Review by Booklist Review
This book delves into the history--and consequences--of microfinance based on narratives of women borrowers in Sierra Leone. It began in the 1970s, when Muhammad Yunus, an economist, met a female woodworker who needed money to expand her business. He lent $27 to 42 women with the intention of the small credit helping them out of poverty. Soon after, Yunus' Grameen Bank began offering high-interest microloans. Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize for this effort. However, the high interest rates caused many to quickly pile up debt, forcing them to sell land or go to jail. Narratives like these unfold in stories like Aminata's. She wanted to make yogurt and got a refrigerator but didn't have money for supplies. A microloan helped her to quickly turn a profit, but she had to use all of her earnings to repay loans and then had to take out more loans to keep her business going. It is a vicious cycle that many borrowers face. Kardas-Nelson includes more stories like these and a well-researched history of the microloan business. Ultimately, readers will determine who profits and who gets left behind.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Microfinance, a novel approach to financing small-scale business ventures in the developing world "that had promised to uplift millions," may have "quietly died" in the Western media, writes journalist Kardas-Nelson in her eye-opening debut exposé, but meanwhile it's been wreaking havoc around the globe. Throughout the 2000s, microlending--the issuing of tiny loans to aspiring small business owners--was widely celebrated, earning its progenitor, banker Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize. However, by the time Kardas-Nelson traveled to Sierra Leone in 2015 for a job with a health organization, the hype had ended and, quite literally, the bill had come due. Learning from locals that it had become routine for women (the scheme's original intended beneficiaries) to be arrested and imprisoned over microfinance debts, Kardas-Nelson decided to investigate. Through extensive archival research, she pieces together an account of the 20th-century rise of microfinance as part of America's "international development" apparatus, revealing how starry-eyed American "activists, feminists, and funders... create the conditions" for today's global predatory lending problems. She also profiles women in Sierra Leone and Bangladesh struggling to pay off microfinance debts, reporting that a mere three out of the 100 businesswomen she interviewed believe the loans had actually helped them. Kardas-Nelson's crisp characterizations and novelistic storytelling bring clarity to a sprawling, shadowy history. The result is a devastating look at a disaster set into motion by misguided American policymakers. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A keen examination of the rise and fall in popularity of the microfinance loan system. The concept of microfinance--which provides loan and banking services to poor populations that would normally be unable to access such services--was the brainchild of Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. However, as Kardas-Nelson, a journalist focused on international development and inequality, shows, the idea isn't as win-win as it seems on the surface. While some recipients have benefited, others have ended up drowning in debt or jailed for failure to repay. In 2019 in Homa Bay, Kenya, two dozen people died by suicide. "Every single one," writes the author, "had something in common: they had recently defaulted on their microcredit loans." In her penetrating investigation, Kardas-Nelson follows a handful of loan recipients in West Africa, in addition to the mostly well-meaning executives, policymakers, and investors chasing the dream of changing a country's destiny by doling out small loans to "the poorest of the poor." The heartstring-tugging stories of Western advertising firms and banks jumping into the fray looking to make some cash are striking, but the real meat of the book is the absorbing tales of the yogurt seller, jewelry maker, and women living in grinding, exhausting poverty. Most of them, the author argues, would have been better off with a living-wage job, rather than trying to maintain precarious self-employment. Ultimately, the pros and cons of microfinance require further exploration and more long-term data, but Kardas-Nelson offers an evenhanded, instructive account of where things stand today. "Women are terrified of the loans and their consequences," she notes near the end of the book. "And they are also terrified of life without them." This thoughtful deep dive into the world of microfinance is both educative and heartbreaking. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
