Credit for the Common Man in Cameroon

Abstract

Complaints are frequently heard that the African farmer, the small trader, the everyday person has no means of getting the funds needed to improve his farm, to expand his trade, or to pay his child's school fees. It is often alleged that the low-literacy peasants and workers in a partially-monetised economy have no desire to save, even if there was any surplus money, and that in any case there are no institutions in which to accumulate or to redistribute their savings. It is argued that the banks fail to meet their needs because it is so difficult to obtain loans, while the private money-lenders, often operating illegally, almost always charge exorbitant rates of interest that discourage all but the most desperate of borrowers.

Scripting development through formalization: accounting for the diffusion of village savings and loans associations in Tanzania

“…Small‐scale savings associations are a global institutional form, ranging from, on the one hand, groups of four or five people who take turns to access one another's contributions to, on the other, the expanded savings and credit associations which manage lending, saving, and social insurance for several hundred people (Ardener ; Ardener & Burman ; Bouman ; ). Examples familiar to anthropologists include the Mexican tanda (Cope & Kurtz ), the Cameroonian njangi (DeLancey ), the Nigerian esusu (Bascom ), and the Indonesian arisan (Geertz ). Most research on savings associations has focused on the mobilization of savings, hence the body of work exploring the operation of rotating savings and credit associations, which are differentiated from those which are organized around accumulating funds (Hospses : 372).…”

“…Savings groups use standard meeting formats, formal offices and titles, and rehearsed rhetorical devices (e.g. Ardener : 210; Bouman ; ; DeLancey : 319). Accounts of self‐organized savings associations consistently remark on the ceremonial and ritual aspects of their practice (e.g.…”

Expanding horizons: Women’s voices in community-driven development in the Cameroon grasslands

“…Although the notion of community participation remains problematic, its potential in rallying existing communal resources to enhancing and sustaining community livelihoods in Cameroon cannot be disputed. Community participation as a development strategy has a very long and rich history in Africa in general and Cameroon in particular where formal community development is traceable to the expansion and growth of the credit union movement in Anglophone Provinces (Delancey, 1977), community education and the British colonial experience on community development (Kwo, 1984) and to government's shifting regional and community development plans (Yenshu, 1998). The problem of resource scarcity that remains nightmarish accentuates the need for innovative, costsaving and sustainable public service delivery strategies (Lammerink, 1998;Njoh, 2002).…”

“…Within communities, they foster community participation by building social capital and mobilizing members for community endeavours. The existence of Njangis or rotating credit associations have imbued men and women with a strong sense of organization in generating resources and committing them for social development activities that seeks to improve livelihoods (see Delancey, 1977;Ardener and Burman, 1995;Fonchingong, 1999).…”

Collateralized Social Relations: The Social in Economic Calculation

“…41-42) The use of social relations to generate economically useful information is not limited to the upper reaches of society. Researchers (DeLancey 1977;Sexton 1982;Timberg and Aiyar 1984;Biggart 2000) show that even the poorest use their knowledge of others' financial statuses in order to form credit markets. Rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) are a widely used mechanism for generating savings and loans among the economically marginal in countries around the world including Taiwan, Cameroon, India, Mexico, and Vietnam.…”