"Mata Masu Dubara"
Women's Savings and Credit Group Formation

1. Program description

The Mata Masu Dubara (MMD, a Hausa term for "women on the move") target group is rural women. MMD is a refined methodology, which in its pilot phase was designed to provide training in handicrafts and commerce to rural women. Early in the project, it became clear that the women already knew a great deal about income generating activities and the markets in their communities. However, they lacked basic management skills to mobilize their savings resources. Thus the project evolved into a training program to organize women and help them manage their own resources.

Women in Niger face a growing number of responsibilities in an increasingly unfavorable social and religious environment. During the long dry season, many men migrate to urban areas often coastal west African cities such as Abidjan. The women are left with the responsibility of providing for their children and families with few resources. MMD aims to help women strengthen their precarious financial status by using their own resources.

The current goal is to improve the socioeconomic conditions of rural and poor urban women and their ability to secure a better livelihood for themselves and their families by offering them access to a permanent system of savings and credit. The program does not provide credit, but rather offers training for groups of women interested in the creation and operation of their own savings and credit associations.

2. Methodology

The MMD methodology is unique in that it does not provide external credit. Instead it focuses on building local community capacities. The project helps women organize themselves into groups of around 30 women, usually based on existing affinities. The groups elect a management committee, which leads the group. Each group operates after the fashion of the traditional "tontine". Weekly contributions to the group revolving fund enables women to save money, and also gain access to credit.

When MMD starts in a community, a CARE agent holds preliminary meetings with both men and women to explain the project. The support and approval of the village men is essential to its success, even though the project is for women only. In the women's meetings, the agent explains the general principles of MMD, her role as a facilitator and the eight-month time commitment to establish an association. In the last couple of years, CARE has trained Village Agents, who are now directly responsible for directly groups, with CARE field agents providing support and quality control. The Village agent is not paid by CARE, but receives contributions for services from the women who participate in MMD groups.

The eight-month cycle is divided into three different phases. In the first three-month intensive phase, the Village Agent attends the meetings each week to teach the group the basic elements of the MMD approach: the role of the group, the role of the management committee, loan procedures, interest and penalties, internal rules, problem solving and conflict resolution. After discussing and defining the role of the group in the first meeting, the members elect the management committee. The agent helps the group structure their internal regulations and decide the goal of their association. (Group goals often involve the creation of a group activity such as establishing a grain bank.) During the intensive phase, the women learn the basics of savings, credit, interest and fines. The learning process is active, as the members begin to take loans and pay interest. After the first six weeks of skill training, the agent continues to make weekly visits to help members perfect their understanding of the basic structure, but during this time the women progressively assume responsibility for the management of their own affairs.

During the second three-month development phase, the group becomes more self-reliant. The weekly contributions and loans continue, but the village agent visits every two weeks during the fourth month and only once a month in the fifth and sixth months. The agent assumes the role of observer, allowing the women to lead the group themselves.

In the final maturation phase, the group works independently. The agent makes one visit in the last two months to conduct a final evaluation of the savings and credit activities and to discuss any problems. Otherwise, the women operate autonomously throughout the final stage. The group is "graduated" after eight months if the final objective has been met - whether it is to divide the savings among the members or use the savings for a group activity. The overwhelming majority of groups continue their operations, often increasing the amount of their weekly contributions. Indeed, there are groups from the very first years of MMD (in Maradi Region) that have continued activity ever since the program begin - up to ten years.

3. Operations of a MMD group

Group meetings usually begin by reciting the rules. Each member is responsible for a rule: the groups objective, criteria for membership, rights and responsibilities of members, personal conduct, the amount of the savings, conduct of members and penalties for being the rules, and procedures for leaving the group. The basic principle is transparency, and record keeping is mainly oral. It all works because of group solidarity, and peer pressure, which characterized the mutual aid relations between women in rural Niger.

Group members contribute a fixed amount of savings on a weekly basis. The amounts range around 25 to 200 Fcfa (100 Fcfa is equivalent to one French Franc). The money is kept in a steel box with three locks. Three different members of the management committee each hold a key to a different lock (thus the box can only be opened in the presence of all three women). After the fourth or fifth meeting, the group begins loaning the funds to members, usually at a straight interest rate of 10% of the principal. The typical loan is for four weeks. (That is, after four weeks the participant repays the loan, plus 10% interest.) The majority of loans are used for income generating activities. The revolving fund continues to increase through the weekly savings and the interest collected on loans. In addition, some groups apply minor penalties when group rules are broken (e.g., a member who misses a meeting without a good reason may be fined 100 Fcfa).

A few groups keep written records, if one of their members is literate. But most groups keep oral records. Since each member contributes the same amount each week, the weekly collection equals that amount times the number of members (e.g., 100 Fcfa times 30 members, for a weekly contribution of 3,000 Fcfa). Many groups keep track of the weeks by adding a pebble to the steel box each week. The group treasurer announces the amount of money that should be in the box, as well as outstanding loans, and then the physical control of the cash in the box is conducted and verified by two controllers. There are rarely discrepancies.

