Mainstreaming Microfinance

"Most of my own work on microfinance has been in Asia, where modern microfinance was born in the late 1970s. But there was another centre of world microfinancial innovation – Bolivia. Elisabeth Rhyne is someone who knows Bolivia well, and Mainstreaming Microfinance does exactly what its subtitle claims – it tells you how lending to the poor began, grew and came of age in Bolivia. By the time you have finished reading it, not only do you feel that you have got to know the personalities involved in the microfinance movement in Bolivia, and have gained some insights into the lives of the microfinance clients, but you come away with a broad understanding of how microfinance influences and is influenced by broader economic and political changes in the country. Yes indeed. Mainstreaming Microfinance is remarkable in being as frank and as insightful about the mistakes and crises that microfinance has suffered as it is about microfinance’s undoubted successes. Full-blooded commercial competitiveness came to Bolivia’s microfinance much earlier than it did in Bangladesh, and the book’s description of ruthless competition and its consequences is gripping. Rhyne recognises that not all micro-lending is wholesome; some is destructive."