Her name is Aselefech Desalegn and she’s in the headlines of Africa Renewal, a UN publication that deals with development in Africa. After leaving her parents’ village fifteen years ago, this young lady settled in the town of Bishoftu, 45 km from Addis Abeba. She started work as a hotel cook and became a customer of a microfinance institution to set herself up in business and increase her revenue. She was a street vendor of charcoal and eggs, later switching to baking enjera, the national bread, which she now sells to hotels.

In East Africa, for numerous farmers the main “professional risk” is the death of livestock due to drought. Linked to the disappearance of pasture lands and scarcity of water sources, this risk threatens them with job loss, starvation and, ultimately, loss of life.

In the Ivory Coast, 75 Microfinance Institutions (MFI) had their permit to operate removed. The list was published on 3rd October by the Economy and Finance Ministry. According to the Griot daily newspaper, this decision follows the recommendation to “clean up” the sector, which was made by a working group partnering the African Development Bank, the IMF and the World Bank.

In January 2011, Nuru launched a pilot project to make microfinance available by mobile phone. They use the M-PESA service and MIFOS software (link to mifos). MIFOS is an open-source software programme which was developed by the Grameen Foundation. Vivian Lu manages this project in Kenya. She talks to us at Microworld.