Periodically, loans are made, and then four weeks later reimbursed. Then new loans are given out. Not all women take a loan at a given time; usually the women take turns.

After a time, most groups will distribute equally to members all or part of the accumulated funds. This often occurs when women need access to more money - before the Islamic holiday of Tabaski (Eid ul azar), at the beginning of the planting season, or after the harvest to procure family grain stocks. In a typical group, most women are able to double their savings in a year through the interest income.

In the course of a year, savings groups mobilize between 150,000 and 600,000 Fcfa. Loan sizes typically range around 6,000 to 20,000 Fcfa. The nationwide MMD savings force can mobilized nearly 2 billion Fcfa a year, or nearly US$3 million. This is all from the women's own resources.

5. Keys lessons learned

MMD is a dramatically different approach to micro-finance in poor and developing communities. This methodology is derived from the traditional savings method called "tontine" in which many women in rural and urban areas participate. The MMD program is sustainable because each group is autonomous. About 95% percent of the groups formed by CARE continue their activities after graduation. In addition to groups formed by the program, many spontaneous savings and loan groups have been created without any intervention of a project agent.

MMD is self-sufficient insofar as the project does not provide external capital. MMD provides training and technical support, but the funds are collected from the members of the group. Women create their own capital, giving them ownership and a stronger stake in the outcome. The association is self-regulated; each group can decide the amount of the weekly contribution, the amount of interest to be paid on loans and the objective.

The transactions and accounting are simple and transparent. Transactions all take place during meetings, and every member of the group observes the process to guarantee the correctness of the accounts.

Social pressure guarantees that members repay their loans on time. Unlike programs with credit from outside sources, MMD women feel a strong obligation and sense of responsibility to pay back their loans. Any woman taking a loan also invests her own savings capital.

6. The limits of the MMD system

MMD is appropriate to the small-scale needs of poor households. It enables women to start up small income generating activities, and to maintain these activities even in times of crisis (e.g., sickness of a child). But MMD is not a panacea. Among its limitations, we can cite:

· The size of the available loans are small, especially in the beginning. They are limited by the capacity of the women to save. In poor rural areas, and during times of scarcity, the weekly contributions may be quite modest.
· The groups that distribute their savings periodically are obliged to start over again from zero savings. During this time, there are no funds for loans, which limits the potential to expand the members' income generating activities.
· The short term for the loans (one month) limits investment to activities with a rapid turnover (such as food processing). Investment in long term activities, such as agriculture inputs, are more difficult to undertake.

Perhaps as a tribute to MMD success, women are beginning to articulate other needs, such as literacy training, health care and help with legal aid. As MMD continues to expand, it is developing ways to improve existing groups. The Tahoua Credit Project works with well-established MMD groups in the Tahoua Region to access to credit and savings on a larger scale, through local micro-credit schemes. These groups can use their savings funds as collateral to obtain even larger loans (and for longer periods), and thus undertake more ambitious economic activities.

In the Tillabery Region, the MMD program is undertaking participatory diagnostic exercises with women's groups to develop action plans for addressing other needs. In this area, CARE will help link MMD groups with other agencies, both civil society and government, to obtain support for the various needs identified as priorities.

7. Impacts

The methodology is simple and easy to replicate. It builds on local capacities and is adapted to a wide variety of local cultural contexts. MMD has been replicated by CARE on many other countries, such as Mali and Zambia, and is also being implemented by agencies such as the US Peace Corps in Latin America. In far flung place, people speak of MMD, without necessarily knowing the meaning of the Hausa phrase Mata Masu Dubara.

The impacts are both social and economic. For the most part, MMD allows women to undertake small economic activities, such as petty trade, food processing, or raising small livestock. The loans allow women to gain ownership and control over the primary resources of their activities. For example, a woman can invest in peanuts to make peanut oil, and reap all the profits of her labor - whereas before she may have borrowed the peanuts, and would have had to reimburse a hefty part of her profits. A shrewd operator may take the modest load to procure, say a goat, and then invest the profit from fattening it into another activity. Eventually such a woman may be able to buy a productive asset, such as a donkey cart, and thereby ensure a steady income.

But perhaps more significantly, women speak about the impact of MMD on enhancing their self-esteem. For many women, MMD is their only means to participate in civil society. Through MMD they gain an opportunity to meet others and build networks. The training and group formation enhances the women's prestige in their households - they are often viewed as "having been educated". The resources brought to the household strengthen the woman's role in household decision making. She is more frequently consulted by her husband, and gains more respect. The growth in self-confidence over the eight month group formation period is often summed up by the women, who use the Hausa phrase "wayé kaï" - an opening of the mind and spirit.

From material provided to FON by CARE Niger.

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