Thread by @mentorshipzim

Do you know what microfinance is? This is a fairly young discipline, don't miss out, as we end Finance week, please welcome @mimmitwit . Holds a degree from University of District of Columbia(USA) in Computer Engineering, Digital, Circuits Design & a Diploma in Social Science

Mirriam has vast international experience having worked in USA, Zambia, UK. Her time at Vantage Microfinance and Credit, Zim was responsible for signing off Central Bank regulatory reports at the start of institution’s operations & ensuring compliance with regulatory framework

Her vast experience in Project Management, Consultancy for private & national projects for funding from
UNDP/ EU funding & private finance firms.
Zimbabwe Solar City- raising $60million +
for low cost social housing using solar for energy. We live Amai Boy to teach us more

Thank you for having me just a point of correction started at UDC and finished off at NH. But generally “muGrade7”

Right where do I start!
I got into the field believe it or not inspired by discussions and or arguments from forums.newzimbabwe.com thanks at the time to @Mathuthu.

This was during hyperinflation era when price of bread was not guarantee for the next few hours.

At my industry at the time was Telecoms. And a couple of colleagues and I wxplored tge idea of moving value to Zim without getting muddled up into local bearer cheques. So we started exploiting how calls where terminating in Zim with Robert Ndlovu not sure whether he is around.

We finally convinced Eng Shadreck Nkala to allow us to use his switch to try open source callibg for diasporans. We ran a few freebies for a week or so. We then concluded it wouldnt work without Zim being online. But Zim was far from it at the time,internet was predominantly work

Inian Techies surprise surprise where at the helm. So we explored soft switches which led us to learning how the regulatory sector in Zim was closed up.
Invested a few soft switches but termination was killing us and we learnt telecom companies were and still are refiling.

Fast forward to 2009 after sharing much and exploring a bit, I resolved to do a stint in Zim. At this stage I wasnt calling it microfinance! I wqs calling it Online banking for rural Zimbabwe!

Microfinance as an industry was birthed by the writings and experiments with various models by god father of microfinance Prof Muhammad Yunus founder Gramewn Bank and microcredit and microfinance. His approach is not for individual profit sadly that is not what it is in Africa!

Grameen concept has an open source approach to community wealth creation.
Ministry of SME under Dr S Nyoni visitied and learnt first hand the concept but it was seen as a sector for women’s revolving funds.

In Zim via the RBZ, MF was just about lending at high interest rates where the license fees were just $1000 and one was up and running.

Avg int was 30%

The act of microfinance itself is older than Prof Yunus it dates back centuries in Asia and Middle East and in West Africa about 400years and it is known as diff things in diff geos. Kitty in Asia and Susu in west Africa. Ghana and a few East African countries mastered it.

In community based MF lending repayment is 99% as loan guarantee is not your assets but the human beings in your community!
In Zim prior to MFIs and birth of ZAMFI Zim Association of Microfinance Institution our mothers did mf as ma round.

There are various debates around what a microfinance figure is but generally agreed to be upto $5000 during my wtint in the sector.

Teeing off, We started off as Savings Trusts. We setup circa 18 trusts around Zimbabwe. And our mantra was save a dollar a day. Then after saving for 3 months you qualify to borrow 3 times your savings guaranteed. 30% was guaranteed by your savings and the rest by your group.

The group maximum was 10members preferrably same gender. And if mixed we promoted that it be women led.
Most members were informal traders and they out banked formal employees.
Some were illiterate but they knew money.

Parallel to the trusts we were courting anyone who would listen to us on our Gospel of Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.
I wrote so many pitches to everyone who had a bank license or some semblance of authority 😂 I even wrote to RGM’s office and the official reaponse was:

Sending CIO guys formerly to interview each one of us and ultimately they asked us”hamusi kuda kuita unseat president” 😂

Generally the concept was well received we were against uninformed Microlending but pro Microbank.

We requested licenture as Microbank but RBZ did not have provisions for it bor provissions for movile money licensing. Our trusts had by this time set up trust accounts with POSB which was within reach of most Local Authourities.
We insisted we want to run a microbank.

We were eventually allowed but still while our activities were microbanking our license was Microfinance institution. We were given conditions and there after invited along others to participate in the drafting of Microbank legislation drafting. We banked with POSB and Agribank.

And later with FBC. We were primarily using gvt banks ie 49% in POSB and 100% in Agribank, because we wanted gvt buy in. Our product would have transformed banking.

I still consider us the first Microbank in zimbabwe we had more member accounts than commercial banks put together given our nationwide presence. Total individual bank accounts at the time in Zim were less than a million.

The formalisation of our trusts into a microbank meant we were now taken seriously but no one wanted to entertain us fully. Bringing our banking system would mean we would be the biggest settler of transactions.

Zimswitch gave us a 3rd party agreement which bizarrely required RBZ approval even though it was a PL. Steve Wndeeby said to me after one of our pitches “I am happy for you to come in as long as you do not encroach into the traditional commercial space”

The agreement 10yrs on is still waiting RBZ approval 😂

We then caught a break when William Nyemba and team decided to be parent bank for our pool account backed by real value real cash with online and offline realtime.
We were at UAT stage User Acceptance Test when Trust Bank had its license revoked 🙁😭

That was a dagger to the heart of the project. I had IT operqtions sustaining me & a few consultancies so I survived the cull😎. I then went to Angola and got the required license but language barrier was too much, IFC had shown interest n green light was on n generals happened

Zambia received me on an advisory Role of Rural Banking Using tech. They were more organises they had at the time a working group of all tech providers in the Finance Sector including Telecom operators.

I also want to mention one of tge human good seen in Zim during the journey.

I need to dig my archives for last name. Collin someone who was at CBZ opened the door to me being a member of Affordable Housing Association in Africa. I have carried that with me and am a Trustee at Oxford Community Land Trust which focuses on affordable housing in our county.

Thats the short story.

The opportunity as it waa back then still exists! And moreso now with data via fons and more open source

herald.co.zw/cashless-payme… this would have prevented the current situation in Zim.

Here is a tip on goong into banking witgout interacting with RBZ red tape ☺️

Edgars
Barbourd
TV sales etc
All sell on credit! Use the law of credit you can run a bigger bank legally!
It is still crowd fund and fully legal 😎

Oh and another thing

As an academic discipline its only circa 40years old.

Most unis offer it as a module or worse still a subject

a handful offer it as a full degree and Zim is not one of them 😎

However nothing beats practical experience

Someone sent me this just now am still trying to interpret😎

Do we need commercial banks in zim? They are serving micro economy or macro? 😎who is using them willingly 😎