: FW: Unbanked News

Would appreciate receiving at meyer.19@osu.edu. Dick

From: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2014 9:32 AM
To: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MFP] Re: Fwd: FW: Unbanked News - South Africa

Dick,

I suggest that you visit www.thesavix.org, which is a relational database covering 309 projects and about 3 million people in 31 countries, mostly in Africa. You will get a lot of hard financial and membership and financial performance data from these, derived from about 230,000 groups. Average annualised RoA is over 30% and long-term 4 year) survival of independent groups is 89%.

I have a data sheet that I maintain that covers over 70 countries and some 8.8 million SG members, contributed about twice a year, informally, by INGOs. It doesn't capture independent southern NGOs (except in rare cases) and, most significantly, it does not capture spontaneous replication, which Kenyan and Ugandan studies indicate a tripling of the number of formally groups through group-to-group informal facilitation. Send me your e-m and I'll provide.

Hugh

From: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: 11 July 2014 03:33
To: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MFP] Re: Fwd: FW: Unbanked News - South Africa

Hugh: do you have stats by country in Africa for number of groups, members, volume of savings, etc.? Any papers written about them? Dick

From: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2014 1:49 PM
To: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MFP] Re: Fwd: FW: Unbanked News - South Africa

Self-promotion! Well, there's a thing. I mentioned SaveAct because it is the largest savings group activity in South Africa and is expanding very rapidly. I have very little involvement with them, but do believe that it's worth knowing about, even if it only makes poor people's live a bit more tolerable, while doing the reverse of what you deplore – creating indebtedness. I am sure that's not important in the face of the macro-tsunami you describe, but I find it worthwhile. Or do you think that 10 million people in Africa preferring to use savings groups to MFIs is a side-issue? At this time the scale is quite small in South Africa, but massive in other countries in the region - and everything starts with a small initiative.

Hugh

From: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: 10 July 2014 11:15
To: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MFP] Re: Fwd: FW: Unbanked News - South Africa

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