Academic research generates scholarly publications which practitioners do not read. Practitio-ners face challenges which scholars do not address. They speak different languages and move in different worlds. In a field now known as microfinance, this paper is a personal account of taking turns...

La recherche académique génère des publications spécialisées que les opérateurs de terrain ne lisent pas. Eux-mêmes font face à des défis que les universitaires n'étudient pas. Chercheurs et praticiens parlent des langages différents et vivent dans des mondes distincts. Cet article se...

Rotating savings and credit associations (RoSCAs) are, next to moneylenders, the most prevalent type of informal finance around the world. In 1988, Seibel & Shrestha traced the evolution of the dhikuti, as RoSCAs are called in Nepal, and published the results under the title Dhikuti: The Small...

Informal financial institutions (IFIs), among them the ubiquitous rotating savings and credit associations, are of ancient origin. Owned and self-managed by local people, poor and non-poor, they are self-help organizations which mobilize their own resources, cover their costs and finance their...

Rural Finance Nepal (RUFIN) is a joint Nepali-German project, implemented by the Agricultural Development Bank of Nepal (ADBN), with technical assistance from the German Agency for Technical Co-operation (GTZ). RUFIN aims at bringing sustainable financial services to the rural poor. The...

Over the last decade, Nepal has turned into a microfinance laboratory, exploring various approaches to provide financial services to the rural poor, both in the hill and plain areas of the country. The list of institutions and programs engaged in rural finance is long and includes informal...

That has to be uppermost in our minds as we think about what microfinance means. For IFAD, the finance issue is crucial to the task of reducing rural poverty. We do not insist on any particular institutional model. The demand for financial services is very diverse even among the poor, and we...