For Africa's poorest and most marginalized households, few financial institutions exist to serve them, and where institutions do exist they generally have inappropriate products and services. To address the issue of financial inclusion and reach poorer clients, CARE began promoting a savings-led microfinance model, called Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs). The VSLA model is based on the belief that for the extremely poor, particularly women, the best approach is to begin by building their financial assets and skills through savings rather than debt. Through participation in a VSLA members can diversify their activities, plant additional crops and even add new income generating activities. At the same time, they are able to save and borrow in ways that allow them to smooth cyclical household consumption patterns. Now more than ever before, we see VSLAs as an important, and often necessary, rung on the ladder of financial inclusion. Article Full financial inclusion is generally referred to as a state in which all people have access to a full suite of financial services, including most fundamentally savings, credit, insurance and transaction accounts, but extending as well to more sophisticated financial instruments such as pensions and lines of credit. Ideally these services would be provided by a range of providers to ensure users receive services at competitive rates. For Africa's poorest and most marginalized households, financial inclusion is a long way off. Few institutions exist in the rural areas, and where institutions do exist they often have inappropriate products and services. The reality is most extremely poor households have neither the assets nor the skills to interact with formal institution, even those dedicated to reaching the poor. This paper looks at baseline data collected as part of an ongoing impact assessment across three countries implementing large scale Village Savings and Loan (VSL) programs: Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. The baseline data provides evidence of the poverty levels of target communities, and identifies the needs for and barriers to formal financial inclusion in poor remote communities. When combined with periodic data collected on

The effects of HIV/AIDS have been far-reaching in Africa. Beyond adverse health outcomes and the tremendous toll on life, AIDS has serious economic impacts on households, increasing livelihood insecurity while simultaneously depleting socio-economic resources. Although microfinance is believed to have the potential to mitigate the economic impacts of HIV by helping affected households and communities better prepare for and cope with HIV-related economic shocks, little empirical research exists on this subject. This qualitative study examines the socio-economic impacts of economic strengthening activities on people living with HIV (PLHIV) in the era of increased access to anti-retroviral therapy to determine if savings-led, community-managed microfinance is a justified activity for HIV programmes. Findings from a village savings and loan programme, implemented by CARE International in Cote d'Ivoire, revealed that when appropriate medical treatment is available PLHIV are capable of participating in and benefit from microfinance activities, which increased HIV-positive clients' access to money and economic self-sufficiency. By bringing individuals with similar experiences together, savings and loan groups also acted as self-support groups providing psychosocial support while reducing stigmatisation and increasing members' sense of dignity and self-worth.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and some of the associated policy responses have resulted in significant gendered impacts that may reverse recent progress in gender equality, including in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper presents emerging evidence from studies in diverse contexts in sub-Saharan Africa —with a deep dive into Nigeria and Uganda—on how COVID-19 has affected women’s groups, especially savings groups, and how these groups have helped mitigate the gendered effects of the pandemic’s and the associated policy responses’ consequences up until April 2021. The synthesis presents evidence that savings groups found ways to continue operating, provided leadership opportunities for women during the pandemic, and mitigated some of the negative economic consequences of COVID-19 on individual savings group members. Savings, credit, and group support from other members all likely contributed to the ability of groups to positively affect the resilience of women’s group member during COVID-19. Households with a female member in a savings group in Nigeria and Uganda have coped with the crisis better than those not in savings groups. While savings groups have shown the potential for resilience during the pandemic, they often faced financial challenges because of decreased savings, which sometimes resulted in the depletion of group assets. Savings groups also contributed to community responses and provided women a platform for leadership. These findings are consistent with a recent evidence synthesis on how past covariate shocks affected women’s groups and their members. We conclude the paper by presenting various policy recommendations to enable savings groups to achieve improvements in women’s empowerment and economic outcomes, and research recommendations to address some of the current evidence gaps on how COVID-19 is affecting women’s groups and their members.