Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic: How Microlending Lost Its Way and Betrayed the Poor

Hugh Sinclair

Collins Business

268 pages, R350

There is actually surprisingly little evidence supporting microfinance as a practical tool of poverty reduction, but this rather critical detail is ignored within the microfinance sector…

The author argues that while the idea of ending world poverty via small, low-cost loans to the poor (to allow them to start profitable businesses) is a noble one, it has been derailed by greed and “hijacked by profiteers”. Microfinance, Sinclair argues, fails its founding premise: interest rates are usurious and loans are used to maintain life rather than pivot the poor out of poverty.