VILLAGE SAVINGS AND LOANS ASSOCIATION MODEL, MICRO FINANCE AND RURAL WOMEN’S LIVELIHOOD IN THE KASSENA NANKANA WEST DISTRICT OF GHANA

Abstract

Globally, the issue of rural women’s livelihood has taken centre stage because of its importance in reducing poverty among women and by extension, households, rural communities and nations. Livelihood allows women to use their human and material resources to engage in economic activities that involve self-employment or wage employment to generate cash or non-cash to meet their self needs and households. In Ghana, several attempts have been made to enhance women’s livelihood including the creation of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection in 2021. In 2015, the Ministry introduced the National Gender Policy which seeks to promote the greater empowerment of women to have equal opportunities with their men counterparts. Ghana has also ratified international instruments and frameworks such as the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals. More specifically, to take rural women out of poverty, the government of Ghana and the private sector have introduced a number of strategies such as micro finance institutions to provide financial resources to the citizenry to engage in economic activities to take them out of poverty. However, their reach to the rural poor especially women are limited: their unavailability, nearness, non-effectiveness of service provision, inadequacy of loans granted, untimeliness and cost of services provided to rural communities. This drew the attention of development practitioners to introduce the Village Savings and Loans Model as an alternative to micro finance and as a way to marshal financial resources for women in particular in rural areas where micro finance institutions are hard to reach. As an informal micro finance institution, the Village Savings and Loans model allows for saving and borrowing without any requirement for external support. This study thus, examined the Villages Savings and Loans Model as an alternative to micro finance and its effects on rural women’s livelihoods in the Kassena Nankana West District of the Upper East Region of Ghana. The study adopted the sequential design approach where quantitative data was collected through the use of questionnaires and followed by a qualitative data through focus group discussions and key informant interviews from a sample of 291 members of the Village Savings and Loans Associations in the district. The study revealed that the Village Savings and Loans Associations model has increased rural women’s access to credit due to savings’ mobilizations, increased the average households’ monthly incomes from GH¢78.56 to GH¢136.37, increased women’s participation in household decision making and improved members’ level of confidence and self-esteem. However, the study showed that members of the associations lacked regular capacity building trainings to boost their work. The study therefore, recommends that government through the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and District Assemblies should provide regular, timely and need-based capacity building trainings for members and link them with formal micro finance institutions that will help enhance their activities and policy makers should learn best practices from the existing Village Savings and Loans Associations and incorporate them into existing national programmes that address rural women’s livelihood issues.