Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Mainstreaming Microfinance does exactly what its subtitle claims – it tells you how lending to the poor began, grew and came of age in Bolivia. By the time you have finished reading it, not only do you feel that you have got to know the personalities involved in the microfinance movement in Bolivia, but you come away with a broad understanding of how microfinance influences and is influenced by broader economic and political changes in the country.
Mainstreaming Microfinance looks at microfinance schemes in the context of Bolivia. Tell us about the book.
Most of my own work on microfinance has been in Asia, where modern microfinance was born in the late 1970s. But there was another centre of world microfinancial innovation – Bolivia. Elisabeth Rhyne is someone who knows Bolivia well, and Mainstreaming Microfinance does exactly what its subtitle claims – it tells you how lending to the poor began, grew and came of age in Bolivia. By the time you have finished reading it, not only do you feel that you have got to know the personalities involved in the microfinance movement in Bolivia, and have gained some insights into the lives of the microfinance clients, but you come away with a broad understanding of how microfinance influences and is influenced by broader economic and political changes in the country.
Can we learn anything from the book about the limits of microfinance?
Yes indeed. Mainstreaming Microfinance is remarkable in being as frank and as insightful about the mistakes and crises that microfinance has suffered as it is about microfinance’s undoubted successes. Full-blooded commercial competitiveness came to Bolivia’s microfinance much earlier than it did in Bangladesh, and the book’s description of ruthless competition and its consequences is gripping. Rhyne recognises that not all micro-lending is wholesome; some is destructive.
Read full interview
Stuart Rutherford, author of The Poor and their Money, is interested in the way in which poor people manage their money. He has spent the last 30 years travelling the world, researching the different financial strategies of the less well-off in a variety of different cultures. This has led him to an interest in microfinance, the practice of issuing small loans in poor communities, with the aim of empowering individuals to invest as they choose. In the 1990s he set up SafeSave, his own microfinance co-operative in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and later in Hrishipara, a rural area. SafeSave is an alternative to the popular microfinance schemes, based on saving rather than loans (you can find out about SafeSave on his website).
