Posts filed under ‘Kenya’
In Sickness Or In Wealth
By Brittany Boroian, Kiva Fellow Class 12 with Faulu Kenya in Nairobi, Kenya
It all started last Monday with a cold. I downed orange juice, popped some sudafed, and went through two boxes of tissues.
A day later, I found myself in St. Theresa’s Ward of Nairobi Hospital.
Micro-finance Means Community in East Africa
By Brittany Boroian, Kiva Fellow Class 12 with Faulu Kenya in Nairobi, Kenya
Hello Kiva readers! My name is Brittany Boroian, and this is my first post on the Kiva Fellows blog! I am a Class 12 Kiva Fellow working with Faulu Kenya, one of the largest micro-finance institutions in Kenya. I have worked with micro-finance in Asia and South America, and this is my first time to Africa.
I’ve only been in Kenya a few days, but one realization that has been apparent to me immediately in East Africa is the sense of community with your co-workers.
Vote for Kiva Field Partner Juhudi Kilimo as an Ashoka Changemaker!
By Rachel Brooks, KF9/10, Kenya
Kiva Field Partner Juhudi Kilimo has been nominated by Changemakers and Artemisia as a model of how to build the field of social business. Juhudi qualified as one of 448 entries from 78 countries as an outstanding demonstration of innovation, social impact, and sustainability.
Vote now (http://www.changemakers.com/socialbusiness/finalists#tab-section) until August 11 to help them win $5000. The winner will be announced on August 18th.
Continue Reading 2 August 2010 at 12:59 Rachel Brooks Leave a comment
Video: How MFI’s explain Kiva to borrowers
Jenny Jin, KF11 – Kenya, KADET
Check out a video that features how a microfinance partner, KADET, explains Kiva to clients.
Continue Reading 1 August 2010 at 10:35 Jenny Jin 6 comments
Video: Kenyan mountaintops is where wonderful inspirations live
In Kabarnet, a town situated on the mountain tops of Western Kenya, I spent a day with Irene, a credit officer, to meet KADET’s client groups living in this area. At the end of the day, I was tired but happy from all the people I had the pleasure to meet. One young woman, at the young age of 28, was earning less than $2 a day and supporting 8 orphan children in addition to her own two kids. Wow!
In The Words of Our Clients – An SMS Journal Pilot in Kenya
By Jeremy Gordon, KF11, Kenya
On July 26th, Erick Bii updated the 21 lenders that had supported his loan with the state of his business, the impact of his loan on his family, and his recent challenges. To read the full journal, click on the quote above.
To communicate with his lenders, Erick didn’t need to travel to the Juhudi branch office in Litein, or even sit down with a loan officer at his farm. Instead, he responded to a series of SMS questions sent to him via his mobile phone. Erick chose to receive his survey in Kiswahili, but in several of [our] [early] [tests], borrowers preferred to send their updates in English. (more…)
Transparency Through Client Feedback
By Jeremy Gordon, KF11 and Rachel Brooks, KF10, Kenya
“Esther Keino hopes Juhudi will consider giving loans without requiring solidarity groups in future as group lending is sometimes discouraging because not all members are reliable.”
“Peter is grateful Juhudi Kilimo is focusing on the rural poor who would otherwise have limited or no access to capital. He likes the funding for dairy cows as it is not just for financial purposes but also for social purposes, as it improves the health of families.”
Kiva entrepreneurs can often be a little uncomfortable answering even some of the basic questions for a Kiva profile. Yet at the end of an interview, when Juhudi Kilimo loan officers ask if clients have any other comments, the clients often noticeably relax and open up with quite a few other comments.
Who are the entrepreneurs at KADET?
Jenny Jin, KF11- Kenya, KADET
In the first weeks as a Kiva Fellow with KADET, I learned that the Kenyan microfinance organization focused on serving rural small entrepreneurs, both men and women. But it wasn’t until I got into the field and met the clients that I began to have a richer understanding of the entrepreneurs that KADET was serving. The clients were infallibly gracious in their welcome, and shared details of their businesses, their family life, and invited me into their homes and introduced me to their neighbors. As many other Kiva Fellows attest, these field visits to meet clients have been the best part of my experience and oftentimes also present the greatest challenge to figure out how to pass on this information to the Kiva community without losing much of the vibrancy.
