Sowing seeds of hope for ‘unbankable’ rural women
Grameen-style finance initiative has helped lift thousands out of poverty
WHEN I returned to South Africa from exile in the early ’90s, I looked around and, as a social worker, asked myself: why are women in our country being denied access to finance and opportunities to participate in their own business ventures?
The idea dawned on me that we should create a vehicle to focus on banking the “unbankable” — women in the most rural and marginalised communities in South Africa. For, if poverty has a face, it is a woman’s face.
As the founders of Women’s Development Businesses, we had a simple vision: to put development resources directly into the hands of the poor, and initially to provide small loans to rural women to help them start small-scale incomegenerating activities.
We started out as a microfinance programme in 1991 with just R20 000 seed capital, graciously donated by Vusi Ngobeni.
We were inspired by Professor Muhammad Yunus and his approach to empowering the poor in his own country, Bangladesh, and we based our programme on Grameen Bank’s philosophy of giving step-up microloans to the poor.
Our very first WDB Microfinance pilot project began in 1991 in Acornhoek, Mpumalanga — an area ravaged by drought. We identified 50 prospective woman clients and lent each of them R300. We held our collective breaths, not sure if our idea would work or if it would be a disastrous mistake.
Three months later, 100% of the loans had been repaid, and so the WDB journey began in earnest. In addition to lending small amounts to women who wanted to start their own businesses, we also began various training programmes to assist with basic business and literacy skills.
WDB was very well received and although we had many lessons to learn along the way, we began to see real results. By 1995, we had opened the second branch of WDB Microfinance, in Bushbuckridge.
One of the things you learn in microfinance is that if you put development resources directly into the hands of the poor, they can change their own lives.
We officially formed the WDB Trust in 1997 as a charitable trust focused on poverty eradication and the development of women. We realised that to succeed in the long run and to be sustainable, we would need to fund ourselves and, in the same year, WDB Investment Holdings was registered to support the trust’s programmes.
For the past 25 years we have helped thousands of women to establish businesses through which they have been able to take care of their families.
More than 180 000 rural women
Inspired by Muhammad Yunus empowering the poor in Bangladesh
have benefited from loans totalling more than R400-million. More than 3 000 women have received literacy and basic business skills training.
WDB Investment Holdings has built up an investment portfolio with a net asset value of more than R3.5-billion and has paid cumulative dividends to the trust of more than R200-million.
We are now entering a new phase of WDB, with the backing of WDB Investment Holdings. Today the WDB Trust has three main programmes: the Zenzele Development Programme, for socioeconomic development; the Siyakhula Microfinance Institute, for microfinance; and the WDB Development Training Academy, for skills development. We continue to learn and grow.
Our vision for the next 25 years is to continue to play a leadership role in women’s economic empowerment and development by deepening WDB’s impact in rural South Africa, and by transforming the South African business landscape. We want to grow the asset base of the holding company to create a bank that is truly for poor people.
Going forward, we aspire to the vision of Yunus, who is determined that one day poverty will exist only as a museum exhibit. Our 25th anniversary celebration is based on the theme “Making poverty history” and we will continue to do our part to make his vision a reality.
We ask you to journey with us into a future devoid of poverty and hunger.
Mbeki is founder and patron of the WDB Trust and a non-executive director of WDB Investment Holdings