EDIAIS :Conference papers

Sudan is characterised by its diverse natural and socio-cultural environment, yet, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. The UNDP Poverty Report (2000) estimated an overall poverty rate at 85%. The cost of living has multiplied by 34 times between 1988 and 1998. Poverty line increased by 834% during the same period. Poverty is thus a product of many forms of structural inequalities inherent in the distribution of national endowments. Women in general, the displaced and head of households in particular have been hardly affected by these inequalities in areas of health and basic education employment opportunities, sustaining livelihoods and food security as well as the access and control over resources and benefits. Thus, ACORD-Sudan initiated two poverty alleviation projects and since 1991, around 42,000 families have been provided with micro finance, 63% of them were women. Non-financial services offered include the provision of business management training, and business counseling and advice, gender and skills trainings. Women participation in needs identification, formulation, implementation, decision making and monitoring and evaluation, took place at the level of staffing where 80% of programme technical staff and 50% of the senior management are females; and at the level of the community based organisations (CBOs) as the programme works with four of them involved in the selection of beneficiaries, preparation of feasibility study, provision of loans, monitoring and installments. 75% of the CBOs executive committees are women.

The programme, has established also six saving and credit committees. These committees are considered as a forum for women to exchange ideas, experience, business linkages, and mobilization of saving. Gender training is an activity that carried out by the programme and targets the whole community in general and CBOs, and saving and credit committees in particular. To enable women have control over resources and benefits the programme provide leadership training, managing CBOs, and business management training. Monitoring indicates an increasingly higher level of control over expenditure at both the household and community levels and female clients showed self-confidence in dealing with their businesses, and banking system, diversified and new women businesses, higher degree of mobility and better social interaction among women from different ethnic groups.

The main lesson learned from the experience is that microfinance is a necessary condition (but not enough) for women empowerment and hence it is an appropriate tool towards gender equality. MF may work alone (depending on the context), however the reverse is not true in poor countries, i.e., the rest of the package could hardly work alone. ACORD experience in Sudan tells very strongly that MF still (and will continue to) holds a pivotal position in helping women to bridge the gender gap MF institutions and scholars must seriously consider the numerous disadvantages of advocating for MF in isolation from other development packages such as gender sensitization and institutional/organizational capacity building. MF is to be geared towards addressing strategic women issues rather than the mere notion of economic empowerment and improvement of income or income generation.

to top of page

The Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded by clicking here