One of the many ways women implicitly or explicitly dodge the nefarious influence of global capitalism. These women have started a system of informal banking from lack of access to credit. The best part is it is community based.
Oumar Diene works at a Senegelese non-governmental organization and has studied informal banking in Yoff village, near Senegal's capital city of Dakar.He explains that, instead of bank accounts, Senegalese have developed a variety of local strategies to save money and raise capital. Examples include what are known in local languages as maases, tontines, and tekks.
A maas is a support group based on local traditions. Where once that meant helping a sick neighbor plow his field, today this has evolved into various forms of economic support.
Tekks are a simpler form of informal saving, in which a group of children turn over their collected change to a trusted adult for safekeeping.
But it is the second method, tontines, that have become particularly popular among women on Carabane, Ndiaye explains.
She says groups of women formed to help each other, and her group of seventeen women contributed 1000 local francs per month. That is the equivalent of about two dollars.
The idea is a sort of group savings plan. Originally developed in Europe in the 1600s, members would contribute a sum to be invested jointly, and dividends were shared equally until the last surviving member took all.
Two dollars? Global capitol flow and the way it fails to reach *certain* people makes me sick. But still people do what they must to survive.
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I must be missing something here. They are basically grouping their funds in an interest free community chest, correct? Are they dodging "the nefarious influence of global capitalism", or do they simply not have a bank where they live?
I wonder about the "That is the equivalent of about two dollars" part. Is that "two dollars as the exchange rates have it" or "the equivalent of two dollars based on cost of living and price indices"? All too often, those sorts of estimates are given based on the exchange rate between the local currancy and US$, which is often extremely misleading.
For example, as a Canadian, I see this all the time -- people talk about my salary in terms of what it would be in US$, which devalues it severely, but when compared to what an average basket of goods and services costs in a comparative metropolitan market, I'm actually making approximately 1.3x my salary's value in US$. (That is, my dollar spent at home goes further than a similar American's dollar spent in the US goes for them.)
You can't do an exchange rate comparison on a home-currency transaction and have it signify anything meaningful at all.
The way to determine how much money that really is, is to look at how much you can buy in Senegal with 2000 francs per month. If that is, in fact, about what you can buy with $2US in the US, I'd be very surprised.
That is not to say I don't think people in most countries around the world aren't getting shafted by global capitalism; of course they are. However, the media likes to take the easy way out in reporting figures, and it's almost mendacious how inaccurate the comparisons can be.
1000 cfa will feed a very large Senegalese family for 1-2 days. It is a significant savings that will significantly compound with a group effort on a monthly basis. My understanding of these savings plans is that it creates small business loans for local level women's groups that would not typically have access to the local banks. (People that do not have regular income or savings will not be able to use CBOA- the national bank.) I have seen this in action and it a great community initiated form of empowerment. (After one year of collective saving- one woman in the group is loaned the total sum to start up a small business. She will repay the sum when she is financially able to do so; meanwhile, the women's group continues to save. This money will also be used to contribute to families in need during times of hardship and crisis. I do take issue with the fact that this idea is contributed to Europe- I highly doubt that Senegalese women have 17th century Europe in mind when they are planning for their future.
binta - Thanks, that is interesting. Do you know how they decide who gets loans and when, and if they have a say in how a business they are financing is run?
Sounds kind of like a credit union to me.
Yes, it is usually a collective decision as to who gets the loan (a long discussion among members with trusted "elders" (or president of the group) making final choice.) The business is run primarily by the loan recipient; other women in the group will not have a formal say on how the business is run; these are usually very small projects, like artisinal crafts or goods sold out of the home. I should also mention that the money saved from women's groups often will also go to projects for the betterment of the community such as millet grinding machines (saves time and energy, as opposed to pounding by hand), improvements/installation of community wells/ water faucets, community vegetable gardens, etc... While Senegalese men are certainly the figure heads of the local communities; women, being the movers and shakers, are much more adept at getting things done.