MAKAZI BORA DIARY: 100th Loan Approved - Week 14: 21st

26 September 2009

100th Loan Approved - Week 14: 21st - 25th September 2009

MAKAZI BORA crossed two milestones in week 14. The 200th client was registered and the week was finished with 216 MAKAZI BORA clients. Registration gives the client a number, identity card, welcome packet and all the forms necessary to apply for a MAKAZI BORA loan. Clients are not considered active clients, however, unless they have received a loan and have an outstanding loan balance.

Also during week 14, the 100th loan was approved within a group of 22 loans that were approved by the credit committee on Friday 25th September. A total of 102 loans have been approved since the doors opened on 22nd June. Not all of these loans have been disbursed yet. The proposed disbursement date for the 22 loans approved on 25th September is on the 1st of October. Clients have been notified to come and sign loan agreements and will have to make an insurance payment and security deposit prior to having their loans processed and disbursed. One client who had a loan approved at a previous credit committee meeting travelled and has yet to have the loan disbursed. Approval does not necessarily mean immediate disbursement.

Within the loans approved in week 14 was a new loan use under the loan use category of finishing. One client is using the loan to have a water connection from a private water supplier. We have had several electricity connections and quite a few loans for septic tanks and latrines, but this was our first water connection. Water, sanitation and utility upgrades are important improvements in a household's living conditions.

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MAKAZI BORA: A Housing Microfinance Program in Tanzania

Habitat for Humanity has been active in Tanzania since 1986. Up until 2008, it built low-cost houses at community-based projects across the country. The cost of each home was to be repaid into a revolving fund to build more houses. Repayment rates were very low and the annual average number of families served was less than 75. We felt we could do better.

In September 2008, the Board of Directors adopted housing finance for the poor as the organization’s core business. Out of this decision, a retail housing microfinance program called MAKAZI BORA was created as our entry point into the world of housing microfinance. MAKAZI BORA Diary is the story of how it develops - as it happens.

INCREMENTAL BUILDING

The photos below along the right column of our blog are of incremental building projects of people within the Mbagala Branch operating area, Temeke Municipality, Dar es Salaam. The houses would qualify for MAKAZI BORA home improvement loans, but all of the work seen was done prior to MAKAZI BORA being introduced to the area. They are examples of what people are doing on their own and projects to which an injection of affordable housing finance can add value and improve living conditions. Some of the houses in the photos belong to MAKAZI BORA applicants prior to receiving their loans. Others are simply houses viewed in the area.

People are already building.... Habitat is just helping them solve a finance gap to advance their own housing process with the MAKAZI BORA home improvement loan. In the absence of any realistic hope of formal housing assistance for the hundreds of thousands of households with low incomes in Temeke Municipality, we applaud and seek to support their individual efforts that are made with limited resources and using what is available locally in an effort to find housing solutions.