Sustainable banking with the poor - outreach and sustainability: a comparative analysis of savings-first vs. credit-first financial institutions

The study examines micro-finance institutions located in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, namely, Niger, Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and South Africa, though a certain degree of macroeconomic heterogeneity is to be expected, given comparisons and contrasts of some basic economic indicators among this grouping of countries. It examines the extent to which savings-first and credit-first programs throughout Africa, have been able to strive towards sustainability, while reaching clients that traditionally have been excluded from formal finance, including women, rural inhabitants, the illiterate, and the poor. The analysis focuses on measures of sustainability and outreach, as well as on their inter-relatedness to eight micro-finance programs in the selected countries.