A Good Way to Handle Meeting Latecomers
By Steve Grey, KF11, Kenya
… it was one of the meeting management techniques that intrigued me. At the beginning of the 4-hour session (with no break!), the leader asked the 100+ attendees to come up with rules for the meeting… fines for cell phone use, fines for leaving the meeting, and fines for arriving late… You might be wondering, “What do they do with the fines?”. Well that’s one of the more interesting parts of this system…
Continue Reading 23 July 2010 at 12:01 stevensgrey 7 comments
Solar Loans in Kenya
Jenny Jin, KF11
This past weekend I had the opportunity to check out one of KADET’s newest loan products: solar loans!
Money goes Mobile: Kenya leads the world!
By Robert Karanja
KF 11, Kenya
In the last two years, the development of mobile money transfers has grown by leaps and bounds in Kenya and today almost every major bank has developed a mobile money product or is in the process of launching one. This represents the next frontier in the provision of banking services to a population that was previously completely left out of the banking system. Dare I say it, Kenya leads the world in mobile banking innovation. Here is why…..
Safaricom the country’s largest mobile service provider with over 15 million subscribers first launched its MPESA mobile money service about two years ago and since then this service has grown by leaps and bounds. MPESA was the world’s first mobile money service. Today over Kenya Shillings 2 billion (US$25 million) is sent and received every day using MPESA and most of these transactions are very small meaning that hundreds of thousands of people are using the service every day!
Following Safaricom’s launch of MPESA the second largest mobile network in Kenya, ZAIN launched a mobile money service called ZAP. ZAP just as Safaricom does enables people to use their mobile phone to do the following:
Pay bills for goods and services, receive and send money from friends/family/business associates, send and receive money to their bank accounts, withdraw cash, buy mobile airtime. This is just the beginning developers are working day and night to add more applications to mobile phone services.
In the past few months no less than three major banks in Kenya have launched their mobile money services. Kenya Commercial Bank launched “KCB Connect”, Family Bank launched “PESA PAP” and the largest bank in Kenya, Equity Bank launched “MKESHO”
These developments also lead me to believe that there is a great future in mobile microfinance and a few months ago a small, start up Dutch based MFI called Musoni set up shop in Nairobi and their entire business model is based on mobile microfinance. Musoni will be able to disburse loans and collect payments using mobile forms as a platform. They are able to disburse loans to new customers within 6 hours from when the loan application is submitted. This is a record in Kenya and one of the fastest loan applications I have ever heard of.
I am excited about all these developments in mobile money and cannot wait to see what comes up next.
A letter from Dorice to the Kiva Community
Dorice is the newest Kiva assistant coordinator for KADET, the Kenyan microfinance partner that I’ve been working with through my Kiva Fellowship. Dorice is new to KADET’s Kiva Operations team but she’s been with KADET for years, and has been a real source of inspiration and fun for the staff and past Kiva Fellows with her passion to help others and her social personality. A week ago, I asked Dorice whether she’d be interested to introduce herself to the Kiva community on the blog, and she wrote a wonderful letter that I’m posting below.
My name is Dorice Lucy Anyango. I’m a Kiva assistant coordinator in KADET Microfinance based in the Nairobi office. I joined the KADET Kiva team in June, and I would like to share the story of myself, and my work for KADET and Kiva.
Meeting Kiva Borrowers in Kitengela, Kenya (3.5 minute video)
By Steve Grey, KF11, Kenya
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGUTs8H-jEg]In this 3.5 minute video, see what it’s like to spend the day with a loan officer from one of Kiva’s lending partners. Hanifa Seme (Credit Officer with Small and Micro Enterprise Programme in Kenya) and Steve Grey (Kiva Fellow) walk “The Pipeline”, a densely populated urban area in Kitengela just outside Nairobi, Kenya. They meet with 9 potential Kiva borrowers to get the information for their Kiva website profiles.
