Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria

For the past two decades, microfinance scheme has become a key instrument for community empowerment in developing countries. In recent years the scheme has attracted international attention thereby assuming a prominent place in community development discourse. This paper discuses the role of microfi...

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Main Authors: Saidu, Mohammed Bashir, Abu Samah, Asnarulkhadi
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia 2012
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/51189/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/51189/1/1-GSNRIC2012_17.pdf
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author Saidu, Mohammed Bashir
Abu Samah, Asnarulkhadi
author_facet Saidu, Mohammed Bashir
Abu Samah, Asnarulkhadi
author_sort Saidu, Mohammed Bashir
building UPM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description For the past two decades, microfinance scheme has become a key instrument for community empowerment in developing countries. In recent years the scheme has attracted international attention thereby assuming a prominent place in community development discourse. This paper discuses the role of microfinance scheme as a tool for community empowerment in Nigeria. The previous literatures revealed that successive Nigerian governments in the past initiated a series of public financed programmes and policies targeted at the poor but unfortunately, all those programmes have failed to deliver. In-line with this therefore, the author reviews the current Nigerian government policy on National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS) where microfinance scheme is identified as one of the key instrument for empowerment which the author perceived as bottom-up approach. The author found out that the reason why those initial programmes failed to deliver was that the subsequent government used top-down approach which leads to little or no empowerment at all. Therefore, this paper proposed a model of microfinance in the Nigeria context. The framework of the model portrays the relationship between empowerment and community participation which shows high level of empowerment at various stages in order to support the argument that bottom-up approach is relatively appropriate for community development.
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spelling upm-511892017-04-03T05:48:11Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/51189/ Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria Saidu, Mohammed Bashir Abu Samah, Asnarulkhadi For the past two decades, microfinance scheme has become a key instrument for community empowerment in developing countries. In recent years the scheme has attracted international attention thereby assuming a prominent place in community development discourse. This paper discuses the role of microfinance scheme as a tool for community empowerment in Nigeria. The previous literatures revealed that successive Nigerian governments in the past initiated a series of public financed programmes and policies targeted at the poor but unfortunately, all those programmes have failed to deliver. In-line with this therefore, the author reviews the current Nigerian government policy on National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS) where microfinance scheme is identified as one of the key instrument for empowerment which the author perceived as bottom-up approach. The author found out that the reason why those initial programmes failed to deliver was that the subsequent government used top-down approach which leads to little or no empowerment at all. Therefore, this paper proposed a model of microfinance in the Nigeria context. The framework of the model portrays the relationship between empowerment and community participation which shows high level of empowerment at various stages in order to support the argument that bottom-up approach is relatively appropriate for community development. Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia 2012 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/51189/1/1-GSNRIC2012_17.pdf Saidu, Mohammed Bashir and Abu Samah, Asnarulkhadi (2012) Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria. In: National Research & Innovation Conference for Graduate Students in Social Sciences (GS-NRIC 2012), 7-9 Dec. 2012, Mahkota Hotel, Melaka. (pp. 97-111).
spellingShingle Saidu, Mohammed Bashir
Abu Samah, Asnarulkhadi
Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria
title Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria
title_full Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria
title_fullStr Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria
title_full_unstemmed Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria
title_short Community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to Nigeria
title_sort community participation in microfinance scheme as a medium for empowerment in developing nations with special reference to nigeria
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/51189/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/51189/1/1-GSNRIC2012_17.pdf