Can Microfinance Cure Poverty?
“My own view is that we have to approach extreme poverty a little like the way in which a doctor might approach a patient. By that I mean do a diagnosis and understand what is it that is really ailing the particular country, the particular region. Sometimes its terrible governance and the question is how to improve the governance and the hope for the kind of change that is needed. In other places it’s the terrible burden of disease that may be addressable by good public health measures. In other places it is to show how to grow more food. In other places its how to get business going and microfinance has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool.
Once the basics are in place, the people are eating and can survive, then microfinance can play a huge role in helping a poor community find ways through the market to get new opportunities, to earn new income, to start saving, making investments and start the process of climbing the ladder of economic development in your children, in your business or your farm and continuing up the process of improving skills, specialisation, new business ventures and so on. We’ve learnt that microfinance can be a wonderful tool for that.”
Jeffrey Sachs - Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia University
