Micro-finance and Women Inclusion in Northern Ghana
By V. Conti
STUDY AREA: FARFAR
Farfar is located in the Upper East Region of Ghana, in the Garu-Tempane district. It is a semi-arid region, where erratic rainfall patterns and increase in mean temperatures are challenging traditional livelihood systems. With only one farming season, coinciding with the rainy season (May-September), the population of the area has found it increasingly difficult to produce enough resources to survive all year around. According to local sources, matching with scientific observation at a broader scale, the rainy season is getting shorter, its begin is less predictable than in the past and harmful events such as fire outbreaks and storms are becoming more frequent. The population of Farfar is mainly composed of Bimoba, a minority ethnic group settled in Northern Ghana and neighbouring regions of Burkina Faso and Togo. Polygyny is common and society is patriarchal: inheritance is patrilinear. Although women access their family's land, sell the crops they grow and rear livestock, women customarily do not own land. aside from domestic duties and assisting in farming, many women are also engaged in income generating activities such as petty trading, shea butter production or pitu brewing, which is a local alcoholic beverage. Household decisions regarding expenditures are usually taken by men. Women generally seek permission from their husbands to embark in any income-generating activities such as selling crops or animals.
VSLA's and COMMUNITY-BASED ADAPTATION
VSLAs were established as a part of the Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP), a programme implemented in various African countries by the NGO CARE International with the support of local partners. Its goal is to increase the capacity of vulnerable households in Sub-Saharan Africa to adapt to climate variability and therefore improve their resilience to climate change. Saving groups have been active in Farfar long before the existence of ALP, so the mechanism of microfinance community institutions was already known by the local people. With ALP, four new groups were established with the specific aim of improving the resilience of the community and providing funds to invest in the dry-season farming. The choice of watermelons as a dry-season crop was taken as a result of a participatory process facilitated by CARE, in which the community was given trainings on climate change and on different ways to adapt traditional livelihoods to it. The VSLAs are self-selected groups of women and men and each group received trainings on how to independently manage its activities. Each group meets weekly and the members contribute with their savings; loans can be asked and repaid with interests within a fixed period of time, usually 12 weeks. Every group has a self-written Constitution that lists the possible reasons to request a loan and no one is allowed to have a loan for other expenses. Some groups also have a social fund, an amount of money which can be given in special circumstances, such as death of a member or of a member's close relative.
VSLAs are considered a good development tool by NGOs as they are deemed to economically and socially empower those who are part of the groups. Women, who are often the majority of the members, are believed to benefit the most as previously they have access to credit to fund their investments in income-generating activities. Access to credit is thought to improve women's position both in their households, as they are supposedly taken in higher consideration in decision-making processes, and in the community, as they can are empowered to speak at public meetings and advocate for themselves. VSLAs are considered particularly suitable to adaptation interventions as they can be used as a resource in case of unforeseen events linked with climate change shocks, for example if the crop is damaged by a drought. VSLAs are therefore used as a tool to improve the resilience of households to external shocks caused by climate change.
RESEARCH
The research aimed to assess the relevance of a social capital framework to assess the impact of VSLAs on women's adaptive capacities and the emergence of new dynamics of conflict and cooperation between men and women resulting from the intervention. The research question thus asked whether the community-based micro-finance used as a tool for adaptation in Farfar increases women's inclusion in households' economic decision making. During the fieldwork, the contribution of VSLAs to the adaptive capacity of men and women and the improvements inposition in the household was assessed. The assessment was done through a set of questions about the use of loans and the household decision-making processes; a survey was combined with focus groups discussions and interviews.
The role of women member of VSLA groups in household decision-making processes was analysed and compared with those of a control group, formed by people who have never been part of savings groups. In this way, it was possible to assess whether an improved role of women in their household decision making is a result of the VSLAs. The research used social capital theories, and in particular those relating to perverse social capital, to explain why women are spending their loans in certain ways, different from men's, and how this hinders the development of women's adaptive capacity.
research findings
- The VSLAs contributed to cooperation within households between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Women in VSLA groups are involved in household decision making-processes more so than women not part of VSLA groups.
- A gendered pattern in the loan use was observed: while men invest in the profitable watermelon farming, women's loans act as a back-up resource for their household in times of crisis.
- The gendered pattern in loans use results in a consolidation of imbalanced distributions of power at the community level. It results in a latent conflict between different male and female VSLAs members, and widen gender inequalities concerning adaptive capacities at the community level.