The role of informal microfinance institutions in saving

1964, rural production mutual benefit societies (SMR) in 1953 and rural development mutual
benefit societies (SMDR) in 1956.
“For the administrators of the provident societies, the essential thing was to develop the
infrastructures and intensify export agriculture by the dissemination of inputs and hardware.
This was also to maintain social peace by distributing loans to purchase pre-harvest gap
foodstuffs in order to mitigate the imbalances caused by the growth of cash crops to the
detriment of food crops.
“Agricultural credit then appeared as a simple means in the service of an overall policy.
Despite numerous cases of delinquency, these provident societies operated for several decades
and injected billions into the rural world”.
It should be observed, as confirmed by the words of these researchers, that the experiences of
pre-cooperative organizations under colonial regime used the mutual benefit approach in
name only and failed to apply practically any of its principles. The first true experiences in the
area of savings and credit cooperatives in sub-Saharan Africa were to a large degree the work
of foreign missionaries. These initiatives were supported subsequently by the governments of
these countries. The bibliographical sources that the first savings and credit cooperatives
emerged in the English-speaking countries, primarily in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. In Ghana,
they were the work of Father J. McNulty in 1995 in Mirada, in the northwest part of the
country. The cooperative were sustained afterwards by the governmental structure through
special legislation (ACCOSCA, 1978). In Uganda, according to the same sources, in 1946 there
were already savings and credit cooperatives. Individuals with the help of the government
founded these.
These initiatives, in the case of Nigeria, dated back to 1951-1953. In Tanzania, they date back
to1954. All these experiences progressed after independence was achieved in the other English-
speaking countries before taking root in the French-speaking regions of Africa. Their expansion
was only particularly significant in the 1970s.
In 1960, Mauritius became the first French-speaking country to have SACCOs installed. One
year later, it was Lesotho’s turn and Malawi’s in 1962. Cooperative credit unions appeared in
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