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Microfinance in « Le Monde »
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For the past three years, the «Microfinance» program at the IFP, aims to evaluate the impact of this new development tool, the way it is used, lived, sometimes reappropriated by the populations, but also its limits and the ways it fits, in the context of a renewing of style of public action.
The multidisplinary analysis adopted (2 books have been published; one is to come) enables us to go beyond the statistics and sector-wise briefings and to deconstruct the « myths » circulated by multiple institutional reports and communications. It allows to affirm that Microfinance is by no means a tool for fighting against poverty or for women emancipation ! The distorted and over evaluated image of this tool is all the more dangerous that microfinance has a tendency to, most particularly in south India, where it is much in vogue, to substitute itself to other tools for fighting against poverty and inequalities, or even to forms of civic and political mobilisations aiming to claim the right to, or the respect of, basic economic and social rights.
It was about time to ring the alarm bell! Besides a series of texts distributed in the network of microfinance professionals, the microfinance team of the IFP alerted the general public in an article that came out in the Daily, well known french newspaper « Le Monde » on November 29, 2005.