Social impact
MicroLoan’s mission is to deliver essential financial services to the poorest segment of the population and our approach is effective in creating positive social impact. We continue to reach the poorest communities and in 2023, over 50% of new clients who joined MicroLoan were living below the Poverty Probability Index of US $1.25 per day extreme poverty line and 77% below $2.50 per day poverty line. 17% of our clients are moving out of extreme poverty after one year on our livelihoods programme.
A few of social impact highlights…
- 84% have improved food security after joining MicroLoan
- 49% of clients have increased access to healthcare after joining MicroLoan
- 97% of clients in Zambia report that they have improved resilience to face emergencies
- 98% of clients report feeling more self-confident after joining MicroLoan
- 9% of our clients have one or more paid employees
- 92% of clients in Malawi with children of school going age are able to send all their children to school
Country highlights
In Malawi, a total of 37,177 female entrepreneurs had an active loan with MicroLoan at the end of the year and 62,489 women accessed training and financial services in 2023. With an average of four children each, over quarter of a million children and vulnerable adults in their care benefitted from increased access to food, healthcare, education, and a more safe and secure home. These are not just numbers, they represent individual women, and the far-reaching impact on their lives and their families.
In the prestigious European Microfinance Award, MicroLoan Malawi was awarded a certificate for its contributions to Inclusive Finance for Food Security & Nutrition. This award was based on MicroLoan Malawi offering and continually expanding its range of agricultural finance products and training designed to improve women’s farm livelihoods and shift from subsistence farming to an entrepreneurial approach.
We saw a significant growth in the outreach in Zambia during the year with 54,526 active clients at the end of the year and a total of 80,105 women benefitting from our services during the year. The ripple effect of MicroLoan’s work impacted the lives of 336,441 dependants. MicroLoan offers hope not handouts, opportunities that these women previously did not have.
MicroLoan Zambia continues to lead the way in digital innovation with 100% of disbursements made via mobile money, something we hope to achieve in Zimbabwe and Malawi too. The institution launched a project to develop the technology to allow financially excluded communities to create a digital financial footprint. By using our free savings platform, women will build a savings behaviour history. This will open up the opportunity to access formal financial services in remote rural areas, which typically they would be excluded from.
In 2023, MicroLoan Foundation Zambia won the 60 Decibels Top Impact Award – ranking second out of all African financial service providers surveyed in the 2023 Microfinance Index. The full Microfinance Index Report 2023 including the ranking came out in August and we are proud to announce that MicroLoan Zambia was ranked the fourth most impactful financial service provider in the world out of 115 institutions.
The number of active entrepreneurs served by MicroLoan Zimbabwe increased tenfold, from 234 at the start of the year to 2,205 at the end of 2023. In total 2,349 women had the opportunity to increase their financial and entrepreneurship skills through training and access much needed capital to start or grow businesses. With increased household income, their families have the opportunity to rise out of poverty and achieve a higher standard of living and well-being.
We are sincerely grateful to our funders, donors and supporters and look forward to building on our collective successes in 2024.
For more information on our impact statistics please head over to our Impact page.