Continue Reading 20 June 2010 at 18:22 stevensgrey 7 comments
Exciting Technology Helping Borrowers, Changing East Africa
Jenny Jin, KF11- Kenya
It’s an exciting time to be in Nairobi, Kenya right now – especially for anyone who’s interested in development. This city is filled with passionate locals and expats who are working on social enterprises, green companies, and tech startups of all different perspectives and approaches to tackle big challenges. I arrived in Nairobi six weeks ago after living in Silicon Valley for the past three years, and I found a city even more energetic about innovation than where I had come from.
Portrait of a Boda Boda Driver
By Jeremy Gordon, KF11, Kenya
“People like us can’t get a loan. You have to be a member of a group with an influential person in it—we don’t know anyone like that.”
- Rama
The second day I passed him on my way to work, a man on a bright red and chrome boda boda (motorbike) befriended me. Rama is not a Kiva entrepreneur, and though he has been in this business for just over a year and a half, he rents his bike daily. He’ll spend the full retail price of a new motorbike every year in rental fees.
Before I left Mombasa, I asked Rama if I could take him to lunch, and ask him a few questions about his business. Over fries and cola, Rama and a fellow boda boda driver told me—in quite a bit of detail—about the financials of their work and lives. I’ve summarized most of what I learned in a balance sheet below, but if you’re interested in the specifics, please read on.
Life and Death in Rongo, Kenya
By Steve Grey, KF11, Kenya
“One of the borrowers on this list, Helida Ochieng, passed away last month.”
Those words hit me like a punch in the stomach. I was in Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria to work with Kisumu Medical & Education Trust (K-MET), one of Kiva’s lending partners in Kenya.
My assignment was to do “borrower verification” – visit 10 randomly selected K-MET borrowers who have received Kiva loans and verify that the information posted on Kiva’s website is accurate (name, loan use, loan amount and term, etc.). But now what? I felt like I was on shaky ground. Was there a way to honor Helida’s memory and be sensitive to her family while also upholding Kiva’s value of transparency to its lenders?
Continue Reading 23 May 2010 at 11:19 stevensgrey 8 comments
Tomorrow is Here: M-Kesho Offers Microloans and Interest via Mobile Phone
By Jeremy Gordon, KF11, Kenya
Yesterday marked big news for branchless banking in Kenya. Safaricom, the company behind the highly successful mobile-money platform M-Pesa, announced its launch of a new service called M-Kesho (kesho meaning tomorrow in Swahili) allowing anyone with a cell phone to begin earning interest on their savings and even to receive a loan.
One of the things that first drew me to opt for a placement here in Kenya was the exciting innovation happening through mobile applications, where Kenya is both a pilot and a hub—pushing limits, and proving viability in this part of the world. This new foray into mobile micro-savings and micro-credit is particularly exciting news to me, so I couldn’t help but head into the local Safaricom agent in hopes of setting up my own account. Unfortunately, once in town, the following became clear: 1) non-Kenyans cannot use M-Kesho, 2) no one (even Safaricom agent employees) knows all that much about it yet. Instead, I’ll share what I do know, and the role this technology may play in the road ahead for microfinance.
The Influence of Choice — Could P2P Funding Introduce Bias?
By Jeremy Gordon, KF11, Kenya
Kiva’s success is exciting. A door is now open allowing us to reach those living in places we can’t easily visit in person and to become personally involved in micro-finance. Making my first loan on Kiva felt a bit like a rediscovery of the internet. International Skype conversations were impressive, but this was something novel—Kiva allowed me to lend my own resources to help achieve someone else’s goal, and I was hooked.
Because this sort of P2P lending is still new, we can’t yet know the full extent of its impact on the microfinance ecosystem; even less can we predict the role it will play five or 20 years into the future. I think it’s important to start a conversation, and to consider what influence we, as lenders, may have.
In some ways, the Kiva lending model is a free market susceptible to the same influences of supply and demand as any other. Perhaps certain loans (maybe agricultural loans to rural farmers) are consistently chosen by lenders more often than others (say, maintenance loans to urban taxi drivers). If loans of the latter type take significantly longer to fund on Kiva’s website or are more likely to expire before they’re completed, a flexible market will adapt, and a Kiva partner may choose to post other loans that tend to fund more quickly or reliably.
