Since its emergence in the 1970s, microfinance has risen to become one of the most high-profile policies to address poverty in developing and transition countries. It is beloved of rock stars, movie stars, royalty, high-profile politicians and 'troubleshooting' economists. In this provocative and controversial analysis, Milford Bateman reveals that microfinance doesn't actually work. In fact, the case for it has been largely built on hype, on egregious half-truths and – latterly – on the Wall Street-style greed of those promoting and working in microfinance. Using a multitude of case studies, from India to Cambodia, Bolivia to Uganda, Serbia to Mexico, Bateman demonstrates that microfi nance actually constitutes a major barrier to sustainable economic and social development, and thus also to sustainable poverty reduction. As developing and transition countries attempt to repair the devastation wrought by the global financial crisis, Why Doesn't Microfinance Work? argues forcefully that the role of microfinance in development policy urgently needs to be reconsidered.

Incorporates global perspective but focuses on southeastern Europe, a key arena for microfinance and microcredit programs --

Ha-Joon Chang dispels the myths and prejudices that have come to dominate our understanding of how the world works. He succeeds in both setting the historical record straight ('the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet'; 'the US does not have the highest living standard in the world'; 'people in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than people in rich countries') and persuading us of the consequences of his analysis ('making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer'; 'companies should not be run in the interest of their owners'; 'financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient'). As Chang shows above all else, all economic choices are political ones, and it is time we started to be honest about them.

This memoir by a microfinance insider “is essential reading for anyone interested in development economics, a disturbing and yet ultimately hopeful exposé” (John Perkins, New York Times bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman). This is the account of a microfinance true believer whose decade in the industry turned him into a heretic. Working with several microfinance institutions around the world, Hugh Sinclair realized that the $70 billion industry wasn’t doing much to help the people it claimed to serve. In fact, exorbitant interest rates led borrowers into never-ending debt spirals, and aggressive collection practices resulted in cases of forced prostitution, child labor, suicide, and nationwide revolts against the microfinance community. Sinclair weaves a shocking tale of a system increasingly focused on maximizing profits—particularly once large banks got involved. He details his discovery of several scandals, one of the most disturbing involving a large African microfinance institution of questionable legality that charged interest rates in excess of one hundred percent per year and whose investors and supporters included some of the most celebrated leaders of the microfinance sector. Sinclair’s objections were first met with silence, then threats, attempted bribery, and a court case, and eventually led him to become a principal whistleblower in a sector that had lost its soul. Microfinance can work—Sinclair describes moving experiences with several ethical and effective organizations and explains what made them different. But without the fundamental reforms that Sinclair recommends here, microfinance will remain an “investment opportunity” that will leave the poor with hollow promises and empty pockets.

In the mid-1980s the international development community helped launch what was to quickly become one of the most popular poverty reduction and local economic development policies of all time. Microcredit, the system of disbursing tiny micro-loans to the poor to help them to establish their own income-generating activities, was initially highly praised and some were even led to believe that it would end poverty as we know it. But in recent years the microcredit model has been subject to growing scrutiny and often intense criticism. The Rise and Fall of Global Microcredit shines a light on many of the fundamental problems surrounding microcredit, in particular, the short- and long-term impacts of dramatically rising levels of microdebt. Developed in collaboration with UNCTAD, this book covers the general policy implications of adverse microcredit impacts, as well as gathering together country-specific case studies from around the world to illustrate the real dynamics, incentives and end results. Lively and provocative, The Rise and Fall of Global Microcredit is an accessible guide for students, academics, policymakers and development professionals alike.

Microcredit programmes, long considered efficient development tools, now face unprecedented crises in a number of countries. Is this the end of microcredit or rather an essential step in its expansion? Should we stop microcredit altogether or rethink the way it is implemented? Drawing on extensive empirical research conducted in various parts of the world - from Morocco to Senegal to India - this important volume examines the whole chain of microcredit to provide the answers to these questions. In doing so, the authors highlight the diversity of crises, both in intensity and in nature, while also shedding light on a diversity of causes, be it microcredit organizations unprepared for massive growth, saturated local economies or greedy investors and shareholders attracted by profits. Crucially, the authors demonstrate that microcredit is not a monolithic project, and the crises should also be analysed in the light of national histories and policies. An original and necessary intervention in what has become one of the most contentious topics within the development world.

The first feminist critique of the much-lauded microcredit process in Bangladesh.

Zusammenfassung: In this innovative volume, experts from international relations, anthropology, sociology, global public health, postcolonial African literature, and gender studies, take up Ngūgī wa Thiong'o's challenge to see how Africa gives to the west instead of the reverse. Humanitarian assumptions are challenged by unpacking critical legacies from colonial and missionary genealogies to today's global networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Who Gives to Whom: Reframing Africa in the Humanitarian Imaginary is a decolonial gesture that builds onNgūgī's work as well as that of pan-Africanist and intersectional feminist scholars. Contributions range from assessing the impact of historical legacies of colonialism on gender, religious/secular attempts at "saving" Africans to (South) African unrealized project to reconfigure foreign policy frameworks shaped by apartheid. Case studies of "silver bullet" solutions focus on the incorporation of women in peacebuilding, microfinance, and e-waste disposal, to argue that humanitarian interventions continue to mask ongoing forms of despoiling African well-being while shortchanging intersectional African forms of agency. Cilas Kemedjio is Professor of Francophone African and Caribbean literary and cultural studies at the University of Rochester, USA. Cecelia Lynch is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, USA

After almost forty years of development aid most commentators agree that aid as we know it has not worked. Aid fatigue is suffered on both the donor and recipient sides, with a wide divergence between those who call for a radical overhaul of aid delivery methods, those who advocate a complete end to development aid and those who continually demand significant increases in aid flows. David Fee provides a refreshing, insightful and comprehensive analysis of how an exit may actually be possible - drawing on real experience and as such supplying a simple summary of recommended policy steps. The author thoroughly reviews aid for trade, regional integration and microfinance and a host of other solutions that have been proposed - arguing that an exit strategy for both donors and the least developed countries will have to consider the optimal combination of these specific initiatives to best satisfy the necessity of development and at the same time solve the problems of conventional aid.

Established to help people jumpstart their lives and economy after over a half century of conflict, the South Sudanese microcredit sector collapsed in 2012, six years after its takeoff, to the detriment of some 80,000 participants. Microcredit Meltdown is an account of the ambitious launch and premature downfall of the Southern Sudanese microcredit industry. Through a mixed methods ethnographic approach, the book charts the state and non-state actors that embarked upon economic development after war, the assumptions built into microlending, and the impact of ideologies and social norms on economic practice. The text compares industry theories with the experiences of borrowers and finds that microcredit failed in South Sudan due to false assumptions that were inapplicable to this post-conflict environment. Yet the over promising and under-delivering commercial microcredit was not isolated to South Sudan or even post-conflict settings. The Juba microcredit story is an instance of the broader global shift toward the commercial microcredit model. Initiated to get badly needed capital into the hands of poor people, instead the focus became sustaining a lending program. The text shows how the ideological and material constraints of the commercial microcredit paradigm were woefully misaligned with local socio-cultural realities, and created the collapse in South Sudan.