Microfinance missions in Africa

This book sheds light on the mission drift of microfinance institutions (MFIs), i.e. the fact that they are not fulfilling the missions for which they were created. Microfinance is not used to finance women's entrepreneurship. We focus on the exclusion of women owners of very small enterprises (VSEs) from financing by MFIs. The same applies to MSEs owned by both sexes. We have also looked at the customer risk of urban and rural MSE borrowers. Finally, we have studied the statistical and longitudinal stability of the models produced using the highly case-sensitive QCA technique, the majority of which is used in this book. QCA v.2.3 software and QCAGUI v.2.3, R packages, running in tandem developed by Thiem and Dusa (2016) for QCA modeling. The main results indicate that microfinance principles are not respected: low loan amounts, geographical proximity of customers, recidivism or experience with microcredit indicating paradoxes. We note the detour of borrowed funds away from investment purposes.