By Khumbo Kaliwo:
Village savings have proven to be an important model for mobilising resources in communities as 42.1 percent of loans are accessed by rural people, particularly women, in Malawi Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA).
On the other end, formal financial service providers are being accessed by less than percent of Malawians.
This was said Monday in Lilongwe during the Care international 2023 Global Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA) learning event.
It comes as the country has many people who are not yet reached with financial services as it also remains predominantly a cash-based society to the extent that much of the cash in the economy is outside the banking system.
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Figures provided show that Malawi has over 60,000 VSLAs with membership of over 1.2 million of which over 75 percent are women.
Minister of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare Jean Sendeza commended Care for having a reflection on how best to design and implement programmes that integrate VSLAs and for choosing Malawi as the venue for this year’s Global VSLA Learning Event.
“As a country, we will share with you our best practices and also challenges but we know that we will learn a lot from you.” Sendeza said
Director of Care International Global VSLA Team Vidhya Sriram said village savings groups are a trend globally and the meeting would help them grow in the future.
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“We want to learn together on what the VSLAs do now and what we want to grow the VSLAs,” Sriram said
Interim Care Malawi Country Director Chris Mzembe said if all the VSLA in Malawi were systematically connected and empowered, more Malawians would graduate from poverty.
“If these groups grow together and sell together, they can become anything and that is the power which needs to be harnessed.” He said
Over 70 delegates from 40 countries are attending the VSLA learning event in Lilongwe.
