PART TWO of TWO, IMTFI Blog: PART TWO: Financial Vocabularies, Accounting and Calculation
Final Report, Mobilizing Religion as Value Storage: Islamic Microfinance in Bangladesh as a Model for Poverty Alleviation: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2hj9r8mt
PART ONE of TWO, IMTFI Blog: Research Questions and the ‘Islam’ of Islamic Microfinance.
This blog post presents some of my research findings through a FarmVille inspired infographic. In it I compare the rules and features of the game to actual practices of savings, loan repayment and provision of government technical assistance for agriculture and farm improvement in the Philippines. FarmVille was introduced on Facebook in 2009 asan online farming simulation social network game that teaches players to use availableresources for generating maximum farm productivity. It requires the players to beinvolved in different farm management activities such as planting, plowing, growing and harvesting crops and trees, and raising livestock. FarmVille’s popularity soared onFacebook between 2009 and 2011 and appears to have contributed significantly to an awareness on aspects of farm management among online gamers all over the world.
Bangladesh, a deeply impoverished nation of nearly 160 million with the world’s fourth-largest Muslim population, has a rapidly growing Islamic finance industry, anchored by its oldest Islamic bank, the Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL). IBBL is one of Bangladesh’s largest banks, offering commercial and consumer financing, tremendously popular remittances servicesfor migrant workers, and an Islamic microfinance program for the rural poor, the Rural Development Scheme (RDS). Since its inception in 1983, the Islami Bank has described itself as a religious as well as financial institution dedicated to poverty alleviation—an identification often invoked by employees during our conversations. In addition to the regulatory, staffing andmonitoring structures to ensure the Shari’a compliance of IBBL’s operations, its expansion strategy, corporate culture, and the semiotics of its branding and marketing reinforce IBBL’s status in Bangladesh as an Islamic institution. My PhD dissertation is an ethnography of finance, Islam, and poverty that explores the theoretical registers of Islamic (micro)finance client experience and institutional management threaded through the money, policy, and influence connecting Saudi Arabia to the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka to a small-town slum tucked along the Bay of Bengal.
The three researchers—Dr. Jane Mutinda (Kenyatta University, Kenya), Dr. Ndunge Kiiti (Houghton College, New York), and Professor Charles Nzioka (University of Nairobi, Kenya)—set out to discover the uses and impact of M-Shwari as a financial inclusion banking product in urban and rural areas of Kenya. We visited eight counties in four regions of Kenya—Western (Kisumu & Bondo); Coastal (Mombasa Town & Kaloleni); Nairobi (Westlands and Eastlands); and Eastern (Machakos & Embu). In each region, the first location listed represents the ‘urban’-based focus and the second represents the more ‘rural.’ The Micro and Small Enterprises Authority (MSEA) were our hosts in each of the counties. With an introductory letter in hand from the Director of MSEA Headquarters in Nairobi, county-level coordinator facilitated our access to the SME owners, and were each interviewed for the research as well.
Final Report/Synopsis of Research Results: The rate of penetration of the mobile phone has exceeded any other technology, particularly in the developing world. This has seen the introduction of mobile based financial services to address financial exclusion. However, there is limited research on the usage of these mobile financial services by the poor. This paper seeks therefore to explore how mobile banking services are beingused by the urban poor in five townships in Johannesburg, South Africa. It seeks to explore the social, technological and economic factors that have enhanced or inhibited use of mobile banking initiatives. In-depth interviews with 15 users of a mobile banking initiative and focus groups of non-users were conducted.
The study applied the Capabilities Approach by Amartya Sen to analyse the contexts that can affect access and use of mobile banking services. Analysis of the data shows that mobile phone uptake does not directly translate to mobile banking uptake and usage. The study finds there are contextual influences of usage specifically the social, technological, economic and banking environment that the usage decision is made in. Usage is therefore shaped by who the users are, their family dynamics and their economic status, who they associate with, the banking alternatives available and perceptions of risk both on an individual and societal level.
Why do people trust each other? What are the characteristics of people who trust eachother? Is it mutual trust which results in formation of groups, or is it self-interest which brings people together? How does the theory of rational choice relate to the concept of social capital? The following discussion concerns the concept of social capital and its applicability, and argues that the sustainability of self-help groups (SHGs) does not depend only on social capital – trust, shared knowledge and reciprocity, important as these are – but also on the nature and extent of social relationships among (a) the group members themselves, (b) group members and program/credit officer(s) staff, and (c) each member's pursuit of self-interest. A central issue for understanding levels of trust in various societies is to grasp whether trust follows social capital of other kinds or whether it is itself a major category of social capital.
The goal of this study was to explore personal, business, and social money-related practices that have emerged with increased patronage of Mobile Money (MM) in Ghana. Of particular interest was the impact of MM on the urban poor who so far appear to be the sector of the population least aware of and the least likely to use MM in their daily lives.
The goals of the proposed study were to (i) investigate MM uptake patterns in year 3 of its re-introduction to Ghana, (ii) to explore the social and cultural interfaces between MM and existing money behaviors, including savings and money transfer practices among Ghanaians of different socioeconomic classes, and (iii) to investigate of the internalized (cognitive) representations of MM that Ghanaians develop. The study focused on the segments of the Ghanaian population and behavioral practices that were perceived as included and excluded from the MM adoption process. Research to answer these questions was conducted using surveys, spending diaries, interviews, and analysis of secondary data.
In recent years, there has been increased interest in access to formal financial services by the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) in developing countries. Today, there are six competing mobile money transfer systems in Kenya (“M-Pesa,” “yuCash,” “Orange Money”, “Airtel money,” “PesaPoint” and “PataCash”), each of which offers subscribers SIM card registrations and subscriptions to mobile money transfer systems. Thereafter, subscribers access electronic money remittances, payments, micro-credits, insurances, savings accounts, and loan facilities. These products are key instruments in the empowered of the poor as they become exposed to branchless banking in their daily lives. In Kenya, however, very few studies have addressed the inter-linkages between gender empowerment and financial inclusion in banking institutions. This is in spite of the fact that mobile money systems are technologies, which embody gender differences as well as socio-cultural constructs like gender empowerment. This study examines the gender dimension of mobile money systems, exploring how mobile money systems can give one gender preferential access and empowerment to financial intermediation at the expense of the other.
This research explores the social client perspective in mobile money systems, specifically potential resistance to e-money. We focus on 200 poor remittance-receiver families in Central and Eastern Lombok Island in Indonesia. Following Ram and Sheth (1989) we will measure resistance to e-money innovation along five axes: usage, value, risks, tradition, and image barriers. It is not clear whether slow e-money adoption is due to concern over system configuration security; basic fees; aging related to risk and image barriers; perceptions that relate to the input information mechanism; the battery life of a mobile phone; a fear that the list of PIN codes could be lost and end up in the wrong hands; or the usefulness of new technology in general. Could the the important factor be further information that e-money help meet the needs of private banking, increasing convenience and cost effectiveness? Could it be merchant reluctance to use e-money? Could local cooperatives be e-money provider partners, due to the high use of cash-base transactions among Indonesians? Could the use of e-money help out-migrant workers transfer remittances efficiently? A descriptive and factor analysis will be used to summarize information from the survey and in-depth interviews.
