Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: The People’s Calabash The Republic of Uganda The University of Oklahoma Oluwadara Olayiwola, The Federal Republic of Nigeria, The University of Oklahoma, UWC-USA Arthur Makumbi, The Republic of Uganda, Colby College, UWC-USA Sandile Dube, The Kingdom of Swaziland, Dartmouth, UWC-USA
Section I
The goal of this project was to provide small loans mainly to women in and around the Kampala area, in order to empower Ugandans and to give people the means to provide more for themselves and families. We hoped that this would in turn improve living standards of some people and make better the micro economy in the areas we operated in.
We each requested and received funding from departments at our respective schools for the purpose of paying for travel to and from Uganda so as not to spend nearly half of the Davis funding on travel alone. I approached The University of Oklahoma’s Gallogly College of Engineering and they along with the Computer Science department contributed to purchase my flight ticket to and from Uganda. Sandile received travel funding from the Dickey Centre for International Understanding at his school. Arthur got part of his travel funded by Colby College.
Most of the participants in the People’s Calabash live in and around the city of Kampala, located in the Buganda kingdom in Uganda. Buganda’s people speak Luganda and English as well as any other languages any individual might have learnt from the surrounding nations or in school. Interestingly, in Kampala, Ugandans almost exclusively speak Luganda, on the streets, on the news and in stores and one is immediately flagged as an outsider when his/ her accent is heard to sound different. Ugandans are a proud people and as such they were more comfortable receiving help from one of their own and as a result most of our business in Uganda was conducted through our Ugandan colleague; Arthur Makumbi and his mother Mrs Yawe Sheillah. Mrs Yawe in our time in Uganda was invaluable, a godsend as she was and still is involved in microfinance in Uganda so she knew a good number of people who could benefit from these loans. She put us in contact with some of these people, vetted them and did routine follow ups. She was also instrumental in organising our appearance; she suggested that we get some branded loan books, with our vision and mission printed on it to show the people we were committed to seeing true the full extent of our goals.
Our lending method works as thus, we get in contact with people who need loans, either by word of mouth from other customers or through Mrs. Yawe’s connections. After getting people we put them into groups of five for the purpose of bookkeeping, and organising who to visit and when. Loan contracts are then given out, where the borrowers put down their collateral and subsequently we check that the collateral actually belongs to them. This is important as it shows we are organised in our business and it ensures accountability. After we have collected the loan contracts we give out loans of 500,000 UGX to each individual with an interest rate of 8.3% of the original value every month and a repayment time of three months. This interest and repayment model was reached after consulting with our customers and discovering that the previous model of 13% per month for two months was too taxing on some of the borrowers. Eventually after the repayment time is done, customers could, if they wanted to, receive a larger loan, usually around 700,000 UGX. We then continue this way with customers needing more money till they have received and repaid the amount they needed. We adopted this model so as first to ensure that a certain customer could repay and also build trust, before loaning them larger sums of money.
In our time in Uganda we lent to a total of 23 people. That number continues to grow, at this time we have lent to almost thirty people. The project continues to run in Uganda with Mrs Yawe managing the day to day.
The major complaint from people about taking loans from big banks is the fact that the process of getting approved is very long and arduous sometimes taking months with no guarantee that one would be approved for the loan or that they would be loaned the amount that they needed. Although we did not initially loan some people the amount they requested, we strived to, and did respond quickly to people’s loan requests. This is what I feel our biggest impact is and will continue to be, giving people quicker and more affordable loans than is generally available in Uganda.
Section II
When I think of peace what first comes to mind is the absence of war. Myself and Arthur Makumbi come from countries which now or in recent history are involved in some sort of conflict and the topic of peace immediately brings to mind our desire for such conflicts to end. But when I think deeper about the term, I would define peace as the absence of worry. It doesn’t just take a war or some other explicitly violent situation for a country to not be at peace and as such I believe the absence of worry or anxiety about any situation we find ourselves in is peace. Our project as I mentioned before provides loans to small business owners, much quicker and at a lower interest rate than they would get at the bigger banks in Uganda. Therefore, our project contributes to the short term peace of mind of these business owners as they are able to grow or expand their business in a timeframe that is suitable to them at with an interest rate that is not much of a burden. In the long term, our project is ensuring that more people will grow their businesses, employ others and send their children to school. If we can reach as many people as we hope to we can not only improve the local economy around Kampala but by extension the country of Uganda as well, because as our loans help businesses grow and as businesses employ others it means there is less and less of the population in Uganda who are poor.
The project has taught me that patience is very important in any endeavour one undertakes; it introduced me to the entrepreneurial mind-set of many Ugandans; and, it afforded me the opportunity to experience culture and life of people in The Pearl of Africa. The project also changed the way I view privilege as previously I had never been in a position where knowing my first language; English, afforded me no sort of privilege. For the first time I was the one not able to fully communicate my feelings.
“When I arrived here, while we drove down to the place thirty minutes or so from Kampala and 2 or 3 hours from Entebbe (Matugga) I had my head outside the car window, and as the trees sped by and the Lake Victoria glistened in the midnight sky, The Pearl of Africa felt like home. I’ve learned above all else that patience is a very important virtue, from the patience of our customers and other Ugandans in dealing with hardship, to that of our host Mrs Sheillah in putting up with three 20-year- old boys for a month and half. Without patience in whatever way it manifested this project would not have been successful.” --- Oluwadara Olayiwola
Photographs:
Yawe Sheillah, Oluwadara Olayiwola and Arthur Makumbi (L-R) meet with a client.
Arthur Makumbi, Sandile Dube and Mrs. Sheillah (L-R) with a microloan recipient (front).
Arthur (grey shirt), Oluwadara (black shirt) and Sandile (kneeling) with microloan patrons.