Author Archive
The Most Expiring Loan: Part 1
During training for the Kiva Fellowship I heard it mentioned numerous times that taxi drivers in Central Asia (but specifically in Azerbaijan) were the least demanded loans on Kiva. Their loans took the longest to get funded and expired most often. I was not surprised. After all, “Transportation”, being at the end of the Sector list on Kiva also competes with attention-grabbers like “Agriculture”, “Food”, “Housing” and “Retail” that precede it. What’s more, Kiva’s lenders prefer loaning to women, a fact supported by the percentage of Kiva loans that have been made to women entrepreneurs, which currently stands at almost 82%. Thus, taxi drivers raising funds on Kiva are at a justifiable disadvantage considering their entirely male demographic. I gave some more thought to this trend and came up with a few possible causes for it.
Sacrifices and Microfinance
On November 8th AqroInvest received new capital from an existing partnership with PlaNIS and a new partnership with Microenterprise. AqroInvest is one of Kiva’s two Field Partners in Azerbaijan. It is important to note that microfinance institutions, such as AqroInvest, depend on new partners and capital for growth. That Monday also happened to be my first day at AqroInvest. At the end of the day the entire staff and I celebrated with champagne and cake, making toasts to AqroInvest’s bright future, and my anticipated contribution to it. It was a very joyous occasion.
