Malawi
Malawi is a beautiful, land locked country in Central Africa at the southern end of the Great Rift Valley.
The Rift Valley gives the country amazing changes in topography so, you can travel from less than100 meters above sea level along the banks of the Lower Shire River to over 3000 meters at the top of Mount Mulanje just 100 kilometers away.
Much of the land is also covered by the beautiful Lake Malawi, which is so big it gives the impression of being an inland sea. Lake Malawi covers 30,000 square kilometers; is 500 meters above sea level and is the second and deepest of the Rift Valley lakes at over 700 meters deep. It is drained by the Shire River which runs south into the Zambezi River.
With a population of about 18 million, the country is rural and the economy agricultural and Malawi is one of the poorest, least developed countries in the world, with 72% of its population living in poverty ..
MicroLoan Foundation currently operates out of 16 branches in Malawi and our focus is on supporting more women from existing branches rather than opening up new branches.
This is because, in recent years our organisation and our clients in Malawi have had to deal with devastating floods, droughts and famine which caused many of our clients to lose all their assets. We never repossess assets, and we wrote off some of the loans affected by these crises and recapitalised women’s businesses. By increasing the number of women we support after such unforeseen events, our organisation will eventually recover.
In 2017 we have seen a healthy growth of our loan book and solid management of our operations. Our portfolio at risk is consistently very low, and we have much improved our operational self-sustainability.
The figures below give an indication of the extent of our operations in Malawi in 2017.
Remember that the 39,389 clients we looked after in 2017 will in turn help so many more people in their communities.
Each woman will have a family with children to support.
Each family will also be looking after other family members and most will be bringing up orphans (there are over 1 million orphans in Malawi, whose parents have died due to AIDS.HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis, childbirth or any number of other causes).
And each business woman will almost certainly grow her business to create employment for others in the community.
The increased economic flow on effect of our services impacts on the whole village, raising economy and lifestyle for all.
Click the button below to have a look at some of the stories our wonderful clients in Malawi have to tell.
