From ice cream vendor to lab assistant

Just a few years ago Pélagie Evina used to set herself up in the school yard of a primary school in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, to sell homemade ice cream at four cents a portion. It was little more than an odd job to help her family get by. Her husband did not earn a regular income either. One day a friend told her about the savings and credit cooperative MUFFA (Mutuelle Financière des Femmes Africaines) in Yaoundé and persuaded her to pay them a visit. MUFFA staff explained how she could become a member and how to go about applying for a loan. The usual fee of almost € 30 for joining a savings and credit cooperative as a "full" member would have been beyond her reach. However, MUFFA offers special terms, enabling even the poorest to start participating. So Pélagie Evina was able to become a "partial" member by contributing only € 1.50.

In order to qualify for her first loan amounting to € 78, Pélagie had to form a small group with two other women. Each member of this group was to help out the others if repayment difficulties arose, essentially acting as mutual guarantors vis-à-vis MUFFA. Pélagie paid back her first loan as contractually agreed and also honoured her obligations with follow-up loans. Skilfully investing the microloans in her own income-generating activities, she progressively stepped up her earnings. Today she can afford to pay the full membership fee to the cooperative, which in turn enables her to request credits for higher sums. She is thrilled at the firm prospect of being granted a € 300 loan by the cooperative soon. "My life has changed radically since I joined MUFFA. I am now able to support my family financially," says Pélagie Evina. "I have enough money to give my children their breakfast. They can now afford to pay the fares to travel to school. I can even help my husband. I am now a trained laboratory assistant. I attended a training course that MUFFA also helped me to finance and I am working as a lab assistant in a medical practice." The MUFFA credit cooperatives are part of a microfinance programme of the Cameroonian women's association WINC (Women Investment Club). These cooperatives target in particular poor women working in the urban informal sector. The first MUFFAs were created in the year 2000. In the meantime they boast over 3,000 members.

A network of microbanks – called MC² (Mutuelles Communautaires de Croissance) - has already been in existence in rural areas since 1992. The MC² programme can be credited to the initiative of Paul Fokam, founder and Board Chairman of the commercial cooperative bank Afriland First Bank. Both the MC² and the MUFFA programmes are components of an evolving microfinance system that is being brought into the mainstream of the formal financial system. The two programmes have benefited since 1998 from assistance provided by MISEREOR and KZE (Catholic Central Agency for Development Aid). Thanks to their support, there are now 54 MC²s and MUFFAs, and another 20 are due to be set up in the near future.

The MC² and MUFFA programmes are successfully tackling a serious obstacle to social and economic development in Cameroon: the overwhelming majority of low-income households have either only limited access to financial services or none at all, let alone access to the formal banking system. This constitutes a massive constraint on development. The microfinance programme has set itself the goal of targeting a broad group of customers. High-income groups are deliberately included so that the programme can be further developed with their participation and support, a strategy that will also benefit the poor.

The major objectives are to create purchasing power in Cameroon's rural regions, to check the flow of funds to the wealthier cities, and to introduce and link the poor to the formal banking system. The individual microbanks are all established on the initiative of the local inhabitants themselves, with high levels of local contribution. By providing support, MISEREOR’s long-term aim is to secure viable access to a range of financial services such as savings, credit and insurance for the poor, especially women. The programmes are cooperating with MISEREOR's partner of many years' standing in Cameroon, the non-governmental organisation ADAF (Appropriate Development for Africa Foundation) and the reputed Afriland First Bank. Cooperation with the commercial Afriland First Bank means more than tapping the bank's specialised technical capabilities and control instruments. It opens up long-range prospects from the perspective of the customer: a micro-borrower can grow into a major account-holder of the bank. The sky's the limit! The international acclaim now accorded to the work of these organisations is echoed in the fact that Paul Fokam was awarded the German Africa Foundation's Africa Prize for 2004 for his services to the promotion of microentrepreneurship. He is the first African entrepreneur to receive this prize.