Suchergebnisse

SUMMARY
Financial technology, or simply 'fin-tech', is increasingly seen as one of the key tools to facilitate poverty reduction and local economic development. One article in particular by Tavneet Suri and William Jack published in the leading publication Science has played a hugely influential role in promoting the fin-tech model in the global South using the example of Kenya's iconic M-Pesa money transfer platform. The authors' central claim is that M-Pesa has been instrumental in facilitating a major episode of poverty reduction. Our analysis shows that their analysis and claims are extremely problematic.

Foreword / James K. Galbraith -- Introduction: setting the scene / Milford Bateman and Kate Maclean -- Background -- The political economy of microfinance / Milford Bateman -- Poverty reduction or the financialization of poverty? / Maren Duvendack and Philip Mader -- Seduction -- Pop development and the uses of feminism / Meena Khandelwal and Carla Freeman -- Petit bourgeois fantasies : microcredit, small-is-beautiful solutions, and development's new anti-politics / Elliott Prasse-Freeman -- Kiva's staging of "peer-to-peer" charitable lending : innovating marketing or egregious deception? / Domen Bajde -- Muhammad Yunus's model of social business : a new, more humane form of capitalism or a failed "next big idea" / Milford Bateman and Sonja Novkovic -- Betrayal -- Bosnia's post-conflict microfinance experiment : a new Balkan tragedy / Milford Bateman and Dean Sinkovic -- From tigers to cats? : the rise and crisis of microfinance in rural India / Marcus Taylor -- The destructive role of microcredit in post-apartheid South Africa / Milford Bateman and Khadija Sharife -- Public goods provision aided by microfinance : an innovative or a flawed idea? / Philip Mader -- The "scandal" of Grameen : the Nobel prize, the bank, and the state in Bangladesh / Lamia Karim -- Agricultural microfinance and risk saturation / Charlotte Heales -- Alternatives -- Banking on the difference : credit unions as superior local financial institutions for the poor / Jessica Gordon-Nembhard -- Microfinance and the "woman" question / Kate Maclean -- Moral and other economies : Nijera Kori and its alternatives to microcredit / Kasia Paprocki -- The "solidarity economy" model and local finance : lessons from new left experiments in Latin America? / Milford Bateman and Kate Maclean -- Conclusion: it's the politics, stupid / Milford Bateman and Kate Maclean -- References -- Contributors -- Index