Finance

Yohane Mdeme owns a food market in Tanzania. Though poor and with little to no collateral, he applied for a loan of $850 through Kiva.org to expand his small business. Twenty years ago in such a place and for such a client, Mdeme would never obtain the capital to increase his business. No bank...
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Kenyan microfinance institutions have for a long time served the unbanked segments of the population despite several obstacles in their quest to access this niche. It is estimated that micro-enterprises contribute about 18 per cent of Kenya’s gross domestic product and 25 per cent of non-agricultural GDP. It is thus not surprising that many...
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Harvard researchers have a way to help banks screen loan applicants easily. The goal: to spur lending to small and midsized companies in the developing world 1. Do you like taking things apart to see how they work? 2. Do you enjoy going to parties? 3. Given five seconds, how long a sequence of...
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Where do Kenyans access reliable credit? The unlikely answer — at their neighbourhood kiosk. It took a 2007 study to unveil this basic truth. The findings turned conventional logic on borrowing on its head. The study showed that the ubiquitous shopkeeper found in every estate, village and even footpath is the most frequent source...
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Mary Ellen Iskenderian remembers the moment when she discovered her purpose in life. As a child, her parents often took her to visit her father’s family in Turkey where she saw, for the first time, people living in utter poverty. She remembers thinking, “I don’t want to spend my life looking the other way.”...
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“If you keep looking at microfinance from the point of view of idealism, it’ll never work,” says the director of an investment company. “But you can’t see poor people as a paying concern,” counters the lecturer in microfinance. The two experts clashed head on during a debate at Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The question: has...
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STEVE EMBER:  I’m Steve Ember. BARBARA KLEIN:  And I’m Barbara Klein with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we talk about a method that helps provide low-income people with the financial services they need to improve their lives. Organizations around the world are showing how microfinance methods can help lift poor people out of...
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In any developed or emerging economy small businesses provide the momentum to spur growth and economic development. Bill Gates and Manu Chandaria were once start-up entrepreneurs. They would hardly have dreamt that they would at some point in their careers become such huge successes. Such figures of success made it the hard way with...
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The Kenyan Government enhanced mortgage financing and opened up the insurance business to members of the East African Community. Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta also said the law would be amended to accommodate Islamic banking, which has been operating since 2007. Mr Kenyatta increased the threshold of core capital that banks are allowed to invest...
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The World Bank has launched a multi billion shilling project to boost agricultural productivity among smallholder farmers in Eastern and the Horn of Africa to end reliance on expensive food imports. The programme, under the bank’s 12-year adaptable programme loans (APL), seeks to establish centres of excellence in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia and...
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