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The
Decentralised Financial Services (DFS) project is an
action research initiative addressing the problem of rural
outreach.
DFS project includes four main activities:
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Research on understanding the current limits of
centralised financial service provision and the
potential for decentralised financial models to
reach further into rural areas and serve poorer
clients. DFS research suggests strong evidence
of the frontiers that exist for different types
of centralised financial service provision,
beyond which they cannot currently reach.
Read more. |
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Simple and easy to use tools have been developed
to strengthen operations, management and
governance in decentralised, community based
financial organisations that work in remoter
rural areas and with poorer people as a
building block for developing sustainable and
robust decentralised financial systems in Kenya.
(TOOLS) |
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Tools are currently being tested and refined
with Action Research Partners
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The role of social and cultural norms and power
structures in the governance and management of
microfinance groups is investigated.
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Background
Providing financial services in rural areas of Kenya on a
sustainable basis remains a challenging goal. The Kenyan
rural environment is characterized by poor communications
infrastructure, relatively low population density, low
levels of literacy, low profitability and/or high risk of
many rural economic activities, and relatively
undiversified economies. As a result, the rural areas have
proved unattractive markets for NGO microfinance
institutions (MFIs), let alone commercial financial
institutions.
Given that 60-80% of African people live in rural areas,
there is a pressing need to review the variety of attempts
being made to extend financial services into these areas in
a systematic manner. DFS aims to draw lessons from tested
approaches and to build on these achievements to develop and
test tools that will assist managers in managing, Boards in
governing and members/clients in understanding their
financial service organisation.
The Decentralised Financial Services is an independent
project but shares several support personnel with
MicroSave
What are
decentralised financial services?
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