Impact of Micro-finance Institutions on Poverty Alleviation

Poverty is one of the major critical issues in most of the African countries; Tanzania being inclusive. The majority who are productive poor (especially women) had been denied of access to financial institutions such as banks in order to get loans to increase their working capital. It is because of this (gap) that is why since early "90¿s" there has been an emergence of micro finance institutions (MFIs) to bridge the gap and join with micro-entrepreneurs in combating poverty and it is expected that (together with other things) poverty will have been reduced by 50% and completely eliminated by 2015 and 2025 respectively.Despite the existence of MFIs no systematic studies have been done to assess the impact of MFIs on poverty alleviation.In this book the author tries to explore the whole issue of impact assessment in micro-finance institutions looking at one micro-finance program as a case study for more insights.This book is useful to all micro-finance practitioners, evaluators, researchers, policy makers, academicians and donors.