Table-banking refers to small-scale financial transactions usually done on a very informal basis, often in one of the participants’ homes. Such table-banking can be a major help among the poor who find credit difficult to obtain from banking institutions and who need an initial capital input in order to start their income generation scheme.

July 2010 – a typical table-banking meeting. This was held at the home of one of the members of Dinyerisia Bukheri.

Aims

The purpose of this project is to provide a microfinance facility to community groups so that they can implement their own income-generation projects.

Progress

Community groups who were members of OWDF were invited in September 2009 to submit proposals for a self-managed income generation scheme. They were also asked to raise funds for the project and given ten days to do so. Those funds would be matched on a 50-50 basis up to a maximum of Ksh.5,000/- (about £40). At the initial table-banking meeting 32 groups produced such plans and in total raised the equivalent of £1,150. Within 3 days all of these groups received the equivalent of £2416.42p from SGG and they were asked to proceed with their project. These projects adopted different approaches & priorities according to local needs and interests. Most schemes were goat, pig or poultry projects. Some of the most profitable used the moneymaker pump for vegetable production, especially sukumawiki for sale during the dry season. Several schemes were based on the CBO using the funds received from SGG to establish their own table-banking among their own members. In July 2010 SGG workers visited the majority of these CBO income generation schemes to assess progress ten months after the launch of the project. There was insufficient time to visit 5 of the schemes, but of the remaining 27 there were 5 schemes which SGG regarded as unsatisfactory and 22 where progress was at least satisfactory and sometimes excellent. Several of the latter schemes had managed to produce an income or have livestock worth more than double the cost of the initial investment e.g.

• one group purchased 3 pigs but in less than a year they had produced 21 piglets,
• two CBOs gained an income from dry season sukumawiki sales which was three times the cost of the initial pump needed for irrigation,
• groups with pigs generally were profitable, provided good care was taken of the pigs.

Mudala Women produced a good profit by using table-banking funds to produce sukumawiki. Those profits were then used to start a pig-breeding project.

After monitoring the first round of schemes, a second cycle of fundraising and disbursement was started in July 2010. And this is where problems began. The first year of table-banking proved to be so popular and successful that there were over 90 CBOs wishing to table-bank in 2010. This required far more funding than SGG had available, and some 30 applications had to be rejected. SGG needs to greatly increase funds available for this type of enterprise, and the present hope is to have £5,000 available by July 2012. There was also the need to move towards a more sustainable model based on low/no interest loans, so in 2010 CBOs were asked to raise 70% of the total cost of their schemes. On this occasion 53 CBOs were accepted for table-banking and these groups raised a total of Ksh.328,700/- (about £2,500). In turn, they received in total Ksh.545,500/- (about £4,500). Thus, SGG’s contribution to the establishment of over 50 income generation schemes was approximately £2,000. We need to wait for the monitoring visit in late 2011 to see how successful this investment has been.

July 2010 – the problem with table banking is that SGG were overwhelmed with new community groups who wish to make use of this microfinance arrangement. At this meeting in Siguli Orphanage 15 new CBOs wished to join the project.