The Micromagic of Microcredit
January 8, 2008
After decades of failure, the world’s aid organizations seem to think they have at last found a winning idea: Microcredit. The United Nations declared 2005 the “International Year of Microcredit,” and former Secretary-General Kofi Annan claimed that microloans to help the poor launch small businesses recognizes that they “are the solution, not the problem." But can microcredit achieve the massive changes its proponents claim? Is it the solution to poverty in the developing world, or something more modest—a way to empower the poor, particularly poor women, with some control over their lives and their assets?
