Premium
Assessing African Microfinance: An Exploratory Case Study of Ghana's Central Region
Author(s) -
Reiter Bernd,
Peprah James Atta
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.3066
Subject(s) - microfinance , exploratory research , business , set (abstract data type) , economic growth , development economics , economics , finance , sociology , social science , computer science , programming language
This article presents the findings from a 5‐week exploratory research project on microfinance in Ghana. The aim of this project was to develop initial hypotheses that can be tested in a follow‐up systematic research project. Our preliminary findings are that informality is a major roadblock to successful lending that lenders redirect loans to other, nonexplicit needs and wants thus indicating a different set of priorities than the lenders and that the most successful component of microfinance is not lending but saving. We also found that gender and religion constitute important factors interfering with and potentially distorting successful microfinance practices. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.