Spain Renews Support for MicrolendingBy Ramiro FuenteNAIROBI – Spain’s Queen Sofia used her speech on Wednesday at a regional summit on microlending to note that Madrid has provided more than 700 million euros ($934 million) to fund microloans worldwide and to reaffirm her country’s commitment to theinitiative.In the first session of the gathering in the Kenyan capitalof representatives from 40 African and Middle Eastern countries, the queen urgedthat such aid be more widely…See More

The Microfinance Act 2006 allows MFIs that register under it to take deposits, a function that they were previously not allowed, and which ruled out any chances of expansion, unless through private funds.Prior to the enactment of the legislation, microfinance institutions relied on shareholder funds to lend money, limiting their lending capacity, unlike banks that use deposits to grant…See More

NAIROBI // Rose Waithera lives in a small house made out of sheets of corrugated tin. In front of her home, an open sewer carves a fetid path through the rough dirt street. And this is one of the better neighbourhoods in Mathare, a squalid slum known for its hardened criminal gangs.Ms Waithera lived much of her life as a street beggar, but on a recent afternoon she felt like the most important person in the world. Although her neighbours will never believe her, Ms Waithera hosted the queen of…See More

Kenyan student Shadrack Silipo had a heart operation five years ago, the sort of surgery that often bankrupts families in Africa.Silipo's parents normally would have paid by selling off land — the same green acres that form the inheritance for their eight children. But Silipo's father, a retired principal, had enrolled the family eight years ago in a micro-insurance plan that covered the $5,000 operation in full.Silipo got his money from a Nairobi-based nonprofit micro-lending organization,…See More