IRC -The Hague, NL, International Water and Sanitation Centre, 2006. Regional workshop on microfinance in Sub-Saharan Africa, Dakar 12-14 December 2005 : microfi nance and innovative mechanisms to achieve the MDGs in the water and sanitation sector in Sub-Saharan Africa : report of proceedings. [online] Delft, The Netherlands: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.

• WWW page: WWW Download report, PDF file [1.41 MB]
• Local file: IRC-2006-Regional.pdf (1.41MB)

Historically, micro finance has not been available for financing water supply and sanitation activities, because these have not usually been seen to be sufficiently attractive to lenders. A long term repayment period is normally required and in some cases there is no direct link with income generation. However, some micro finance institutions in the 2005 micro finance workshop in Dakar argued that the core blockage to increased micro finance in the sector is lack of awareness of the business case for water supply projects. The workshop web page also provides access to the power point presentations of all papers and to Micro Finance Daily for an overview of the discussions and happenings on the first day of the workshop.

Subjects: sanitation | water supply | institutional aspects | access to water | access to sanitation | poverty | scaling up | sdiman | microcredit;