Mesofinance Media - News #Uganda

Liberation Community Finance Pilots Group Microfinance Lending to Congolese Refugees in Uganda

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 09:02:33 -0500

The Ugandan social enterprise Liberation Community Finance recently launched an 18-month program to help refugees from DRC integrate into life in Uganda. The microlender has partnered with the government of Uganda and a refugee-led NGO to identify members of the community who are interested in launching microbusinesses. Many of the refugees are taking English classes to help integrate into their host cities. Others are learning trades such as sewing, baking and hairdressing.

With the support of an interest-free loan of USD 20,000 from Belgium’s Credit Sud, Liberation has opened nearly 1,000 accounts for groups of refugees, whose members are 90% women. Liberation also lends to members of host communities, generally on an individual basis.

From an operational standpoint, the loans are about 45% digitized. Initial KYC and applications are done on paper, but once borrowers get to their third loan cycle, they are well-enough known to the company that their interactions can be fully online.

Liberation was founded in 2017 and is now a social business 95%-owned by Patrick Batenze (pictured). Mr Batenze, who joined the company as its CEO in 2022, told Mesofinance Media last week at IF25 in Luxermbourg: “Funding has become harder to access, especially for the most vulnerable groups. Funders have become more driven by the balance sheet, at the expense of impact.”

Thierry Deflandre, who has served as an advisor to Liberation, explained to Mesofinance Media how his philosophy aligns with Credit Sud’s model: “As an impact investor, I am fond of interest-free loans, so I don’t pay taxes, but the money does the work and can be re-invested. That’s why I joined Credit Sud.”

Liberation also has been innovating in the area of governance. As a result of past fraud by branch managers, the microbank is rolling out an advisory board for every branch. This board will supervise the branch and its manager, as well as reporting to central leadership.

Looking forward, Liberation aims to grow within the regions it serves as well as to move into the eastern and northern parts of Uganda. It is also working to digitize its operations more fully.

The microbank lends for purposes such as agriculture, trading and school fees - largely to youth. Liberation also offers savings services, training, crop storage, agency banking, bill payments, money transfers and mobile banking. The organization's balance sheet is valued at the apprroximate equivalent of USD 1 million.

Financial Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities \ Adriana Carolina Armos Cuesta et al \ Alliance for Financial Inclusion

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 14:20:41 -0500

Adriana Carolina Armos Cuesta and her colleagues analyzed the National Financial Inclusion Strategies of 16 countries. Although 1 billion people in the world live with disabilities, this segment comprises less than 0.5 percent of the customers of global microfinance institutions. Approximately 80 percent of those who live in low-income countries and have disabilities do participate in the informal sector through self-employment. However, the World Bank estimates that the remaining barriers to the economic inclusion of this group reduce global GDP by 5% to 7%.

The obstacles preventing people with disabilities from accessing formal financial services include: (1) lack of education; (2) discrimination; (3) inadequate training of staff of financial services providers; (4) regulatory frameworks that fail to incentivize FSPs to design services for people with disabilities or to foster greater “access [to] and usage of adaptive financial technologies;” (5) lack of access to mobile phones - particularly smartphones; and (6) shortage of data to assess the needs of people with disabilities and to create and monitor programs and policies to address those needs.

Among the actions noted from the National Financial Inclusion Strategies are: (1) expansion of Kenya’s National Development Fund for Persons with Disabilities; (2) lowered tills and access ramps in financial institutions and social welfare offices in Uganda; (3) documents offered in braille, sign language translation and ramp installations in bank branches as well as job quotas for people with disabilities in Pakistan; and (4) tactile features added to paper currency in the Philippines.

In closing, the authors suggest three measures: (1) increasing access to assistive financial technologies; (2) gathering data classified by type of disability, age and gender to improve policies and product development; and (3) developing government plans targeting the three dimensions of financial services: access, usage and quality. As part of this process, the authors emphasize the importance of engaging people with disabilities - and representative organizations - in all phases of the strategies: design, execution and monitoring.

This is a summary of a paper that the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) published in November 2023. The authors are Adriana Carolina Armos Cuesta, Isabela Pradere da Silva Ramos, Daniel Ricardo Meza Rodriguez, Diana Schvarztein and Robin Newnham.

Summary by: Renata Samadova