A Meeting of the Center Chiefs – Welcome to Mombasa
By Jeremy Gordon, KF11, Kenya
Over 500 borrowers and center chiefs gathered in Mombasa
Adet Kachi looked calm but a bit worried. “Not even 50% are here yet,” he said to me as we appraised the meeting hall’s interior. As CEO of Yehu Microfinance, a new Kiva field partner, Adet had reason to be a bit nervous — he and his staff had been working for weeks to prepare for today’s Annual General Meeting. Over 500 center chiefs (each the leader of 7-8 Grameen-model borrowing groups) from Mombasa and farther reaches of Kenya’s coastal province gathered for the meeting. Coming from different towns and villages, many were surrounded by unfamiliar faces. Adet noted with interest that many of those who had arrived the earliest, had also traveled the farthest — some must have departed their homes at 4am in order to make it to Mombasa for the meeting.
By 10:30am, Adet’s concern had faded. I stood at the back of a packed hall, and watched as Hiari, a dance troupe from Kisauni branch, energized the crowd with their performance.
How to Handle a Deadbeat
I got to see a fascinating situation last week in Nairobi when I was with Caroline, a local Credit Officer from SMEP (one of Kiva’s lending partners in Kenya). It was a classic microfinance scenario: What happens when a member of a borrower group doesn’t pay? But it wasn’t theoretical anymore… it was happening right in front of me.
Why am I going to Kenya?
Since we spent most of our time volunteering in developing countries, we saw a lot of poverty. From favelas in Brazil to slum settlements in South Africa to beggars in Calcutta to subsistence farmers in rural areas (including Kenya) poverty was pervasive… but it wasn’t hopeless. In the midst of poverty, we met some inspiring people… Why am I going to Kenya as a Kiva Fellow? I’m going for three reasons…
Continue Reading 29 April 2010 at 18:00 stevensgrey 22 comments
Scaling in a Saturated Market: The Kenyan Experience
Seventeen young, scared faces sit around the board room for the full-day training of new marketers. I had been present the day that this new crop of SMEP employees was being interviewed. They had assembled en masse at our head office; many of them looking like the suit they were wearing had been hastily purchased at one of the local secondhand markets in anticipation of their first job interview. In fact, they were what I refer to as “babies” the young-ish, newly graduated staffers whose faces more often look up at me when I am conducting trainings at the SMEP branch offices all over Kenya.
I don’t call them babies to disparage them, but actually to highlight the new crop of SMEP employees that is fresh-faced and wide-eyed, ready to take on challenges and work for the first MFI in Kenya.
The 17 new marketers take a while to warm up during the training – they seem scared to speak, and I think back to employee trainings I have been in the United States, where each one of us struggles to prove ourselves by opening our mouths and commenting on every nugget of information offered by the trainer. These new recruits are the latest line of offense on SMEP’s push to capture more market share in a country where microfinance is overwhelmingly popular.
Be the spark, light the fire, keep burning
This is a blog that I’ve written in a hurry so as not to let the words swirling in my head escape my fingers on the page. In my tenure at SMEP, I’ve never attended the weekly devotional, held every Monday morning from 8-10 in the morning. I always thought of myself as a secularist, and I assumed that attending would make me uncomfortable – after all, I come from a place where there is separation of church and everything. I’ve grown up in the deeply religious “bible belt” of the Southern United States, and I just assumed that at SMEP, the devotional would take the color of some of the church services I have attended back home.
Nelly Barati, SMEP Client, and I show off the outfit that she made for me when I went to visit her at her shop. Nelly is one of my "mamas" in Nairobi.
Nothing prepared me for what I experienced today, as I attended devotion for the first time. As a community builder and activist, I know that sometimes we pull ourselves out of our own comfort zone to forge connections with others. I felt that by attending the morning devotional today, I’d show my co-workers that I cared about this institution and that I am interested in connecting with all of them on a deeper level.
SMEP is an organization that was born out of the highly influential organization, the National Council of Churches Kenya, an ecumenical Christian governing body that is an opinion leader in the country. This is a religious institution. Employees are asked if they are saved when they come on board. Meeting and trainings begin with prayer, and end with prayer. These people are serious about their god.
When Cows Attack (with video)!
Juhudi Kilimo CFO: Kevin, when you’re out in Litein, make sure you ear-tag at least one cow for our Micro Insurance program.
