Empowering Vulnerable women in Eastern Africa through Innovative Savings Schemes - Details

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Empowering Vulnerable women in Eastern Africa through Innovative Savings Schemes
  • Duration : January 2018 – January 2020

Empowering Vulnerable women in Eastern Africa through Innovative Savings Schemes

This project was commissioned and funded by  International Development Research Centre (IDRC). This project set out to evaluate the impact of innovative savings schemes and the ways in which they have economically empowered women in Burundi, Kenya and Uganda and enabled them to cope with shocks and vulnerability. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare women savings groups which were operating under the World Concern network in Kenya and Uganda, and Five Talents in Burundi, and the regular women savings groups, as well as women in similar economic and social circumstances but were not in any savings group.  

The Groups under World Concern (WC) and Five Talents (FT) network adopted innovative ways combining savings mobilization and credit with additional services to members including business trainings, agricultural extension services, sanitation and home hygiene, counselling and spiritual nurturing.  The assessments from the baseline and endline surveys in all three countries revealed that: (1) The women in WC and FT networks registered significant improvements in economic empowerment in terms of income and business growth.

They reported being in a much better position to afford household consumption expenditures on food, education and health among others and were able to mobilize savings to start and grow their business mostly in trade and agricultural enterprises.  (2) The WC and FT women group members were significantly more socially empowered and many reported being in a much stronger position to make decisions in the family and join leadership positions in the community.

Contact person:  Paul Okwi (PhD) – Senior Programmes Manager International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

  Phone: +256772591002    

Email: pokwi@idrc.ca