Microfinance

On Friday I went to a meeting for women’s groups in the Northern province organized by SLANGO (Sierra Leone Association of NGOs). SLANGO is the national coordinating body for NGOs in Sierra Leone. The purpose of the meeting was to share information with women’s groups in the region and to try to connect them with NGOs that want to work with them.

The NGOs at this meeting were two local NGOs that offer microcredit. In several of the development blogs I follow (see list on the right), there has been quite a bit of debate recently about the merits of microcredit (does it actually lift people out of poverty?) and how it should best be done (non-profit vs. for profit), so it was interesting to me to hear about some of the programs offered and hear what the women here thought afterwards.

Both organizations focused on working with women and offered a variety of different types of loans, starting from about Le 300,000 (a little less than $100 CDN) all the way up to Le 20 million for bigger groups (e.g. agricultural associations). The loans had to be taken out to support or expand an agricultural operation, or to expand or start a business. Loans could be made to borrowers without collateral in groups, so that the people in the group serve as each other’s guarantee of repayment. Interest rates were low, 2-3% depending on the purpose of the loan. Each loan also included an element of forced savings – part of what the borrower repaid was put into a savings account, which they were able to access once the loan was fully repaid. Each organization also required borrowers to attend training/information sessions before borrowing so that they fully understood the process.

After the meeting, Sally and Mabinty told me that the conditions offered by these organizations were not feasible for women in Mapaki. There were a few reasons for this. The first is that the amount of the loans in general was too large – the women here are either engaged in small-scale agriculture and sometimes in petty trading as well and wouldn’t be able to either use such a large amount of money all at once, or earn back enough income to make the required payments in time. Another problem is that because Mapaki is located in a rural area, women here who do petty trading may only have the opportunity to sell their goods once a week at the nearest market in Mayalaw (at the junction of the road to Mapaki with the highway, 7 miles from here). This means it takes much longer for women here to generate income from an investment compared to someone in a town that is able to go to market every day.

The women from Mapaki who attended the SLANGO meeting in turn met with the rest of the women here in Mapaki to share the information. All the women here generally felt the same – that these programs would not work for them. However, there is still an interest here in microcredit. The CIDA project currently ongoing here (a project of cdpeace and Peaceful Schools International) includes a small amount of funding to support women’s groups, Le 320,000 ($100 CDN). The women in Mapaki decided that they will use this money to start their own smaller-scale microcredit project here in the village. This way it will be organized by them locally and can work with very small amounts, making the payments easier to achieve. The women will retain control over the money and can make decisions together about how it should be used. I think that this is a great idea and am looking forward to seeing how it works. This is a good example of how given a big of support, a community can find its own solution to development challenges.

Oh, and the meeting was also an excellent test of my Krio as I took the minutes. My comprehension is really pretty good. Now if I only I could learn to speak it a little better . . .

A few more links

The Nova Scotia Gambia Association (NSGA) has a new short documentary on their work in The Gambia and on the lessons we in the developed world can learn from our friends and partners in West Africa. The NSGA also works in Sierra Leone. I haven't watched the whole film yet (stupid slow internet), but the 6 minutes I did watch were very good. You can see the film online at http://www.journeymanfilm.com/work/ - click on the photo of the African man in the bottom right corner to watch.

Sign Amnesty International USA's petition on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone: http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/sierra_leone/slpetition.php

Also, if you're interested in issues like development, global health, aid, and Africa, there are quite a few blogs that I read regularly on these topics - see the blog roll I have posted (scroll down, it's on the right) for a list of a few.

On water and power

Yesterday was an interesting day. The chief had a visit from a couple of staff from the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) along with someone representing the embassy of Japan. UNDP is the donor who funded the building of the community centre in Mapaki a couple of years ago, so they came back to see the project and to talk about new projects. It looks likely that UNDP will fund the replacement of pipes so that water can be piped into Mapaki. The water comes from a dam about a mile from the main road in Mapaki. The walk there was beautiful (pictures are posted - link is in the "links" section). The dam was built originally in the 60s or 70s. Water from the dam was carried down to the village via a pipe system (you can see the pipe sticking out in the photo on the right) and allowed people to have much easier access to water, especially during the dry season when water shortages are a problem. However, during the conflict a lot of the pipe, made of copper, was ripped up by fighting forces to be sold or used for other purposes. Since then, the chief has been trying to get the pipe repaired, and it looks like there could be water from this source in Mapaki by the end of this year. Very exciting!

Last night there was the biggest rainstorm I have seen since coming to Sierra Leone. The rain was so heavy, the lightning bright and frequent, and the thunder loud. I find heavy rain here is magnified even more because all of the roofs are made of metal (zinc I think), so the sound of the rain is made even louder when it hits the roofs. Then, in the midst of a very heavy downpour, around 6:30 or so, just when the sun was going down, it started to hail. Yes, you read that right, hail. I didn’t think it could hail in such a hot climate. One of the people I was talking with said this had only ever happened once before. Everyone seemed quite surprised by it, and the kids ran out in the rain picking up the tiny balls of ice. Especially because there is no refrigeration here in Mapaki, ice is really a novelty, so the hail caused a lot of excitement.

If this storm had happened in Nova Scotia, our power would most definitely have gone out! Luckily, there’s no power here to lose! :-) I read an interesting little note yesterday about off grid electricity. The article said (I’ll look for the link and post it if I can find it again) that donors are finally starting to realise that providing central grid electricity across Africa is not going to be feasible (for example, here in Sierra Leone, only Freetown, Bo and I believe Kenema have grid electricity, and even that can be unreliable), and that they need to begin to look at local, off-grid power solutions like solar power, small scale hydro, and other options. The next big revolution in local, small-scale power generation could happen right here in Africa. Interesting.

p.s.  saw a very large centipede in my room this morning - about 6 inches long and half an inch wide. Nice.