Me: Ummm yea, I may pass on that one, but I’ll think about it.
Gotta get that paper: the well-travelled life of a simple loan form
Could you imagine having to do all your communication in writing, on actual paper? Or writing a check for every transaction or purchase that you made? Frankly, I don’t even remember how to write a check!
Anne, former Kiva fellow at SMEP and I shuffle loan forms to choose borrowers to randomly audit for Kiva
Everyday in Kenya, paper loan forms are traveling great distances in order to make microfinance work over a geographically diverse network of branch offices. With 19 branches, and 11 satellite branches all over Kenya, SMEP HQ in Nairobi bears the task of disseminating information back and forth to the branch offices all over the country. Since I’ve worked in some community-based financial institutions before in the US, I was accustomed to seeing things done electronically.
The Kiva Fellows have explored the various costs of doing microfinance on the blog from different angles and in different countries. What struck me as interesting about SMEP, is that the whole institution relies on paper to function. The cornerstone of the loan process is the loan form, the instrument through which critical information is disseminated – the loan amount, purpose, information about the borrower, the approval of the group members of the borrower, the acknowledgement of the receipt of the disbursement. The form is it, the beginning and end of the deal.
A Kiva Entrepreneur Meets YOU!
On February 17, 2010, I introduced the Kiva world to Robert Nandemu, a mixed farmer in western Kenya taking out a $1,050 loan. This week, the opposite holds true, as earlier today Robert met the 39 lenders to his loan!
Kiva’s newest cash cow: Juhudi Kilimo
Hezron Murinde is a happy man. After 20 years of subsistence farming in a hilly region of Kenya’s Central Province, he’s earning a profit. It started with a chaff cutter. A chaff cutter is a big, cranky device that chops feed into small enough pieces for livestock to eat (and livestock eat a lot). The chaff cutter led to the cow. Not just any cow, but a high-yield dairy cow that produces enough milk to out-gross all the maize and beans Hezron grows across acres of land.
Hezron and his watermelon-eating cow
It’s a Whole New World…
So imagine your first week as a Kiva Fellow placed at a microfinance institution in Nairobi, Kenya. Think about what the place may look like, how the people will greet you, and the overall atmosphere of the office. Now scrap all that, because my first few days at Juhudi Kilimo have been so far above and beyond anything I could have imagined.
The Last Days of the Dodo
by Avani Parekh-Bhatt, Kiva Fellow at SMEP in Nairobi, Kenya.
The "dodo" bird from SMEP
Jambo! I’d like to introduce myself, My name is Avani Parekh-Bhatt, I’m a 9th class Kiva Fellow and the last of my class to get to the field in Kenya. I hail from Durham, North Carolina. I believe in the power of human relationships, and grassroots led development, and I want to see the real nuts and bolts of microfinance, so that’s why I applied to be a Kiva Fellow (and to start my own microfinance organization one day.)
At my second day on the job at a Kiva fellow at my MFI, I looked out of my window in the marketing office, and saw in the garden the vestige of a time gone by, a bird that to me looked exactly like a dodo bird. You remember learning about the dodo –it’s now extinct, but living on in the faded black line drawings in elementary school textbooks. It struck me today that I am witnessing the death of the dodo at my MFI, and the creation of an entirely new species of organization.
Swahili Lesson 1: The Habari Family and Learning English in Kenya
By Hanna Azemati, KF9 Kenya
Our first Swahili class in the early morning tranquility of the still shuttered Prestige Plaza cafeteria in Kilimani was interjected with a myriad of embarrassing anecdotes of faux pas called forth by each new lesson that Lucy taught us. As Anne, Rachel and I, the three Nairobi Kiva Fellows, can attest, it behooves anyone new to Kenya to learn Swahili as promptly as possible and not because Kenyans don’t speak English. In fact, most Kenyans speak both official languages, English and Swahili, in addition to one of the sixty regional Bantu, Nilotic or Cushitic tribal languages. But as Lucy put it, “You can’t teach Swahili without teaching culture. And you might even find yourself learning some more English.” As we reviewed in our minds every interaction so far had to gauge the damage, we realized that the inverse is true also: without the linguistic investment, much of the inextricably linked Kenyan culture had escaped us.
